Genre: True Story/Sci-Fi
Premise: The famous 1961 UFO case of Betty and Barney Hill, an interracial couple who had a close encounter of the 4th kind with aliens on a remote highway.
About: This script finished Top 15 on last year’s Black List. Today’s writers have one small produced credit, called The Republic of Rick, which came out in 2014.
Writer: Mario Kypianou & Becky Leigh
Details: 96 pages
UFOs are real.
And when I say UFOs, I don’t mean Unidentified Flying Objects. I mean these things flying up in our skies are intelligently controlled alien ships. And we’ve seen them over and over again, throughout time, and pretended they were a figment of our collective imagination. B.S.
For those of you who are skeptical, check out this podcast where a former flight officer who had some UFO experiences is starting to interview pilots who have seen UFOs. In this episode, a very established pilot talks about seeing three classic disc UFOs flying near his 747, and talking about it with the pilots in the plane ahead of him, who also saw the discs.
To that end, this might be the only screenplay on the Black List that has a social component to it (an interracial relationship) that doesn’t feel like a writer trying to game the system. Because the interracial relationship is actually a critical component to this famous sighting.
You see, back in 1961, it was not popular to be in an interracial relationship. And, therefore, it was very much in this couples’ best interest NOT to talk about this UFO publicly. It would put them in the crosshairs of a highly judgmental media and nation. And yet they did talk about it, which tells me that what they saw was real.
The year is 1961. Barney, black, in his 30s, is a post office worker. He’s just married Betty, who is white. They are an interracial marriage when interracial marriages were still illegal in 30+ states.
These two live up in New Hampshire where, while interracial marriage is legal, it is still frowned upon by some. Barney is excited about his future. In addition to working for the post office, he is part of a civil rights group that is tracking the housing situation in New England, where white neighborhoods are making it difficult for black people to move in.
Late one night, while heading home through the White Mountains, Betty sees a light moving around frantically in the sky, and then, less than a minute later, a giant tic-tac shaped ship stops in front of them. Both Betty and Barney go into a trance, and the next thing they know, they’re waking up in their home the following morning.
Betty remembers everything surrounding the UFO event but Barney seems determined to pretend it never happened. He’s freaked out by the experience. Which is the exact opposite of what Betty wants, who’s chatting about it to anyone who will listen.
Of course, in 1961, when you said you saw a UFO, people thought you were crazy. Barney starts getting angry with his wife because they already have enough crap to deal with – namely that society doesn’t want them to be married to each other. This is just bringing on more scrutiny.
But Betty keeps yapping away, which leads to them going to a hypnosis expert. The hypnosis dude puts both of them under and asks them to recount what happened that night. He’s freaked out by the fact that both their stories are similar. This man doesn’t believe in UFOs. So he comes away from it thinking they experienced some sort of collective trauma that induced a case of mild schizophrenia.
Barney, now having to admit that he really did see something that night, is unable to handle the reality. He starts to go into a deep existential crisis, while also having to balance his political aspirations with the growing media interest in his story. Can he make real civil change if people think he’s a UFO nut? We’ll see.
This script did about what I was hoping it would do. It combined the story of a married couple dealing with racism who are presented with a situation that complicates that racism and forces them to make a choice. That choice is to shut up so they don’t have to deal with racism. Or to talk about what happened, in which case, their interracial marriage will be on blast to the world. It’s a very difficult position for someone to be in at that time.
Which is why it works. You want to put your protagonists in difficult situations. Not just physically. But internally. These situations should be challenging them inside. Barney is going through so much with this sighting. Cause he’s dealing with it on two fronts. One, he doesn’t believe in aliens. So he can’t reconcile the fact that he saw them. And two, speaking about aliens destroys his chances of making a positive difference in society.
I thought that was well done.
I also liked the general setup of the story. When you break stories down, they amount to: an INTERRUPTION of the NORM. We go about our normal boring lives and then, one day, two robots show up at our doorstep with a message from a princess saying she needs you to deliver the droids to her father. This is the INTERRUPTION.
The mistake a lot of writers make is that their interruption doesn’t really interrupt anything. There’s nothing going on in their lives. So the interruption becomes both the NORM and the INTERRUPTION. “White Mountains” does it correctly. Barney has a lot going on in his “norm” life. He’s trying to affect change on society and help black people have better opportunities by moving into nicer neighborhoods.
But the interruption may ruin all that. Which gives you the proper dualism. We have him trying to change the community. And we have this alien thing that keeps trying to ruin his pursuit.
I read scripts all the time where Barney wouldn’t have been doing anything in life of note. He’d just be working at the post office and that’s it. So, then, when this sighting came along, we wouldn’t have even needed to cover his life outside the sighting cause nothing’s going on there.
Another thing this script did well was draw the suspense of the sighting out. They could’ve given us the whole shebang in that opening scene where the aliens take Betty and Barney aboard the ship. But we only see the beginning of that interaction. That’s how you create suspense. You give the audience a taste of something they want, and then you make them wait before they can fully bite into it.
The writers wisely do this a second time when the hypnosis therapist has them come in and recount what happened. We actually don’t see what happens while under hypnosis either. It isn’t until later, when Betty and Barney keep seeing weird things in the skies and in their dreams that they demand to hear their hypnosis.
FINALLY, we see what happened that night. Again, this is good writing. This is the thing we all came to see. So you want to make the reader wait for it.
I didn’t love the script, though, and I had a hard time figuring out why. Because, as I’ve told you, I love this subject matter. But I think what I wanted was a more profound explanation or revelation of what happened that night. I wanted to learn new things about this famous case.
There is a sort of new revelation in that the ship was a tic-tac, which we now know is a common UFO that a lot of military personnel see. But, back then, I think people referred to the shape more as an egg since tic-tacs hadn’t been invented yet. So it was cool to find out that this specific UFO that was famously captured on video in 2012 by an Air Force pilot, has actually been shooting around our skies since 1961.
It’s a solid script, especially if you like this subject matter. I would’ve preferred more UFO geekery in the end than social commentary but that’s just me.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Give your characters an actual life to interrupt. Your characters shouldn’t be waiting for your movie to start. They don’t want the movie! They just want to go to work and pursue their lives. So give them an actual life to pursue and, that way, when the interruption shows up, it’s in constant battle with their actual lives.
