Genre: Dramedy
Premise: (from Black List) A grieving thirteen-year-old girl hires a terminally ill, acerbic philosophy professor to prevent flunking the seventh grade. What begins as a homework assignment blossoms into an unlikely friendship and a new appreciation for life that neither will forget.
About: This script finished with 17 votes on last year’s Black List (which puts it in the Top 10) and ALSO won the 2017 Nicholl Fellowship. Amazingly, English is not the writer’s, Cesar Vitale, first language. He lives in Brazil. But the reason he got so good at it was that he loved screenwriting. He says he used to read Syd Field’s How to Write a Screenplay book for fun. He would later take a screenwriting course at UCLA’s Extension Program. When asked by Scott at Go Into The Story how important mentors and teachers were, Vitale had this to say: “Oh, I think it’s essential. Maybe not for every writer, but, for me, certainly it was essential. The sense of…How do I put this? Just the fact that you have…First of all, you have to force yourself to write new pages every week, because otherwise you don’t have anything to show for in the next class. So you have people to hold you accountable and force you to write every day, or at the very least every week. That’s great if you’re not very organized, like me. Also, you get some outside perspective on your work. I think a lot of amateur writers don’t realize how important feedback is and how it’s easy to get too close to your work to really analyze it objectively. To have someone with experience and someone who has been produced and has been working with this for 20, 30, 40 years, however long, just read your work and give their feedback on it, it makes all the difference in the world. At least it did for me.”
Writer: Cesar Vitale
Details: 109 pages
I’m tempted to not even write a review about this script and just tell you to read it. You won’t want to. Not after reading that logline. I know I didn’t. Not only are these cancer-dying scripts where two people teach each other lessons nauseating to think about, but they have to nail a very specific tone to work. Can’t get too melodramatic. And can’t get too fluffy or heartwarming. Finding that sweet spot is like trying to find the famed Monkey Burger from In and Out, the mythical double cheeseburger stuffed with animal style fries.
But The Great Nothing does it. I mean, I was in tears by the end of this. And I got so lost in the thing, I wasn’t paying attention to why I liked it so much. Which I need to do now if I’m going to pass on the knowledge of what worked in this script to you.
June is a 13 year old spark plug whose photographer mother died in a car crash six months ago. June’s been riding the “dead mommy benefits” train at school for awhile now. But the teachers are starting to toughen up. June’s doing so poorly that there’s a good chance she’ll have to repeat the 7th grade.
Meanwhile, across town, we meet Dan, a Pulitzer prize winning author for his book, “The Great Nothing,” which is basically an ode to Nietzsche and nihilism. Dan is a few months away from dying of cancer and also a prick. The only thing that gets him out of bed every morning is the heroin he buys from his 14 year old neighbor.
Which is the beginning of how these two lives collide. Dan is broke so he can’t buy heroin anymore. In a serendipitous turn, June’s father, Bill, and Dan used to know each other. In fact, June’s parents used to rave about what a genius Dan was. So June gets his info from her dad’s records and heads to Dan’s apartment.
Her plan is simple. I pay you money. You write me papers so I don’t flunk 7th grade. Dan’s annoyed by this presumptive girl, but he needs the money so he agrees. At first, it’s just a business relationship. The problem is that June’s father is in such denial about his wife’s death that he loses all capacity to parent. This leads to June spending more and more time with Dan, and a friendship developing.
Things go smoothly for awhile. But when you have a recently de-mothered 13 year old whose father won’t pay attention to her and a nihilistic heroin-addict with terminal cancer, the road can only stay smooth for so long. When Dan forgets to submit one of her assignments, June’s 7th grade re-do is sealed, and their friendship deteriorates. Can it be fixed before Dan bites it? Only this script can tell.
Let me start by saying that this script nails the most important thing that I keep harping on over and over on this blog. What I believe to be the KEY FACTOR in writing a great script. It keeps. Things. SIMPLE.
KEEP IT SIMPLE! (in case you missed it)
This is a script with five characters. That’s it. Dan, June, the dad, Dan’s pregnant ex, and the 14 year old neighbor. When you keep things simple, you keep the story on point. You don’t get dragged off to all these corners of your vast tapestry of ideas. The goal is simple. Help June pass 7th grade. The stakes are simple. If they fail, she repeats 7th grade. The urgency is simple. The end of the school year is approaching. Boom bam, easy-peazy chicken squeezy.
If I could reach out to all the aspiring screenwriters out there and tell them, “Stop trying to write The Godfather meets 2001,” I would. Maybe you’ll be able to tackle that one day. But today, learn how to write “Character A has a problem and attempts to solve it.” Cause that’s all this is. Joy has a problem. She needs to solve it. Dan is her only option. Boom bam. That’s the movie right there.
As far as this subject matter, something where death is the prominent theme, you’re much better off exploring the story with humor than seriousness. But there is a caveat to that. You have to actually be funny. You have to be good with dialogue. This is another thing I tell you guys. Play to your strengths. Write the kinds of scripts that highlight your best writing features. And Vitale is really funny. The dialogue is kick-ass. June is hilarious. Here’s her first day at Dan’s. She’s trying to make a drink as they chat.
Besides this dialogue popping off the page like Rice Krispies, you can see real skill on display here. Notice that the characters aren’t having one of those “A asks B question. B answers question.” “B then asks A question. A answers question” conversations, which is the kind of dialogue you’ll see in most beginner scripts. June’s not really listening to Dan. Dan’s distracted so he’s less focused on what she’s asking than what’s going on. So the conversation is less stilted. It feels like something more akin to the real world.
And like I said. The dialogue stays humor based so it doesn’t descend into melodrama. Here’s an exchange during June’s second visit. “DAN: I have terminal cancer.” “JUNE: Oh, shit. Really?” Dan sits on the couch. Throws the Ziploc on the coffee table. “JUNE: Like. How terminal?” June sits too, eyes on Dan. “JUNE: Like. Do you have time to finish today’s assignment?”
I love that shit. When these scripts go the opposite way and take themselves too seriously? I’m not saying they always end in disaster. But it’s usually somewhere disaster-adjacent.
If the script has a weakness it’s that June starts to dominate the conversations. It’s weird because it’s also one of the script’s strengths. In a script where dialogue is a featured component, you want contrast between your characters in as many ways as possible. So if June talked a lot and Dan talked a lot also, there’s no contrast there. So Vitale has it so June is the blabbermouth and Dan speaks when he needs to. And it makes sense that a nihilist with terminal cancer probably isn’t going to be a chatterbox. But I wish Vitale would’ve found a way to give Dan a little more talking time. Cause during that second act, he disappears for awhile.
Luckily, the script always stays simple. There are no stupid weird forced plot points, like writers sometimes create when they don’t trust the material. So it survives its few mild hiccups.
I used to think writing these scripts was a waste of time. A script about someone with terminal cancer. A nihilist at that? Talk about bummersville. Who’s going to watch that? But the success of movies like Me, Earl, and the Dying Girl and The Fault in Our Stars prove that if you add comedy and you keep the budget low, someone will finance the script if it’s good. And this isn’t just good. It’s damn good!
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Remember how we talked about in Black Panther that at the end of your second act, you want a “lowest point,” or “death” moment? That poses an interesting problem for this script, doesn’t it? How do you incorporate a lowest-point death moment at the end of the second act when your movie is built to end with the main character’s death? You can’t kill him off or your third act is going to be hella-boring. So the way Vitale did it is he created the death of the friendship. Very clever!
