John Wick meets… National Lampoon’s Vacation
Genre: Comedy/Family
Premise: A former top assassin living incognito as a suburban dad must take his unsuspecting family on the run when his past catches up to him.
About: Today’s writer wrote on the TV show, Scream. He’s been a head writer on two other shows. This script not only finished on last year’s Black List, but was also purchased by financing titan, Skydance, the home of such movies as Mission Impossible, Tomorrow War, and Top Gun: Maverick.
Writer: David Coggeshall
Details: 107 pages
Ruffalo for Dan?
I saw on David Coggeshall’s Twitter that when he sent this script to his agents, they dropped him. The script would then go on to sell and make the Black List.
What does this mean, exactly?
Does it mean that, as is often quoted in Hollywood, “nobody knows anything?” Or is there a more complex explanation, some “inside baseball” reason that the common man doesn’t understand?
It’s always interesting to see a script that was rejected then flourish. This happened famously recently with Squid Game. When the Squid Game writer originally pitched that script, executives said it was too dark, that audiences wanted something lighter.
And you know what? They may have been right. Maybe that show wasn’t meant to be made ten years ago.
Now when it comes to The Family Plan, I have no idea the specific reason for why his agents dumped him for it. But I do know this. Unless your agents are specifically comedy agents, you’re going to have a tough time when you send them a comedy script.
Comedy is so divisive. What you think is hilarious I might think is awful, and vice versa. So I can see a non-comedy agent receiving this script, not laughing cause it’s not his type of humor, and saying, “Okay, that’s it. I’m done.”
Another angle to this story is that it’s a family comedy. They say agents just want to make money. That’s true to an extent. But what they *really want* is to be a part of the cool club. They want to represent the hot new “voicy” writer. The Safdie Brothers. Jordan Peele. Whoever the next Diablo Cody is. Representing cool writers is currency in this town.
Agents don’t prance around Nobu talking up their latest family comedy writer. I’m not saying the agents were right to reject this writer. I’m just trying to tell you how the industry thinks, and therefore how this might’ve happened.
And with that, let’s get to the review!
30-something dad-bod Buffalo used-car salesman Dan Mitchell is living a mundane life. He’s got the wife, two children (Nina, 17, and Kyle 14), and a brand new baby. Dan is stuck in the doldrums of suburban hell…….. and he ABSOLUTELY LOVES IT. This is Dan’s dream. Which may sound like a strange dream. But you’re about to find out why.
One day while at the supermarket (carrying his 10-month old son in a baby Bjorn) a tattooed man attacks Dan! Milquetoast Dan all of a sudden turns into Murderer’s Row Dan, and decimates the guy with the precision of Jean-Claude Van Damme in his prime.
Dan, needing to escape the many attempts on his life that are about to begin, rushes home and tells his family it’s time to go on a vacation… to Vegas! His wife, Rachel, is confused. “Um, okay,” she says. “Let’s start planning.” No, NOW, Dan says. He wants to leave IN TWO MINUTES. Everybody jumps in the car, unclear why dad has all of a sudden turned into a psycho, and off they go.
Along the way they stop at Northwestern, as that’s the college Nina wants to go to. That turns out to be a mistake because, while taking the campus tour, Dan is attacked! Dan manages to not only defeat his attackers, but somehow do it without anyone noticing. He grabs his daughter after the tour and says, “Okay, time to get back on the road!”
When they finally get to Vegas, Dan is getting attacked so much that he can no longer keep his secret. So he sits the family down and explains that he used to be an assassin for some really bad people. Not on purpose! He clarifies. He thought he was assassinating dictators. Turns out he was just a killer-for-hire. And now his old boss has finally found him, and wants to clean up his loose end, which includes Dan… and his entire family!
When it comes to comedy, I better laugh in the first couple of pages. And lo and behold, I did get a big laugh early on…
Readers want to know they’re in good hands. They want to know that the writer knows his story, knows the language of screenwriting, knows how to hit a joke or hit a plot beat or set up a character. When I see these sorts of things executed well early on, I know I’m in good hands. After that, I can just relax. Which is what happened here.
The script is at its best in these early scenes. Cause it’s not just Dan fighting off bad guys. He’s having to do so without getting caught. It provides an extra level of difficulty to the fighting that gives the scenes a little extra oomph.
Once we’re on the road for a while, the script loses something and I’m not sure what it was. I think when it comes to any of these big concepts, you want your set pieces to have that clever “this could only happen in this movie” quality to them. Fending off bad guys on a college campus felt too generic to me.
I remember in the original National Lampoon’s Vacation, there was this scene where they visit their “Middle America” cousins and the comedy leaned heavily into the “white trash” and “hick” jokes, which felt organic. All families have those cousins who live in the middle of nowhere and live a totally different lifestyle than you. And there’s comedy to be found in those differences.
I wanted more of that “unique to this concept” type of scenes.
By the way, for those of you who don’t understand what the midpoint shift is, The Family Plan executes a perfect one.
The midpoint shift (which happens at….. the midpoint) changes the movie in some way so that the second half is different from the first half. The first half of The Family Plan, Dan keeps his secret identity to himself. At the midpoint, he tells his family that he’s a former assassin. So the second half of the movie now has a different tenor – he can fight out in the open with his family instead of it being a secret.
I went back and forth on this one. It started out strong. The middle gets a bit repetitive. I would’ve preferred two really memorable set pieces. But, overall, it’s a fun script, and a good representation of what a family comedy should look like.
Script link: The Family Plan
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: When the time comes to get an agent, it is VERY important that you are on the same page as them. Because what often happens is, when you have a hot script and agents are fighting to represent you, they just want the shiny new toy. They don’t care if they like the script or not because it’s hot enough that they can use the heat to send it out and hopefully build a package around it. However, the second that script dies and you send them the next script, if they never got your writing in the first place, they’re probably not going to send it out. So, when you’re talking to agents to potentially represent you, pay attention to if they genuinely like your writing. Ask them, “What did you like about the script?” “What did you like about the writing?” Not in a combative way. Just to see if they genuinely like your writing. — I recently had to beg a writer not to sign with an agent. He let me see their e-mail discourse and this woman – a very successful agent by the way – was openly saying she wasn’t a fan of the script but she thought maybe she could send it to some people. If that’s how an agent is starting out their relationship with you, I don’t care how big they are. I promise you you will have issues with them the second you send them your next script.
