Don’t look now. But another script may have just landed in my Top 25! And in the final month of the year! Expect this one to be a Black List juggernaut next week.
Genre: Thriller/Satire/Comedy
Premise: A food connoisseur takes a first date to an exclusive and mysterious dining experience on an island.
About: Alexander Payne has come on to direct this and Emma Stone will be playing our food connoisseur’s date. Co-writers Seth Reiss and Will Tracy are late-night show writers. However, Tracy also wrote an episode of the greatest show on television right now, Succession. And in case anyone was wondering, this is a spec script! Yay!
Writers: Seth Reiss and Will Tracy
Details: 104 pages
Even though I love reading screenplays, if I’m given the opportunity to stop reading something in order to have time to myself, I’ll always take the time to myself. I have lots of things I enjoy outside of reading so it isn’t a difficult decision. Even the last script I gave an “impressive” to, The Traveler – if you would’ve told me, midway through it, that the following day was a holiday and I didn’t have to post a review, I would’ve stopped reading right there.
Not the case with The Menu.
If my place was on fire, I would’ve eyeballed the time I had before the fire reached me so that I could squeeze in as many pages as I could.
This script is a page-turner if there ever was one. I can’t remember a script with such an original premise and execution. The way this story unraveled was captivating. It had to be if Alexander Payne wanted to direct it. This is a guy who writes his own movies. Who’s won screenwriting Oscars. So if he falls in love with a script enough to direct it, it must be good. And The Menu is very very good.
Tyler is a well-off 30-something man who has an insatiable appetite for the culinary world. He’s spent months trying to get on this exclusive list of Chef Slowik’s mysterious restaurant, which is set on an island that the customers must be ferried over to. Tyler’s date is Margot, a beautiful 20-something woman who isn’t nearly as impressed with tonight’s impending experience as Tyler is. Margot is also a little mysterious herself.
Joining them are an older couple, a prestigious food columnist, a group of tech-bros, and Daniel Radcliffe and his assistant. Yes, Harry Potter is taking part in tonight’s festivities. Tyler geeks out when they all take the boat over to the island and nearly loses his mind at the rustic dining room set right next to an open kitchen, so they can watch the cooks prepare the food.
But as soon as Chef Slowik arrives, we realize this guy is nuts. All chefs are in love with themselves but this guy’s ego stretches all the way back to the mainland. This begins a 7 course meal, with each course becoming decidedly more weird. The second course, for example, is bread without bread. You get butter, oil, spread, all surrounding an area on the plate where the bread should be. But there’s no actual bread.
Course 4 is where things get really f$#%d though. That’s when Chef Slowik introduces his sous chef, who he tells a long sad story about, and at the end of the story, the sous chef pulls a hidden gun out of his pants and blows his own brains out. It is at this moment that everyone realizes tonight is not going to end well. One of the older customers tries to leave but gets his hand chopped off. The message is clear. Everyone stays until the end of the meal.
The only thing Chef Slowik is perplexed by is Margot. As he watches the diners, he’s consumed by her. Something is off. Late in the night, he corners her and demands to know who she is. She’s obviously not Tyler’s girlfriend.
This is where we learn that Margot is a companion. She’s only here because she was paid to be here. That presents a problem for Chef Slowik, who has personalized every single component of this meal. He can’t have someone random. It screws up his perfect menu. But there’s something worse about Margot’s presence. Of everyone here, she seems to be the only one capable of fighting back. Which means she’s the only one with a chance of getting out of the night alive.
I knew this script was going to be great within the first three pages. Take, for example, how well Tyler is set up. We know EXACTLY who this character is immediately. I read scripts ALL THE TIME where, by the end of them, I still don’t know a single character. And these writers have made Tyler crystal clear in three pages.
He’s obsessed with food. He doesn’t have respect for anyone who isn’t obsessed with food, including Margot. And that’s it. If you can create characters that readers instantly understand, that’s a skill that can make you hundreds of thousands of dollars. That’s because it’s a skill most people in Hollywood do not have. Most writers have a tendency to write muddy characters or pack them with so much going on that no single identity trait stands out.
When we get to the restaurant, the writers establish just how extensively they understand their subject matter. Every single description, every single line of dialogue, indicated that these two understand restaurants, food, and the life of a famous chef. “You’re really in for something special tonight, Margot. Chef Slowik is the shit right now. Two James Beard Awards. Number 5 on the World’s 50. The most exciting voice in New American cuisine, hands down.” “How quickly you forget Guy Fieri.” “His story’s incredible. He cut his teeth with Keller at the French Laundry and then at 25 he becomes the head development chef at the Fat Duck. He opens his own place in New York, gets two Michelin stars in his first year and then — boom.”
Bad writers don’t write stuff like this. They’re general and cliche because general and cliche don’t require research. Here’s the bad version of the above: “I’ve heard so much about this guy. He was one of the best chefs in France for an entire decade.” “Well I haven’t heard of him.” “He’s supposed to make one of the best steaks in the country.” See the difference? I see a lot more of the latter when I read scripts than the former. That’s why it sticks out when writers do the work. Because the average screenwriter doesn’t put forth the effort.
Also, I didn’t know where this story was going until the midpoint. It was exciting turning each page because I wasn’t just following the story, I was trying to figure out what kind of movie this was. And then when I figured out the rhythm – that each course was going to get more intense – my concern was, “How do they keep coming up with original courses?’ Because that’s the whole movie, is the anticipation of what the next course will be. And if any of them fall short on originality, the script doesn’t work. So it was shocking to me that every single course was original. Even with the thousands of scripts I’ve read, I still had no idea what was coming next. That’s another mark of a great writer. They’re ahead of the reader. The reader isn’t ahead of them.
And the dialogue. Wow. The key was they created a dialogue-friendly character at the center of the story in Chef Slowik. He comes out and gives a story before every course is served and they’re all weird and wonderful and psychotic. “Jeremy is talented. He’s good. But he’s not great. And quite frankly, he will never be great. He so desperately wants my job, my position, my prestige. Isn’t that right, Jeremy?” “Yes, chef.” “But Jeremy has forsaken everything to achieve that. He works here 20 hours a day. He has no time for friends. No time for family. He can’t go to the gym. Or to see a movie. He can’t even go to the bank because it’s only open when he’s working. Jeremy, when’s the last time you talked to your mother?” “I don’t remember, chef.” “His entire life is service and pressure. Pressure to put out the best food you can. Pressure to please your Chef. Pressure to please the customer. Pressure to please the critics. And even when all goes right, and the food is perfect, and the customers are happy, and the critics are too, there is no way to avoid The Mess. That is to say, The Mess you make of your life, of your body, of your health, of your sanity, by giving everything you have to pleasing people you’ll never know.”
The only aspects of the script that are questionable are one, Daniel Radcliffe. On the one hand it makes sense that a celebrity would want to participate in a prestigious secret high-priced rare restaurant experience. But throwing real-life celebrities into the mix always takes you a little bit out of the story. I’m not sure that was the best choice.
And two, there comes a moment in the script where people are either going to eagerly stay on for the rest of the ride or hop off. That moment is when the Chef makes it clear that everyone is going to die tonight. And there are still three courses left when he announces this. I know they’re on an island. But I would at least try to escape. And yet outside of a weak attempt by one of the customers, everyone else accepts their fate.
The reason I still went along with it, though, is because everything leading up to that moment was so well-written and so well-constructed that I believed in this world 100%. If the script was sloppy and weak, I probably wouldn’t have bought in. That goes to show that readers will take the plunge into tough story sells if the writing is strong. I mean this script is so tight and so meticulous. There isn’t a single wasted moment. It all matters. It all works. I’m jealous.
A lot of people ask me what the difference is between a well-written script and a badly written script under the pretense of, “Isn’t it all just subjective?” If you really want to know the difference, put aside four hours and read last Wednesday’s script, First Harvest, and then this script. Every single aspect of this script is better. Clearly defined characters, memorable characters, tight plotting, dialogue that pops, conflict, mysteries, suspense, surprises, research, specificity.
The Menu is what screenwriting is all about.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive (TOP 25!!!)
[ ] genius
What I learned: Above all, there’s an assuredness in The Menu where you know the writers have complete control over their story. Whereas, when you read First Harvest, you can sense the writer trying to figure things out on the page. It’s the opposite of assuredness. That’s a defining factor in strong screenwriters – having total control over your story.
