Genre: Drama/Period
Premise: Back in 1518, there was an infamous real-life “dancing plague” that took over a town and proceeded to kill dozens of people. To this day, there is no consensus on what happened.
About: This script finished on last year’s Black List. So far, the writer, Julian Wayser, has made a couple of short films.
Writer: Julian Wayser (story by Julian Wayser & Rebecca Dayan)
Details: 93 pages
If you’re anything like me, you have gone down that internet rabbit hole late into the night and found yourself exploring the many inexplicable mysteries of our planet. Most of the time, for myself, that involves aliens. Cause we all know that they walk amongst us.
But one of the weird mysteries I’ve always been curious about is the dancing plague. Every time I stumble upon it, I’m not sure what to think because it’s so odd! I’ve always wanted to know more. I’m not sure I ever thought of the subject matter as a movie. But now that someone’s written a script about it, I’m curious what the angle is. Let’s see what today’s writer came up with.
Our story starts with a farmer named Joss Frizt who’s out planting seeds one night when a meteor kablams into his field. The next day, a priest shows up and wants the meteor. So, he orders Joss and Joss’s men (who are all lepers, including his brother) to load the meteor up so he can take it into town.
Take it into town they do – the town of Strasbourg, of the Holy Roman Empire, July, 1518. Strasbourg is off on its own island. And it is also very close to collapse. There is little-to-no food in the area, so everybody is starving to death.
After Joss heads back home, we stay with a young woman, Frau Troffea, named after the rare French delicacy of the time, fromage toffee, aka toffee flavored cheese. Frau helps out at a local orphanage and has a mental breakdown when she realizes how malnourished the kids are. So she walks into the town square and starts wildly dancing.
Nobody knows what to make of it. Eventually, her husband shows up and drags her back home. But the virus has been set into motion. A few days later, several other peasants are performing the wild endless dance in town square. That quickly rises to several dozen. And now, the authorities are getting worried. They don’t have any idea why this is happening.
We then meet Ida, a basket weaver who cares only about her daughter, Agnes, who’s been married off to a wealthy businessman. Ida thinks her daughter is miserable in this man’s care and dreams of rescuing her. But Agnes turns out to be so taken by the crazy dancers that she, too, heads down to dance.
We eventually catch up with Joss again, who implores the rich church (who is hoarding grain) to save the dancers. It is his belief that this is the dance of the poor. It is the dance of the hungry. They do not have anything left in their life and this is their last resort – moving randomly and endlessly. It is a reality that the church is ill-equipped to solve.
Well that turned out to be sad!
Wow.
Here I was all excited to learn about this weird spontaneous event that happened 500 years ago only to get sadness, death, and starvation. We even get a guy who drowns his baby to death cause he can’t feed him. I don’t read nearly enough stuff that depresses me so I’ll keep this one nearby in case I ever catch myself feeling happy about something.
I mean… look. I guess you have to tell the story that was given to you.
But do you?
After doing a quick wikipedia search, it appears that everything surrounding this dancing plague was sad. So that’s where the writer drew his inspiration from.
But this is still a movie. You still have to give people an experience that fulfills them in some way. And when people are going into a subject like this in a fun curious mood, you shoot yourself in the foot when you provide them with a version that makes you want to wither up in your bedroom for 5 days and suck your thumb.
I didn’t like how the writers teased you from the outset with the fun version that included a meteor crash. We’re thinking – okay, this meteor had something to do with this. But it didn’t. It didn’t have anything to do with it. If anybody reads this and tells you they understand what the meteor has to do with this story, they’re lying. Including the writers. It’s unconnected nonsense.
Yes, I’m frustrated because I wanted a cool story! Instead I got the Manchester By the Sea prequel.
Always always always consider what your reader is expecting. Because if you give them an experience that’s too far removed from their expectations, they will eviscerate you. This may be the most depressing script I’ll read all year. And it’s ruined my curiosity about this subject matter.
As for the narrative choice to follow multiple characters throughout the story – I like that kind of stuff. I was a big fan of Richard Linklater’s first film, Slacker, which used that approach. It’s a fun way to tell a story.
But you do sacrifice structural cohesiveness when you go this route. Without a main character to latch onto, it’s easy for the reader to feel lost and unsure where the movie is heading. Whose story is this, really? Who does it affect the most? I don’t think that question was answered here. I definitely struggled to find someone to latch onto.
I suppose Joss Fritz is the obvious choice. He has a strong opening scene where the priest shuns him for relying on lepers for labor. Joss reminds the priest that the church takes all their money so the lepers are all he can afford. The priest disregards the criticism. So we immediately sympathize with Joss’s crappy situation. But then Joss disappears for most of the movie. Which renders his introduction moot.
Straight up, I wanted something more fun, something that didn’t take itself so seriously. It would be like writing a movie about Stonehenge and the whole film is about how they used to beat and torture people then used Stonehenge to sacrifice them to the gods. Might that be accurate? Sure. Does that mean I want to watch that movie. No. There are a million other way more fun ways to take a story about Stonehenge.
As writers, WE CONTROL THE NARRATIVE. We are god. So we get to choose what to write. It’s why Quentin Tarantino can change how Hitler died. It’s why Bridgerton can change the racial makeup of the aristocracy. It’s why Mel Gibson can make up “prima nocta” to ensure we hate the bad guys.
Coming at this story from such a sad depressing place makes one wonder, “Who would want to watch this?”
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: If you are going to write a story that moves between characters instead of stays with a main character, you have to be GREAT at creating memorable characters in a short period of time. Because that’s what these scripts are about. We’re constantly ditching characters to meet new ones so you have to be great at setting those people up, making them interesting, making them impactful. Look at, literally, any of Tarantino’s movies. Almost every character he introduces makes an impact right away. They’re extremely memorable. You need that in these kinds of stories to make up for what we lose by not being able to connect with a main character. If readers aren’t constantly complimenting you on your characters, DON’T WRITE THIS KIND OF MOVIE.
