I originally planned on reviewing Mayhem today. But then I watched it. And the movie is a borderline disaster. It’s one of the most overwritten over-directed movies I’ve ever seen in my life. I then rented the movie Columbus. That movie is like a delicate slice of cinematic sweetbread. It’s also one of the most underwritten under-directed movies I’ve seen in my life. So I thought it’d be fun to review these two contrasting pieces of entertainment together.

And here’s the funny part.

I’d tell each and every one of you to write the abysmal Mayhem over the brilliant Columbus.

For those who don’t know, Mayhem is about a company attacked by a virus that makes its victims succumb to their worst impulses. If you’re an angry person, it makes you extremely violent. If you’re slightly manipulative, you become a sociopath. If you’ve got sex on the brain, it turns you into a walking sex machine.

When their building is placed on an 8 hour quarantine, a recently fired employee, Derek, enacts revenge on everyone who screwed him over, teaming up with a former female client the company also screwed over, to do so.

I expected to LOVE this movie. I thought the premise was fun. It was a way to make a zombie film without making a zombie film. It had that “familiar but different” thing Hollywood’s so keen on.

But the execution was too over-the-top, as subtle as your loud inappropriate drunk uncle. On the screenplay side, half the script is dedicated to explaining the virus. Even though the opening montage is specifically built to explain every nuance of the virus, we’re still being given virus rules 40 minutes later.

Here’s something to keep in mind for new screenwriters. Exposition (the process of explaining things so that your story makes sense) is fought on two fronts. The front everyone focuses on is the “How to Limit My Exposition” front. You’re trying to minimize how much you explain everything. Which is good. You should be doing this.

But the other front, the one nobody talks about, is to simplify your plot and rules in the first place! If you build your story on top of a simple premise and simple rules, you won’t need to explain as much! By making this virus, this company, the people within this company, and the laws governing this virus, so complicated, they had no choice but to use up half the movie on exposition.

On the other end of the spectrum was Columbus.

Columbus takes place in the titular town of Columbus, Indiana, a hidden goldmine for some of the most beautiful architecture in the country. When a visiting professor of architecture falls gravely ill, his son, Jin, must fly in and wait for the doctors to figure out what to do with him. In the meantime, he meets a townie, Casey, with the potential to do something great in the world, but who’s sacrificed that opportunity to take care of her addict mother.

Talk about completely opposing plots, right? Whereas every second of Mayhem is dedicated to explaining something or killing someone, you might go 3-4 minutes at a time in Columbus without a character saying a word.

The movie is one of the most beautifully shot I’ve ever seen, so much so I tracked down interviews with the elusive director, a 50-something Korean man named Kogonada (who up until this point had only done video essays and never been on an actual movie set). Listening to him discuss his film was fascinating. His entire approach to filmmaking is to prioritize form over plot. To him, the perfect shot (of a building, a character, a lone room in a house) was far more important than two characters conversing. It’s pretty much the antithesis of what I preach. And yet it worked brilliantly for the film.

What Is Neorealism? from kogonada on Vimeo.

Granted, Kogonada has a filmmaking eye like no other. Every frame of his is a painting. Therefore, had a less talented director tried to do the same thing, I’m sure I’d have been chastising him for not focusing more on story.

With that said, Kogonada still finds a story that resonates. Remember, you can get away with simple plots as long as the themes are universal, as long as the issues are relatable. Both Jin – working a soulless corporate job that’s desensitized him to the world – and Casey – being stuck in a small town instead of going out and following her dreams – are universal conflicts that many people can identify with.

And unlike Mayhem, where the plot had to be jammed in our faces every five seconds, Kogonada used the most minimal plot device possible – a sick father who was keeping our main character stuck in town. It was a big reason why the story worked so well. The plot point that placed our characters together was borderline invisible.

With all that said, if you’re choosing between writing a Mayhem or a Columbus? I’ll tell you to write Mayhem every time. It’s got a fun hook. It’s marketable. You can imagine the movie when someone pitches it to you. It’s going to get priority over a “Columbus” like idea in every production room in town.

Not to mention, the prestige Straight-To-Digital release is an emerging avenue for spec screenwriters. I say “prestige” so it’s separated from the abysmal D-Movie efforts that Nic Cage and John Cusack star in. These prestige digital offerings are cooler, hipper, the kind of stuff that’s going to get play on movie web sites. But that means your idea needs to be cool and hip. It cannot, sadly, be Columbus.

With that said, Columbus is the perfect vehicle for a writer-director. If you have something that isn’t sexy on the page but you KNOW is going to look great on film, directing the movie yourself is the way to go. Realistically, nobody’s going to be interested in your small personal movie but you. And that’s okay. Cause plenty of these personal writing-directing efforts turn out to be great.

But if you have no interest in directing? Come on. Be smart. Write something with a hook like Mayhem.

Genre: Thriller/Drama
Premise: A Vietnam POW struggles to survive captivity to seek revenge on the group of soldiers who betrayed him and left him for dead.
Why You Should Read: Been at this incredibly rewarding and gut-punching craft for seven years now. I’ve had my share of contest placements and even turned one of my ten scripts into a multi award-winning book, however, I’m still on the hunt for that big breakthrough. For this script I stepped way out of my comfort zone and broke some of the so-called “rules.” This is a past/present script that is part The Revenant, part Apocalypse Now, and part Saw. Would love the invaluable feedback from the Scriptshadow community to make it the best it can be.
Writer: John Avrai
Details: 95 pages

Age Javier Bardem up with some makeup and he could easily play Camacho!

We had a tie in last weekend’s Amateur Offerings.

And that meant the onus was on ME to pick a winner. This is a good time to take you into the mind of a script-reading madman, because I think the way I approach which script to read is similar to how most people in the industry would choose between two scripts, all else being equal.

The primary determining factor is, which concept do I like better? In this case, I felt both concepts sounded interesting. And that led me to determining factor number 2. You guys are going to hate me for this but I promise you it’s something most producers and agents use in their decision-making process as well. That’s right. Page count. One script was 105 pages. The other was 96. The latter would save me 7-10 minutes of time in my evening. Game, set, match. My Sojourn in Hell.

That’s not to say Dark Horde will never get the call. It could come up in a Rematch Week somewhere down the line. But right now. It’s all about the sojourn, baby. Even if I don’t yet know what sojourn means.

Might need to change that title.

Okay.

Plot summary.

69 year-old Eiten Comacho has just flown into town for a Veterans Benefit. Camacho, a badass soldier in the Vietnam War, isn’t off the plane more than five minutes when he’s approached by a woman who claims to be associated with the proceedings. She guides him towards a parking lot where he’s quickly drugged and thrown in the back of a van.

When he wakes up, he’s with three members of his old infantry unit back in Vietnam. There’s Whybrow, a chickenshit wannabe weatherman, Ox, a former tough guy who’s since found the lord, and Emmit, Ox’s dumbass little brother. All the men have been cuffed and restrained.

They’re soon met with the sight of the woman who drugged and kidnapped them.

Before we can work out what’s happening, we flash back to Nam, where we meet Fort, the weakest member of their outfit – a man so incompetent (he can’t even do one pushup) that the others are routinely forced to pick up his slack. It gets so bad that Comacho beats the hell out of Fort in the hopes that he gets stuck in medical and they never have to see him again.

From there, we cut back and forth between the past and the present, learning more about how the guys bully Fort, and more about this mysterious woman who’s torturing them. Eventually we find out that Camacho killed a local Vietcong woman, and to make sure the word never gets out, he attempts to kill Fort as well. But Fort survives and is later captured by the Vietcong.

Back in the present, the mysterious woman drops a bombshell on all of them. Their shitty lives since Nam (they’ve all been victims of a string of bad luck) have been meticulously orchestrated by her. She made sure Camacho went to prison for 30 years. She made Ox’s business fail. She sabotaged Whybrow’s weatherman job. She’s the sole source of their miserable lives.

Who is this woman? Why is she such a monster? Will she kneel for the anthem on Sunday? And what ever did happen to poor Fort, who barely escaped Camacho’s murder attempt that day? Inquiring minds should check the comments section for answers.

On Wednesday, I complained about a script that was too predictable.

So before I do anything, I have to give props to John for writing a script that, for 60 pages, I had NO IDEA where it was going. When he says he broke rules, he wasn’t lying. This was a wild one.

For starters, there’s no protagonist! Going the no-protagonist route is extremely risky because audiences want somebody to latch on to. They want to feel connected to someone. We didn’t feel connected to anybody here. I mean, Camacho was introduced first so I thought he was our hero. Yet he’s the most despicable character of the bunch. After I found that out, I was left stranded. Who am I rooting for now? Crazy Torture Lady? Kind of hard to get on board with mysterious torturers. Was Fort our hero? No. For the first 60 pages, we only see him through the eyes of others. Talk about keeping me on my toes!

Despite its unpredictable nature, the script still had an ENGINE. What I mean by an ENGINE is that there was still something DRIVING our interest, our need to keep turning the pages. It’s important I make this distinction because it’s easy to write something unpredictable if you just ramble on aimlessly. But we’re going to lose interest if it’s clear the story isn’t going anywhere. Here, the script still had this mystery of: Who is this woman and why is she doing this? So despite us jumping all over the place and going back to Nam for these crazy flashbacks, I was still driven by the desire to find out what this woman’s end game was.

Another thing I picked on the other day was the writer not doing anything unexpected with the plot. You have to take chances with your plot beats or else the story becomes boring. Here, midway through the script, the crazy woman simply unlocks everybody and gives them access to a machine gun! Our characters could’ve hopped up and killed this psycho right then. It was moments like this where I said, “Wow, I did not expect that!”

So what’s the deal then? Did I like this script?

Here’s the problem with My Sojourn In Hell despite its mysterious setup and consistent risk-taking: It was seeped in anger. Reading the script made me feel sad, depressed, angry. Watching the worst in human beings exploit the worst in other human beings – That’s not my cup of tea. And I get that this isn’t an issue for some readers, which I respect. But, for me, a script has to have a sense of hope SOMEWHERE. I can’t leave feeling like humanity is hopeless. It’s just too depressing.

Even in the torture-porn era, you had the torturer, and you had the person getting tortured. And the person getting tortured was usually good. So you were hoping they were going to somehow get out of this and maybe kill the villain. Remind us that good conquers all. My Sojourn In Hell gave us bad people going after bad people. And so even if I was intrigued by what was going to happen next, I never had someone to root for.

In addition, the final act falls apart. The stuff about one brother secretly fathering the other brother’s son felt kooky. And to add this entirely new character of Lee (who accompanies Fort in a POW camp) with 30 pages to go… it felt like the narrative was unraveling rather than coming together. In a way, Fort becomes our hero. But like I said above, we barely knew the guy. We only saw him through the eyes of others, and usually simplistically. He wouldn’t do a push-up right and people would kick his ass. That’s not how you get an audience to root for a character. We have to get to know him on some level.

Also, I figured out what the twist was with a good 40 pages to go, only because there was literally NO other way it could’ve gone.

With that said, John is a good writer. I’d encourage him to enter Amateur Offerings again with something that’s less of a downer. But that’s just my opinion. What did you guys think?

Script link: My Sojourn In Hell

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: If you’re a writer who wants to take some big chances with your narrative, really be unpredictable, this is a good way to do it. Have a giant unanswered question/mystery at the center of your story, and the reader will let you bounce around and do a lot more avant-guarde stuff than usual.

I got two words for you, baby. Thor. Ragnarok. This weekend. Review on Monday. But while you’re waiting, why don’t you dive into some amateur offerings and find the next great screenplay.

How to play Amateur Offerings: Read as much of each script as you can and submit your winning vote in the comments section. Votes will be counted through Sunday, 11:59pm Pacific Time. Winner gets a script review next Friday!

For those who want to play in the next Amateur Offerings, send me a PDF of your script, along with the title, genre, logline, and why you think people should read it (your chance to really pitch your story). All submissions should be sent to Carsonreeves3@gmail.com.

Title: KILLING THE REAPERS
Genre: Sci-fi/fantasy
Logline: After a young paramedic’s soul is prematurely taken by a grim reaper, he must navigate a confusing and dangerous afterlife to find the way back to his destined life.
Why You Should Read: Originally, I was interested in the idea of a young man who has his whole life ahead of him and gets cheated out of it on what should be his happiest day. I wanted to create an afterlife that exists in the real world, where life and death are under the purview of a decaying bureaucracy filled with undead civil servants who act as grim reapers. I was intrigued by the concept of a hero whose job was to save lives and must now save those whose job is to end lives. — I sincerely appreciate anyone who checks out even a few pages of my script. I look forward to anxiously reading insightful comments from Carson and the learned SS community.

Title: Native Blood
Genre: Thriller
Logline: A Native American woman is forced to seek vengeance against the Bollard Gang, an infamous group of scalp hunters responsible for the extinction of her people.
Why You Should Read: Hey Carson, longtime fan and lurker here. I just relocated from Philadelphia to Los Angeles to pursue the dream. Native Blood is a brutal revenge thriller that transcends the genre by bringing to light the horrors of America’s westward expansion. The story takes an unflinching look our nation’s history in the hopes of creating an authentic Native American folk hero. After the first ten pages I guarantee you’ll be hooked.

Title: SNAPPING TURTLE
Genre: THRILLER
Logline: Legendary drinker, brawler, and keelboat captain Mike Fink travels down the Ohio River, unaware that one of his passengers is plotting kidnapping and murder – and has accomplices waiting downstream to attack the boat.
Why You Should Read: Some background. After the American Revolution, the frontier was the Northwest Territory (Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin and eastern Minnesota. Americans called it, “Indian Country.” The British called it “The Indian Reserve” and tried to preserve it as a buffer between the US and the British colony of Canada. The Ohio and the Mississippi Rivers were the residents only means of moving freight. Big, slow moving rivers – average current velocity about 2 mph. You could walk faster. But if you walked you couldn’t carry freight or passengers. For that, you needed a boat. Practically anything would go downstream – rafts, barges, flatboats. But if you wanted to travel upstream as well, you needed a keel-boat – a long narrow boat, with cleated running-boards on each side of the cabin, for the crew to walk on and pole the boat. They were up to 120 feet long, and able to carry up to fifty tons of freight as well as passengers. Mike Fink was the Chuck Norris of his time, but where Chuck’s record was in point karate, Mike’s was in the no rules combat called rough-and-tumble, eye-gouging, or simply gouging. I was surprised to learn that Fink was only portrayed once on film, in two episodes of Disney’s Davey Crockett series (during the fifties). I think this script contains everything Carson has blogged about in the context of thrillers: Dramatic irony throughout the script, ticking time-bombs (figuratively, not literally), and a MacGuffin. Did I miss anything?
I had some great source material for this one: antebellum folklore, history, and pulp – everything long out of copyright. Thanks to everyone who checks out the script.

Title: My Sojourn In Hell
Genre: Thriller, Drama
Logline: A Vietnam POW struggles to survive captivity to seek revenge on the group of soldiers who betrayed him and left him for dead.
Why You Should Read: Been at this incredibly rewarding and gut-punching craft for seven years now. I’ve had my share of contest placements and even turned one of my ten scripts into a multi award-winning book, however, I’m still on the hunt for that big breakthrough. For this script I stepped way out of my comfort zone and broke some of the so-called “rules.” This is a past/present script that is part The Revenant, part Apocalypse Now, and part Saw. Would love the invaluable feedback from the Scriptshadow community to make it the best it can be.

Title: DARK HORDE
Genre: Sci-fi
Logline: In the Middle Ages, two warring military commanders, one Christian and one Muslim, must team up to stop an alien force from weaponizing the Bubonic plague to annihilate humanity.
Why You Should Read: Dark Horde combines the structure of films like PREDATOR and PITCH BLACK with the historical heft of films like GLADIATOR. I think you should review DARK HORDE because it is not only exciting, suspenseful, and a hell of a good read, but it also brings something brand new to the Sci-Fi genre.

A quote doesn’t always become part of the screenwriting lexicon because it deserves to. A lot of times, a quote becomes famous simply because it sounds good. And there’s nobody better at creating sexy-sounding quotes than writers. I mean, that’s their job, right? So today I wanted to sift through some of the sexiest writing quotes throughout the years and determine which advice is actually good, and which you should ball up and toss in the wastebasket.

“If you want to send a message, go to Western Union.” – This was uttered by a famous studio head in the Golden Age of Hollywood in response to screenwriters who argued that their stories should be about more than surface-level entertainment, that their movies should actually contain a theme, or “message.” Here’s the thing about this piece of advice. I think what the studio head was referring to wasn’t themes in screenplays. He was responding to bad writers clumsily executing over-the-top themes in screenplays. Of course your script should be about something. But if you’re on-the-nose and clumsy with the way that theme is executed, people aren’t going to respond well. As is the case with most aspects of screenwriting, you must integrate the component invisibly.

“Every story should have a beginning, a middle, and an end. But not necessarily in that order.” – This was one of the most famous screenwriting quotes to come out of the 90s, and it was born out of the success of Quentin Tarantino, specifically Pulp Fiction. The advice itself is fine. But it set a bad precedent to aspiring screenwriters, encouraging them to write these wild out-of-sequence narratives before they knew how to tell a simple story. Who cared about a narrative spine, stakes or compelling characters when you could rapidly cut back and forth between disparate storylines? As such, I would be wary of this advice. Learn to tell simple stories first and then move on to more complex narratives like Pulp Fiction.

“Kill your babies” – This popular piece of advice has been around for half a century, and the idea behind it is simple. Writers – especially beginner screenwriters – believe that every thing they write down on the page is gold. As in, once it’s there, it cannot be erased. Ever. To be a great screenwriter, you must be willing to eliminate that character, that scene, that subplot, that dialogue exchange, if it doesn’t keep the story moving forward. This is the essence of “Kill your babies.” You have to be a harsh editor. This advice was relevant when screenwriting was invented, and it will be relevant for as long as screenwriting is around.

“A professional writer is an amateur who didn’t quit.” – I remember when I first heard this quote and it kind of blew my mind. You can’t fail if you never give up. Death is literally the only thing that can stop you. But I do think the quote is dangerous. There are people who are 15 years into their pursuit of screenwriting (or whatever artistic endeavor they’re pursuing) who aren’t living productive lives. You have to be smart about it. As you get older and “adult” responsibilities creep in, you shouldn’t be hedging every aspect of your life on selling that big screenplay. It’s cute at 25. Not at 35. However, the awesome thing about writing is that it’s the cheapest of all the artistic pursuits. So make sure you’re giving the rest of your life ample attention and squeeze in time to write after those duties are over. As long as you love to write, there’s no reason to stop.

“Always ask yourself, what’s the worst thing I can do to my hero right now? Then do that.” – There are a lot of variations of this quote. Another comes from Kurt Vonnegut: “Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.” One of the biggest mistakes young writers make is that they’re too kind to their protagonists. Every aspect of their journey is too easy. You gotta put your protagonist through the wringer, man! For the exact reason that Vonnegut points out. We only find out who a person truly is when they’re faced with adversity.

“If there’s a problem in the third act, it’s because of an issue in your first act.” Of all the famous pieces of screenwriting advice out there, this is one of the ones I like the least, mainly because it’s vague. And there’s no quicker way to confuse a newbie screenwriter than to give them vague advice. I think what the advice is trying to say is that if something isn’t working in your third act, it means you didn’t set it up properly. For example, if your hero kills the dragon with some potion he randomly found two seconds prior, that would’ve worked better had you set the potion up earlier. But it doesn’t mean you needed to set it up in the first act. You could’ve just as easily set it up in the second act. So the advice here is more, “If something isn’t working in your climax, you need to set it up better somewhere.” Of course, that doesn’t sound as flashy, which is one of the problems with famous quotes.

“If you show a gun at any point in your story, it must be used later.” – I agree with this one. And note that “gun” is a stand-in for any weapon. Crossbow, hunting knife, bomb. And this is mostly due to the way we’ve been conditioned by cinema. It’s happened so many times in movies before, that if you DO show a weapon and don’t use it, it’s confusing to the audience. I remember reading a script once where the writer went to great lengths to highlight this sword on a wall. He described every crevice of the thing. I was convinced it would be used later to decapitate someone. Nope. It was never mentioned again. Drove me crazy.

“If I have anything to say to young writers, it’s stop thinking of writing as art. Think of it as work.” This one comes from Paddy Chayefsky and it’s something I’ve come to appreciate more as I’ve grown older. Screenplays only reach their potential during rewrites. And, unfortunately, when you’re on your 7th draft and nothing about your story is fresh or fun to you anymore, busting the computer open isn’t as easy as it was during that stream-of-conscious rollercoaster ride of a first draft. The good writers buckle down and they get the work done, even when it’s not fun. So I totally agree with Paddy here.

“Write drunk, edit sober.” – I don’t know who said this (was it Hemingway?) but this is the very definition of what’s wrong with famous quotes. This is such a sexy quote and so fun to say but it’s terrible advice. While writing drunk is fine to do every so often, you do not want it to become a crutch. You’ll be convinced that the only way you write good stuff is to get wasted, and that’s not sustainable. However, I do like the cousin of this quote, as it captures the spirit of it in a much healthier way: “Write from your heart; rewrite from your head.” Be non-judgmental when you write. Let yourself feel things without right-braining them to death. Then, when it’s time to rewrite, bring a more logical assessment to the writing.

“Grab’em by the throat and never let them go.” – This comes from Billy Wilder and I think it’s one of the most important pieces of screenwriting advice you’ll ever hear. Too many writers put the burden of investment on the reader. “You owe me,” is how they look at writing. No no no no no. Readers don’t owe you anything. It’s up to you to keep them invested. And the second you drop that ball, whether it’s on page 1 or page 50? They’re gone. They’re done with your script and they have that right. You want to grab your reader with the very first page and then every subsequent page, ask yourself, “Do I still have them?” If you don’t think you do, rewrite the scene until the answer is yes. That doesn’t your script should be one long action set-piece. You can use mystery, suspense, foreshadowing, conflict, dramatic irony, confrontation, anticipation, an intriguing new character, and, sure, a kick-ass action scene we’ve never seen before. You have hundreds of tools available to yourself. You are in control of whether your scenes are good or boring. Never take that for granted.

Carson does feature screenplay consultations, TV Pilot Consultations, and logline consultations. Logline consultations go for $25 a piece or 5 for $75. You get a 1-10 rating, a 200-word evaluation, and a rewrite of the logline. I highly recommend not writing a script unless it gets a 7 or above. All logline consultations come with an 8 hour turnaround. If you’re interested in any sort of consultation package, e-mail Carsonreeves1@gmail.com with the subject line: CONSULTATION. Don’t start writing a script or sending a script out blind. Let Scriptshadow help you get it in shape first!

Genre: Horror
Premise: A man’s life starts to unravel when he undergoes an experimental form of hypnosis to recall what he saw during a near-death experience.
Why You Should Read: The concept of this script is very loosely based on a true story. I actually knew someone who survived a near-death experience and he hasn’t been the same since. When I asked him about it he told me he didn’t remember what he saw but I had the strange feeling he actually did and was holding back for reasons I don’t know. Since the incident he’s left his family, quit his job and went off the grid. I honestly don’t know where he is now. — I’m a huge fan of horror movies and I believe “dread” is key component is some of the best of them. Any writer can throw in some good scares here and there but building up real dread for the characters and the story on a whole seems to be overlooked in many scripts I read these days. I feel like I’ve been able encompass this with BLACK BOX without losing the pace of the story. It’s a fast entertaining read with some big scares wrapped inside an intriguing mystery. I hope you’ll take the time to check it out and look forward to your honest feedback.
Writer: Stephen Herman
Details: 100 pages

I don’t know what’s the bigger horror film on the docket this weekend, Jigsaw or Suburbicon. Bada-BUM! No, but seriously. I don’t know what’s scarier. Pennywise or George Clooney thinking he can direct satire. BADA-BUM! I’ll be here all night. Try the veal.

No, but seriously. I’ve been looking forward to today all week! Black Box bowled down the competition in last week’s Amateur Offerings, so much so that it looked like we had another Amateur Offerings success story on our hands – an event that’s becoming more and more frequent, thanks in big part to you guys.

I was only worried about one thing going into the script – the dream aspect (the hypnosis). Putting dreams in the hands of an amateur writer is a bit like putting the recipe for a Gino’s East deep dish pizza in the hands of a line cook. It’s not like that cook won’t one day become a great chef. But it’s hard to bake the most luscious crust in the world when you’re still learning where the pans are located.

One of the biggest challenges for amateur writers is narrative structure – for their script to stay focused and purposeful all the way through. Dreams are anti-structure and therefore encourage the writer to move away from purpose. As a result, they’re the script’s undoing. The narrative becomes a loosely connected series of tripped-out scenes sewn around shaky logic. Let’s hope that didn’t happen with Black Box!

40 year-old Nolan Wright is recovering from a recent car crash that killed his wife. The crash, which left Nolan dead for six minutes, resulted in brain damage so severe that it’s gradually stripping away Nolan’s memories. Lucky for Nolan, he still has his beautiful young daughter, Ava, by his side. She’s the one thing keeping him going.

However, Nolan gets word that if he doesn’t do something soon about the brain damage, the world will start slipping away from him, including Ava herself. This forces Nolan to seek out Dr. Lillian Grey, an experimental doctor who’s on the cutting edge of memory recall. Lillian believes that if Nolan can remember everything that happened during those six minutes he was dead, he can permanently heal the brain and eliminate his amnesia.

This becomes increasingly important when Nolan loses his journalist job and the Department of Children and Family Services start sniffing around, trying to decide if Nolan is a fit enough parent to take care of Ava.

Lillian’s therapy involves a literal black box that you plug yourself up to. The box helps you go into the deepest levels of your subconscious, and this is where Nolan relives his crash. On that first trip, he finds footsteps near his crash, which he follows into the woods. It’s there that he sees a dead man hanging from a tree who quickly drops and starts walking towards Nolan backwards.

Nolan’s so freaked out that he pulls himself out of the hypnosis and says he’s never coming back. But in order to keep his daughter, he has to come back, and in a series of hypno-trips, Nolan will learn that this journey extends beyond him, and to a number of people who also cheated death.

Man, I can see why everyone voted for this.

The first act is AWESOME. There was an assuredness in the writing that I wasn’t prepared for. Assuredness is a key trait of professional writing because professionals are better at knowing where their story is going. When you know where your story is going, you write with confidence. I mean, listen to how clear, dominant, and assured the character of Lillian is when she brings Nolan in.

With amateurs, there’s more of what I call the “shiny object” approach to writing. They’re often trying to figure things out on the page. Every once in awhile they’ll see something that’s interesting (a “shiny object”) and it’s like, “Ooh I’ll follow this for awhile.” Black Box didn’t have that.

Well, at least at first.

Once we got 15 pages into the second act, the tight narrative began to unravel. I could feel Stephen being tempted more and more by the shiny object, until it got to the point where it was the only thing left. The biggest problem was in explaining what was going on with Nolan.

I see this a lot. Whenever we come up with a high concept idea, there’s this pressure to construct a big flashy reason for what’s going on. So in Black Box, we find out that there are other people who also had near death experiences, and then there’s somebody who’s using these people to take their bodies and live in them… or something, because once you’ve gone through death, it’s easier to take your body?

To be honest, I barely understood it. And that’s the thing. When you try and get too big, you come up with a convoluted rule-set that’s hard to understand. And because we don’t understand it, we stop investing, we stop caring, and by the end, we don’t really know what’s happened. I know I didn’t.

Honestly, the issues in Black Box take us right back to yesterday. This shouldn’t have been about a flashy serial-body-stealing near-death-experience conspiracy. It should’ve been about characters. And this is my plea to amateur writers out there: stop trying to write the most-blowing mind-bending script ever. Just focus on the characters!

There are some good characters here. Nolan is great. The stuff with the car crash all felt honest and authentic. Ava is great. Lillian is great (minus her turn at the end). Gary is okay but could also work. The social worker who cares “a little too much” is great. Yet they get lost in this silly weird plot that doesn’t make any sense.

I mean at one point we have an ancient shaman killing a dog and becoming part of its soul. This isn’t what I signed up for.

I would strongly recommend dialing back all of the weird shit and focus more on the real-life character journeys. Keep the hypnosis scenes grounded. Have a simple and clear set of rules for what happens inside each hypnosis. Keep the mystery itself simple. Something that happened around the car crash. Don’t bring in people who died 50 years ago halfway across the world. We don’t care about them.

I know I sound like a broken record, guys. But simplify simplify simplify simplify simplify simplify simplify simplify blah blah blah a million more times.

Every time you overcomplicate things, you’re destroying your story.

Script link: Black Box

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: I love it when HUGE stakes can be conveyed simply and powerfully. Here, it takes just a single line to set up the stakes for the entire movie. It occurs when Lillian explains why this therapy is so crucial for Nolan: “In time, your condition will worsen. It’s a domino effect and unless you get to the root of it, your friends, your family, your daughter… they will be the next dominoes to fall.”