Genre: Romantic Comedy
Premise: A woman finds herself pregnant with twins from two different men, a rare real-life occurrence known as “superfecundation.”
About: Just a reminder. This is the script I talked about last week. It made the semifinals of the Nicholl, which, while admirable, rarely leads anywhere. Unless your name is Savion Einstein. Einstein would later go on to sell this script to Sony Screen Gems. Some of you might be wondering, “How come a sale-worthy script didn’t advance past the Nicholl semis?” Uh, have you guys been paying attention? Nicholl wants thematically dominated scripts that have a social or global agenda only. If you’re wondering why your otherwise well-received action or horror spec didn’t get far, you now know why.
Writer: Savion Einstein
Details: 116 pages (5/24/18 draft)
I was excited to read today’s script and I’ll tell you why.
It has a low burden of investment.
Burden of investment refers to the level of complexity in a screenplay. The more complexity you add, the more is required from the reader to keep up. A script with 8 characters has a lower burden of investment than a script with 30 characters. A script that covers a setup we know well (buddy cop comedy) has a lower burden of investment than a script that explores a 16th century war in China. A script with a clean setup, conflict, and resolution has a lower burden of investment than a script that’s told out of order.
I bring this up not to warn you away from writing scripts with a high burden of investment. Godfather 2 has a high burden of investment. That movie was pretty good. Only to remind you that unknown spec scripts are the lowest rung on the ladder, which means readers are less likely to invest in overly complicated scenarios.
Which is why a script like “Superfecundation” had a good chance, and ultimately succeeded, with readers. It’s a tried-and-true setup that’s easily understood. Readers don’t have to take copious amounts of notes to keep up. They’re not going to be mentally exhausted from trying to keep up with all the characters the writer is introducing. They can just read and enjoy.
After the high burden of investment of yesterday’s script, as well as a consultation script that had such a high burden of investment, I needed to break it up into three days just to process everything, it’s nice to read a script like this, where the read is effortless.
Ellie Kessler is 29, that awful age where you feel like you need to figure everything out NOW. Which is probably why she dumps her boyfriend, Ben, a video-gaming skateboarder who thinks pot is one of the five major food groups. Ben isn’t showing the commitment required for a woman who’s about to hit 30.
After the breakup, Ellie drowns her sorrows in a crazy drunken sexscapade with her rich ex-boyfriend from college, Owen. Ellie regrets the act (or series of acts) the next morning, leaves, and doesn’t call. Not initially at least. A month later, Ellie learns she’s pregnant with twins. And that one baby belongs to Owen while the other belongs to Ben.
Naturally, it’s hard for Ellie to break the news, particularly to Ben, who didn’t even know Ellie hooked up with Owen. And it only gets worse from there, as Ellie isn’t sure which guy she wants to be with. When the guys then use every opportunity the three are together to threaten each others’ lives, Ellie is forced to break up with both of them.
While Ellie deals with the prospect of raising twins by herself, Ben and Owen continue to bicker with one another. Except then a funny thing happens. They both realize that they like each other, start hanging out together, and eventually apologize to Ellie just in time for the birth. But being friendly is one thing. The real question is: What is everybody going to do when the babies are born?
I kinda felt like I was pregnant reading this.
Don’t your emotions sway wildly while pregnant? Sometimes I was patting my belly and cheering on this new rom-com take. Other times I was throwing up into my toilet and decrying the existence of this cliched genre.
Let’s refresh our memory. What’s the most formulaic genre in screenwriting?
If you said “the romantic comedy,” then DING-DING-DING, you win a prize. For this reason, it is imperative that rom-com writers come up with a situation that we haven’t seen before. If you do that, it will lead to a series of scenarios we haven’t before. That’s Superfecundation’s biggest accomplishment. You’ve never seen a situation quite like this.
Think about it. Ellie has a complicated choice with no easy answer. She can raise twins by herself. She can raise twins with only one of the guys, leaving the other. She can choose a guy and his baby while giving her other baby to the other guy. The more you think about it, the more you wonder what she’s gonna do. And when the script stays in that space of treating the situation truthfully, it’s at its best.
Unfortunately, as the script continues, it become less and less interested in exploring this dilemma honestly. For example, all three parties go to one of those “birthing prep” classes and, by the end of the session, both men have their shirts off and the teacher is electrically shocking them to simulate how painful pregnancy can be. It’s clumsy. It’s low-brow. But more importantly, it kills the suspension of disbelief. If the writer’s going to stop taking this situation seriously, then why would we continue to do so?
Another problem is the overly clean structure. The scenario is set up with the pinpoint precision of a game show. First Ellie tells one character they’re the father. Then she tells the other character they’re the father. Then she brings them together and explains how this process is going to work. You could feel the wheels and pulleys moving underneath the page. Remember that with any script, you want the plotting to be invisible. We didn’t have that here.
I was hoping, for example, that Ellie would lie to Ben initially. Not tell him that Owen was also the father. Then have Ben find out on his own, confront her, and then see where the bloody aftermath took things. It didn’t even need to be that plot point. I just wanted something that didn’t feel so clean and “screenwriterly.” Which I know is ironic considering I was arguing for just the opposite yesterday.
But the real killer here is the ending. And I have to get into spoilers to discuss this. You’ve been warned. As we’re moving towards the end, I got the sense that we were going in the direction where all three of them were going to end up together. And as this was happening, I was saying, out loud, “Please don’t all end up together. Please don’t all end up together. Please don’t all end up together.” And when they did, I almost threw my laptop across the room.
First of all, that’s not truthful. That would never happen in real life. It’s a total lie. And when you lie to your reader, your reader hates you. How do you know when you’re lying to your reader? When the answer is easy. If everything gets wrapped up in a bow for the hero without them having to do anything, you’re a storytelling liar. You’re always on a better track when your ending is difficult.
Imagine both suitors are equal. Then imagine Ellie picks one of them. The other gets screwed. That’s a much more difficult choice. But it’s more truthful. And it’s going to generate a lot more discussion afterwards. The choice to have them all end up together made me feel like I’d just wasted the last 90 minutes of my life. That’s how insulting it was.
Which is too bad. Because there’s some good stuff here. And the good news is, the development process isn’t over. Hopefully, someone at Sony will come to their senses and provide this script with a different ending. Or, even better, shoot several endings and let the audience decide. I have a strong feeling they’ll decide against this one.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Any solution in your story that’s easy should be treated with suspicion. It typically means you’re providing an “out” for your characters. It’s always more compelling when the characters have to make tough decisions, and those decisions have harsh consequences, even if, as was the case here, it’s the final decision of the story.
