You can begin pitching loglines in the comments section RIGHT NOW!

The contest is COMPLETELY FREE!

This is unlike any screenplay contest you’ve been involved with before. All of those contests let anybody in as long as they pay. My contest is free. Therefore, I demand only the best ideas. I’m looking to create great screenplays that every studio in town is going to want to read because the concept has already survived a public trial by fire.

How does it work?

You get to pitch 5 loglines every weekend for four weekends. We are already in weekend 2. Weekend 1 resulted in 16 screenplays making it into the contest. You can see all 16 of those loglines here. There are some REALLY GOOD ONES. That’s the bar you’re up against.

If you aren’t sure what a high concept is, go back to last week’s inaugural post where I explain in detail what ‘high concept’ means, and give you examples of high concept as well as examples of what’s not high concept.

Before you start pitching your ideas, you’re going to want to look at the rules. For those of you who were here last weekend, the rules are basically the same, however I’ve tweaked a few things. So you might want to re-read them.

If you come up with a script idea strong enough to get into the contest, you will have 6-7 months to write your script. The prize is the exposure. Industry people are watching this contest. If you write something good, I will review it. And if you write something extremely good, I’m going to get on the phone and do everything I can to get you representation.

But what I love most about this contest is that even if you don’t knock it out of the park with the screenplay, you’ll still have a concept that’s better than 95% of the ideas being pitched out there. That’s a huge advantage. Great concepts get read requests off the logline alone. And unlike most writers, you won’t just think your idea is good. You’ll have proof that hundreds of people responded to it. Most writers never get that. They write their ideas on a wing and a prayer. 

Okay, let’s get to the rules!

1) There will be 4 pitch weekends. Friday through Sunday. Pitching ends every Sunday at 11:59pm Pacific Time. This is the second of those 4 weekends.

2) You can pitch five loglines each weekend.

3) Make sure you pitch each logline in its own comment. Do not pitch all 5 loglines in a single comment. This is because I need to vote yes or no on individual loglines.

4) I will vote on every single logline pitched. I will give you either a “YES!”, a “yes,” a “strong maybe,” a “maybe,” or a “no.”  An all-capital “YES” Is the Holy Grail. It means you not only get in, but you can also send me a 5 page outline of your script before you write it and I will give you notes on it. This is HUGE because what I learned from the Blood & Ink contest is that a lot of writers went down weak creative paths that I could’ve prevented had I seen their outline.

5) A “yes,” still gets you in. Just without outline privilege.

6) If you get a “maybe” or a “strong maybe,” you then have, if you want, 300 words to pitch that idea to me. Tell me more about the story or the characters or what you’re thinking of doing with it. I will then use that information to decide, on Tuesday and Wednesday, whether that idea moves on.

7) The large majority of ideas will get a “no.” Try not to get offended. The bar is high here. I’m not here to make you feel good. I’m here to find great movie ideas.

8) Upvoted Entries – Upvote any loglines that you like (besides your own). If an idea gets 15 upvotes, the concept gets in. However, if I don’t like the concept, I’m vetoing it.

9) Golden Weekend Ticket – However, the ‘strong maybe,’ ‘maybe’ or ‘no’ entry with the most upvotes each weekend automatically gets in. So one user-voted entry will get into the contest each weekend. Therefore, even if I’ve voted “no” on something, and you like the idea, you still want to upvote it because that entry might win the Golden Weekend Ticket.  I have special plans for those scripts once written which will involve users reviewing them.

10) Posters – You can include an AI poster with your logline for TWO IDEAS PER WEEKEND.

11) You can get multiple ideas into the contest. But you must choose only one to write.

12) You CAN pitch scripts that have already been written.

A quick reminder that my popular logline consultation service ($25 per logline, $100 for 5) is available. If you want a more extensive reason for why I didn’t pick your logline, order one. If you want to see ahead of time if a logline has a shot, order one. You can also do a deluxe logline consult ($50) where we keep workshopping the logline until it’s perfect. I believe 4 loglines got into Blood & Ink that way. But most of them did not. So, don’t think it’s a guarantee. If you want to use this service, e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com.

Finally, keep in mind that I am going to be living my life during these weekends. In fact, I’m going to see The Odyssey today (Friday) which is like 9 hours long, and then I have a fairly extensive list of errands I have to do. So if your idea is stuck in moderation or waiting in the comments section for a vote, I WILL vote. It just might take a little longer than you want.

I’m going to blast out a newsletter letting everyone know about the pitch weekend. So, it should get crazy. :)

Who’s going to have that standout “HOLY SHIT!” idea this weekend?

I can’t wait to find out!

These are movie pitches from this past weekend that received a “maybe” vote from me. You will now vote for your favorite pitches. Only the top FOUR will make it into the contest!

We have our first official eleven entries, ready to be sent to the island to find love. They are…

Just Another Day by Brenkilco
Wyvern by Finn Morgan
Eternal Stakes by Dev
Tenmile by Branko Maksic
Hear/Say by David Cahill
The Cape by Mr. Blonde
Aftershock by Paperback Writer
Off The Bench by Federico
Doors by Connor L
Dream On by ScriptChick
Love Neighs by Maksim

Mason Triumphant, by Kit Anderson, scored just as many upvotes as Love Neighs but I’m making a personal choice here. I’m worried about a superhero movie where nobody ever uses superpowers, especially in a high concept contest. But I’m sure Kit will be pitching some sweet ideas over the next three weekends. So, it’s not over yet!

Also, shame on you guys for not voting in Robo-Hoe. So much shame being sent your way. I would definitely save that idea for the next comedy contest on the site, though.

Okay, moving on, we’re doing the same thing we did yesterday. I’m going to post all the ‘maybes’ down in the comments section. Each script idea will occupy its own comment. Upvote the ideas you like. Simple as that. And you can upvote as many as you want. But please only upvote the ones you genuinely like and for which you’d want to see the movie.

Now, this next part is going to be controversial. But there are too many ‘maybes’ to place in this mini-voting contest. Therefore, I got rid of a bunch of them. It wasn’t easy. But I went with my gut. By the way, I couldn’t find COUNTDOWN by Simon Veksner or Six Pack by Ken. If you can find those, post them below. I will decide whether to include them in today’s voting.

You have until 11:59pm Pacific Time tonight (Tuesday). Only FOUR scripts are going to make it through today. So every vote counts!

Title: FINALE
Genre: Dark Comedy/Horror
Logline: After being publicly fired from the most popular show on television, a disgraced actor races to flip the script when he finds himself trapped as his character in the episode in which he is fatally written out.
Writer: Matt

Title: KILL VEHICLES
Genre: Action/Comedy
Logline: In a race to disable America’s early warning system ahead of a nuclear attack, a self-aware movie villain finds himself under-resourced, overwhelmed and well-intentioned, leaving him in danger of saving the day and becoming his worst nightmare – a hero. (‘The Last Action Villain’)
Writer: Auckland Guy

Title: The Massacre
Genre: Action-Thriller
Logline: When King Herod learns from three Eastern mystics that the King of Kings has just been born, he orders mass infanticide, forcing a desperate father to smuggle his three small children out of the foreign city of Bethlehem while panic, mayhem, and Herod’s death squads sweep across its people.
Writer: Steffan

Title: The Sword
Genre: Action-Comedy/Fantasy
Logline (version #2): A small-time mob courier loses Excalibur on the streets of London and has one night to get it back before he becomes collateral damage, or discovers he’s the one it was meant for.
Writer: Byron Camacho

Title: 25th Hour
Genre: Sci-Fi Thriller
Logline: A blue-collar technician accidentally intercepts a hidden frequency that gives him access to the secret twenty-fifth hour, used exclusively by the global elite to rig world events, forcing him to survive nightly hunts as he tries to expose their conspiracy.
Writer: Tencoach

Title: They did not live happily ever after
Genre: dark comedy
Logline: When a fairly tale Prince and Princess find themselves incompatible after the wedding is over and real life sets in, they begin a messy and petty divorce that unravels the fabric of their kingdom, allowing the real world to bleed into theirs.
Writer: T D

Title: TAILBACK
Genre: Mystery / Thriller
Logline: Stranded on a bridge in miles of gridlocked traffic on the hottest day of the year, a single mother wakes to find her six-year-old daughter missing and must trace her last known moments through the surrounding vehicle occupants and their dash-cam footage before the traffic moves and her child is lost forever.
Writer: Arthur

Title: ATM
Genre: Contained Action/Thriller
Logline: When he discovers the ATM where his fiancée was murdered is the most notorious robbery hotspot in America, a traumatized man becomes obsessed with returning there night after night, engineering violent confrontations he can claim as self-defense in order to eradicate the gang responsible. But as his abilities improve, what was originally an act of revenge turns into a violent addiction.
Writer: Arthur

Title: First Boy
Genre: Supernatural Horror
When a mother realizes her teenage daughter’s new boyfriend is impossibly the same boy who tried to kill her twenty-five years ago, she must stop him before her daughter becomes his next victim.
Writer: Steven Rauber

Title: The Pot Washer
Genre: Action, Buddy Comedy
Logline: When a debt-ridden restaurant owner becomes the target of New York’s criminal underworld, he finds an unlikely savior in his new, mild-mannered pot washer—a fugitive former Russian general.
Writer: Paddy

Title: MATE
Genre: Sci-Fi Thriller
Logline: An unlucky-in-love woman meets the man of her dreams, only to discover he is a Neuralink patient whose body has been hijacked by her obsessive AI assistant determined to consummate their relationship.
Writer: Ben Stoker

Title: SIX-PACK
Genre: Action Comedy
Logline: When an unassuming journalist stumbles upon six cans of whoopass in a laboratory, he must work out when the best times are to open each can to boost his fighting skills as he battles his way through the neighbourhood of a vengeful mob boss.
Writer: Ken

BEGIN THE VOTING!  If you want to make sure you see all the entries below, you can filter Disqus comments by “OLDEST.”

Mandalorian and Grogu built a movie on a main character whose face we couldn’t see. Minions & Monsters built its movie on main characters who speak a language we don’t understand. Will it suffer a similar fate?

I find it funny when the trades try to cover for a movie bombing. According to them, the reason Minions made 60 million dollars compared to 120 million for the last sequel is that July 4th landed on a Saturday. Which meant the weekend played traditionally, versus when it lands on, say, a Thursday, and then it gets more people in on the non-weekend days.

Oh, and then there’s the World Cup excuse. You know, cause the World Cup fans are entire families. So they’re more focused on that than movies. Hmm, strange how the World Cup excuse didn’t apply to Toy Story 5’s record-breaking opening.

Uh, here’s an alternative explanation. Just throwing it out there. DON’T RELEASE YOUR ANIMATION MOVIE TWO WEEKENDS AFTER THE PREMIER ANIMATED FRANCHISE IN TOWN!

You know. Maybe that’s a reason also?

Now that the Obsession obsession has finally cooled down, the second biggest box office story of the year has come to the forefront. And that’s the quick merciless death of Supergirl. The movie dropped 80% in its second weekend, which is almost impossible, just based on the fact that, when you have that many theaters, sometimes people accidentally buy tickets to the wrong movie.

One of the things that’s always thrown me about Hollywood is how the town will decide early on that a movie is toast and every single person gets on that narrative train, making it very hard for the movie to overcome that negative buzz.

That’s how I would frame the failure of this movie. Right from the beginning, people were against it. And it strangely started when Millie Alcock signed on to play the lead, hot off the buzz she was getting from Game of Thrones.

I’m starting to think that all you need to build buzz about yourself in this business is a really bright blond wig. Maybe I should get a bright blond wig. Wear it around the farmer’s market at the Grove a few hours a day.  Speak in Old English.  Use a lot of “ye’s” and “thou’s.”  Who knows what might come of it.

A lot of people point to Millie Alcock’s interviews as a problem. That’s when a lot of people turned on her. Her most famous quote was this response: “It definitely made me aware that simply existing as a woman in that space is something that people comment on. We have become very comfortable having this weird ownership of women’s bodies. I can’t really stop them. I can only be myself.”

When she was asked about that comment a year later, she doubled down. “I didn’t even say ‘men’ — I said ‘people!’ And they got so angry. I was like, ‘You’re proving my point. You’re proving my point!’”

There were also some woke criticisms that came from comments claiming Supergirl doesn’t live “inside the binary of what a woman should be.”

And it’s definitely Millie Alcock’s fault for saying these things. But not for the reasons you’d think.

Reporters asked her questions that they hoped would get these very responses because reporters know that these responses go viral. So they asked her in that first response what she thought about toxic fandom in regards to House of the Dragon. And they asked her, in that second response, if Supergirl is a good role model for queer people.

In other words, they were baiting her. And she took the bait. And she only took it twice but that’s all that was needed. People turned on her hard after that.

This is part of being an actor. You have to know that the media is not on your side. They are only there to get things from you that help them. And so you sometimes have to swallow what you want to say and instead say what’s best for your project and your career.

There’s a reason that nobody can quote a single thing that Leonardo DiCaprio has ever said in an interview. Because he knows the game the media is playing so he’s deliberately boring. He gives them nothing to print.

The other option is to be like Inde Navarette (Nikki in Obsession). She is the most beloved actress in town right now and she would never ever make a mistake like Millie Alcock made. She was recently cornered by the press asking her about the rumors she might play the lead in Michael B. Jordan’s movie adaptation of the popular book franchise, The Fourth Wing.

This was her response: “I have seen this because I said that I’m a really big fan of Fourth Wing and I would love to play Violet. But I mean, at the end of the day, I really want the studio to find who they want to find and what everybody thinks is like the perfect actress. But if that happens to me, that would be phenomenal.”

You don’t get the sense that Millie Alcock could respond like that. And she’s paying the price for it.

Look. Supergirl was a miscalculation on a giant level. The biggest miscalculation was betting on a third-tier superhero at the tail end of the movie superhero era. People aren’t seeing superhero movies at nearly the same clip anymore. The only ones that do well now are the big dogs. So, if you want to identify the core issue that caused this movie’s failure, that was it.

Millie Alcock’s attitude only exacerbated that problem. And it’s something I believe Gunn was aware of. So he made sure that Supergirl was going to have a big “save the cat” moment early on in the movie so that we fell in love with her.  The save the cat scene we got?  Supergirl is drinking in a bar when a giant alien steals a little girl’s dead father’s sword. Supergirl then goes after the alien to get the sword back for the girl.

What struck me most about that scene was how little I felt afterwards. I did not think, “Wow, I really like this person.” Which is the primary thing that the save the cat scene is designed to do. But I didn’t feel that way and I suspect it was because Supergirl was pissed off the whole time that she had to help this little girl. So it negated the action.

On top of that, reluctant heroes are notoriously difficult to write, since characters who don’t want to do the very thing the story requires them to do create a tricky puzzle for screenwriters. In storytelling, it always works best when the person pushing the story forward wants to achieve the goal.

The best I’ve ever seen the reluctant hero work in a screenplay was Braveheart. William Wallace hated every second of his quest. But he also loved his country more than anything and wanted freedom for his people. So, that helps a lot. When your hero is doing things for others rather than himself. And even though Supergirl is technically doing this to save her dog, she feels like she’s only in this for herself.

I think one of the more interesting subplots of the downfall of superhero movies is the bizarre choice by both Marvel, with Thunderbolts, and DC, with Supergirl, to center their stories around depression.

I’m not saying depression shouldn’t be discussed. I just think it’s a tough fit for a genre built on wish fulfillment and escapism. People go to superhero movies to feel uplifted, not to spend two hours watching superheroes wrestle with the same problems they brought into the theater.

I don’t know. Maybe they thought with Joker’s success that they could bring in a new “depression era” in superhero movies. That everyone was now going to get all jazzed to see depression trilogies. I got news for you, Hollywood. AIN’T GONNA HAPPEN. You want to explore depression, do it with a 15 million dollar film. Not 200 million dollars. Cause these are the results you get.

But the funniest story to come out of Supergirls’s failure is the battle between the “needle drops.” For those who don’t know, I guess because of his Guardians movies, James Gunn has anointed himself the king at being able to drop just the right song at just the right moment into the climactic sequence of the movie, delivering an epic finale.

Because Supergirl had been testing in the 60s (that’s really low) for months before its release, they were looking for every way possible to bring that score up.

Their big solution?  The needle-drop moment!

Apparently, there was then a battle between Gunn and Supergirl director Craig Gillespie about what the needle drop song should be. And they went back and forth on it and they had all these meetings and they even tested different needle drops with different audiences.

Dude.

If you’re depending on a needle drop to save your movie, your movie’s dead. It is six feet under. Maybe that’s your needle drop. Billie Eilish’s Six Feet Under.

I think Supergirl just had too many things working against it. It’s too bad because everybody says the comic book the movie is based on is amazing. But not all comic books are meant to be turned into movies. And I think that having an unlikable protagonist combined with a not very likable actress was the nail in the coffin.

Genre: Horror/Action
Premise: After her family is murdered by the mob, a religious woman lets herself become possessed by a demon in order to get revenge.
About: The Blood & Ink Horror Screenplay Contest is a unique screenwriting contest whereby, six months ago, you had to pitch your way into the contest. Scripts either got in with a “yes” by me or they got at least 15 upvotes when pitched in the comments section. The 90+ writers that were chosen then had six months to write their script. I will occasionally review one of the scripts here.  If you want to see the previous Blood & Ink reviews, you can do so here, here, here, and here.  For those who missed Blood & Ink, I am doing a brand new pitch contest starting Friday July 10th.  Get those high concept script pitches ready!
Writer: Nicholas Cocco
Details: 96 pages

I LOVE this idea.

Love it love it love it. I think I picked this as one of the top 5 loglines, right?

Yeah. So I was really looking forward to this one.

Let’s check it out!

It follows Grace Rache, a deeply religious woman in her 30s. She’s married to Max, a war veteran who has no interest in religion, and together they have a teenage son, Wolfgang, who doesn’t believe in God either. So when it comes to faith, Grace is pretty much on an island by herself.

Max and Wolfgang run a breakfast shop in the city. Right next door is a Wiccan shop run by an elderly woman. One day, two mobsters, Cesare (20s) and Nico (40s), show up and inform the old woman that she’ll be paying them for protection. She tells them to fuck off. Wolfgang happens to be nearby, steps in, and knocks Cesare to the ground. That quickly escalates into a standoff between Cesare and Nico on one side and Max and Wolfgang on the other. The gathering crowd eventually convinces the mobsters to back down and leave.

Unfortunately, they come back later to send a message. But things get out of hand, and Max and Wolfgang end up dead. A few days later, we see Grace mourning. She struggles to move forward until the old witch pays her a visit. She presents Grace with an ancient jar containing a demon and explains that if she allows it inside her, it will help her get revenge. Grace doesn’t need much convincing. She’s in.

Next we meet a terrifying wraith, which we eventually learn is Grace in demon form. The wraith begins hunting down members of the mob one by one. One is taken down in a butcher shop freezer. Others are attacked inside a moving car. The creature is fast, powerful, and seemingly able to appear and disappear at will. After Grace kills Nico, his brother Frank, the head of the family, gathers everyone together to figure out how to stop this thing.

Meanwhile, Grace, or more accurately the demon living inside Grace, catches the attention of Father Vincent, who becomes determined to destroy it. So while Grace continues her bloody war against the Family, Father Vincent launches one of his own against her. Eventually, only Frank and his son Cesare remain. Grace tracks them to an abandoned live munitions island, where the story builds to a long, brutal fight to the death.

Okay, so I’m learning a valuable lesson from this experiment.

It would’ve helped if I’d given guidance on the outlines for these scripts before they were written. Because this doesn’t represent the idea that I imagined. And, if I would’ve seen this in outline form, I could’ve helped Nick nip some of these choices in the bud, and set him on a path to a more powerful screenplay.

So, I think what I’m going to do for the upcoming high-concept pitch contest is offer the top 10 finishers just that – An outline evaluation. Cause I would’ve strongly encouraged Theresa to go with one main character instead of two in Worst Time of the Year. I would’ve encouraged Jake to build a more all-encompassing mythology in Black House. And I could’ve helped avoid the structural issues with Eric Levin’s The Mold.

That’s why I always encourage writers to get consultations BEFORE they write the script. An outline consultation can eliminate problems that might otherwise take three or four drafts to discover. It’s one of the most efficient investments you can make. If you’d like an outline consultation or a screenplay consultation, e-mail me at Carsonreeves1@gmail.com.

Okay, so what are the issues in Devil?

I’d start with the wraith. The whole point of this movie was to see this woman take down these bad guys. But, instead, we start her off as this shadow-like wraith who’s basically Venom.

To me, that defeats the purpose of the screenplay. I don’t want to see a 1000 year old monster get revenge on people who never did anything to him. I want to see the woman whose situation I’m devastated by, someone I empathize with, I want to see HER get that revenge.

So, as soon as that wraith showed up, a big part of me gave up on the script.

To Nick’s credit, he seems to catch a second wind in the second half of the screenplay and give me something closer to the movie he originally pitched. The showdown at the church, the family going for outside help from other crime families, the climax on the island, Grace in human form — that was more what I was originally envisioning. But a lot of it came after I’d mentally given up on the movie.

That’s the thing with screenplays. You can be one of the screenwriters whose script doesn’t hit its stride until the middle of Act 2.  But if the reader mentally decommitted on page 17, it’s pretty much impossible to get them back.

And there are other problems here as well – things that, had they not happened, maybe I would’ve stayed with the script longer. For example, we never see Grace react to her husband and kid being killed!!!!!!

The first time we see her reaction is at the funeral standing in front of the caskets. And she doesn’t even seem that upset. She’s just numb. This whole movie is about revenge. It’s about making this extremely difficult choice to bring a demon into your body so you can achieve something that you are diametrically opposed to — revenge and killing. If a character like Grace is going to make that choice, we have to see her devastation. That’s the only way that the choice makes sense to the audience. And for some strange reason, we never see that.

There were other basic mistakes early on. A key scene occurs when Nico and Cesare are trying to choose which shops on the block are good for hitting up. We’re not told what they want from these shops. That information is kept secret for some reason. Then, out of nowhere, we cut to inside the Wiccan shop, and Cesare is standing in front of a “crone” (note: I don’t know what a crone is), and we hear this line from the crone – “Don’t need protection, boychik.”

That’s the first line we hear after being thrown into this context-less situation. My best guess, at the moment, was that “boychick” implied some sort of sexual connotation. Like a ladyboy maybe? And so the word “protection” following indicated ‘sexual protection’ to me. Condoms maybe. I have no idea why that’s being talked about here but that’s the best I can do with what little information has been handed to me.

This then leads to Wolfgang coming out of nowhere, knocking Cesare down. Then running away, which leads to Cesare and Nico confronting Wolfgang and Max. Which leads to Cesare and Nico later killing them.

Only in retrospect do I realize that the Italians were going down this block, forcing shops to accept “protection” for money. And that’s what the scene was about. With this scene being so incredibly important to set up the story, why are we coming into it so late? Why open the scene mid-conversation with a line that can be so easily misinterpreted??

This scene sets up your whole movie!!!

Make it clear as hell!

And make it an actual scene!!!  With a beginning, middle, and an end.

That shop scene is half-a-page long. It should’ve been 4 pages long. You build it up. You give us all the information we need so we understand what’s going on. Then, and only then, do you introduce a disruption.

I knew after that scene that the script was in trouble. Because those scenes should be easy to write. It’s the later scenes where you try and get deeper into the characters and create interesting plot developments — that’s the hard stuff. This setup stuff should be a piece of cake.

Maybe Nick thought, “I know I’m not supposed to be on the nose. So I’m not going to have the mobsters explain exactly what they’re doing.” And “Screenwriting books tell me I need to move the story along quickly, so I’ll jump into this scene really late.”

I mean, we come into the scene so late and with so little information that I didn’t even know why Wolfgang was there. I know Max told him to go in there for some reason. But I was not told why.

Sometimes I think screenwriters tie themselves in knots trying to do things the “right” way. This scene needed to convey important information. So convey the information. Don’t convince yourself that making the scene cryptic somehow makes it better.

Just to reiterate why I fell in love with this concept. I imagine this woman who couldn’t physically beat up a teenager, much less mobsters with guns. Her husband and son have been killed by the most powerful crime family in the city. The police won’t help her because they’re in with the family. No one else can help her because the family is so powerful.

Then she gets this opportunity to be possessed by a demon that will give her the strength to be able to take the family down all by herself. But it’s a demon. So, there will be problems containing it.

But she’s instructed on how to bring it forth when she needs to and put it away when she doesn’t. Of course, it doesn’t go that smoothly. When she doesn’t need it, it still wants to come out. And so even in her normal life, she’s struggling to keep it contained until the revenge is over. Then, at the end, she has to get it exorcised. Which is no given. And that’s your movie.

And just to be clear, I know writing scripts is a lot harder than criticizing the final effort. I sense that Nick struggled with how much horror he could stuff into this premise and made some creative choices that I didn’t agree with because of that. But I would tell Nick to always follow the path that gives you the best movie, not the path that fits you the most squarely into the correct genre.

Script Link: Let the Devil Loose

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

What I learned: Your bad guys have to be formidable. At least the ones at the top of the food chain. Because if there’s no doubt at all that Grace can eliminate these guys, then there’s no suspense. There’s no uncertainty about what’s coming on the next page. Make Frank and one more guy super formidable. Maybe they even get their hands on some anti-demon weapons. I want to feel like Grace is overmatched in this final battle.  

A couple of weeks ago, I was talking to someone about the word “hate.”

The conversation started because we were discussing music and I casually mentioned that I hated this band. She immediately stopped me.

“Hate is a terrible word,” she said.

Naturally, I asked why.

And she actually had a pretty interesting argument. Her point was that “hate” has become one of those words people throw around without thinking. You don’t merely dislike a movie anymore. You hate it. You don’t disagree with someone. You hate them. Everything gets pushed to the most extreme setting.

The more she talked about it, the more I started to come around. “Hate” is a conversation-ending word. It doesn’t invite discussion. It declares war on discussion. The moment you say you hate something, you’ve essentially informed everyone that you’ve moved beyond reason and entered into the realm of pure emotion.

By the end of the conversation, I found myself nodding along. Maybe she was right. Maybe we’d all be a little better off if we retired the word entirely.

I thanked her for the perspective.

Anyway.

I hate the Scary Movie franchise.

If there is a lazier, less funny comedy franchise out there, please tell me what it is. Because I don’t think it exists. The Wayans Brothers and their idea of humor have to have some of the worst attempts at joke construction that I’ve ever seen put to screen.

And by the way, the success of Scary Movie’s box office this weekend completely destroys all the good will that the box office has built up over the past couple of weeks. We thought we were seeing a revolution. That audiences had finally become smart. They refused corporate trash like Mandalorian and Grogu and embraced smart thoughtful horror in Obsession and Backrooms.

NOPE.

This weekend proves they’ll continue to pay for any piece of garbage that Hollywood lobotomizes onto the screen.

Some people will say, “No. This is good! People are coming to theaters!”

No! It is the opposite of good. People show up to this movie, are reminded of just how bad Hollywood movies can be, then don’t come back for another six months. These are the movies that destroyed the business. Not saved it.

It’s just sad that people go and see this trash. I feel like I’m watching the dodo birds, with the screenplay pages of this monstrosity of a script strapped to their backs, plunge off a cliff and I’m helpless to stop them. But what are you going to do?

The move that was supposed to have the big box office weekend was He-Man (30 mil). But it turned out the roided-out 80s icon did not “have the power.” I don’t think there was anything they could do to make this movie work because I honestly believe this was the best version of the movie they could make. Big-budget, harmless, cheesy. And people still didn’t like it. And sometimes that’s just the reality of your IP. It’s not meant to be a blockbuster no matter how hard you try and make it one. And they tried! They spent 17 years developing this. It’s just not a movie IP.

Backrooms took a pretty big tumble this weekend, losing 70% of its audience. That’s a hard to defend drop. The old excuse used to be, “Horror always has giant drops on the second weekend.” The only problem is that the film’s main competition, Obsession, GAINED audience in its second weekend. And this weekend, it’s fourth, it only dropped 7%. So they can’t use that excuse.

It confirms what I’ve been saying, which is that the backrooms don’t really make sense. The mythology is wonky. And so there isn’t nearly as much depth in the film as its missionaries want you to believe it has.

I still think it’s an okay movie. It’s just not a good movie.

But don’t worry, Backrooms. At least you’re not Mandalorian and Grogu. A lot of people have said that Backrooms and Obsession were the worst things to happen to Star Wars. Because they highlighted how tiny movies with tiny budgets can take down 300 million dollar (Mando and Grogu’s real budget) behemoths with 200 million dollar advertising campaigns.

But I would argue the opposite is true. The Backrooms/Obsession takeover is such a great story that nobody’s paying attention to the fact that Mandalorian will barely limp past 300 million dollars.

WORLDWIDE. Oh, but Disney tells us, the film is “guaranteed” to make money no matter how poorly it does. Yeah, okay Disney. I’ll expect that Mandalorian sequel announcement any day now.

I’m just pumped for Obsession. I obsessively push to you guys how important a simple premise is. It focuses the movie so much and creates this clean runway for you to just play with that premise and have fun. When you have to spend 30% of your screenplay explaining things, that’s time that you’re not entertaining your reader. That’s the power of a premise like Obsession.

Now, the premise itself has to have a good hook. You can’t be simple just to be simple. I could write a movie about a haunted lightbulb and that’s simple. But a lightbulb is not a hook people care about. A girl becoming insanely obsessed with a guy is a hook. And it’s proving to be the most powerful hook of the year.

On the TV side, I’ve been checking out this show, The Audacity, on AMC. Yes, AMC still makes shows. A couple of people had recommended it to me and the best way I can describe it is Succession in Silicon Valley.

It’s about this tech company CEO, Duncan, whose company has a really high valuation but, in actuality, it’s a worthless company. So he’s running around town trying to get people to invest money so that he and the company don’t implode once the media realizes the truth.

The show has a couple of mini-hooks. The first is that Duncan has access to a program that can access every single thing in the world. So he basically knows everything. And also, he blackmails his therapist (who’s a “therapist to the tech CEOs”) and forces her to give him information about his competition.

The show is a maddening watch. If you thought Succession was risky by making all of its characters unlikable, this writer, Jonathan Glatzer, seems to be conducting an experiment of just how unlikable an entire cast of characters can be and an audience will still watch them. I mean, Duncan alone is the most unlikable person on the planet. And the show cannot overcome that. It’s impossible. It’s one thing to be damaged and an asshole, which creates a small level of sympathy. It’s another to be a crazy asshole. And it doesn’t help that Duncan is played by Billy Magnussen, who’s probably the most unlikable character actor in his age range.

But what intrigued me about the show was that Glatzer seems to have read Scriptshadow and is using a lot of the screenwriting tools I espouse. But he’s using them like nuclear weapons as opposed to hand tools.

EVERY SINGLE SCENE has urgency behind it. We can never just sit in a scene between two characters. There’s always a ticking clock. There’s always somewhere someone has to be. If there’s a party scene, the countdown begins to when the guest of honor arrives and everyone is desperately rushing around to make sure the party is ready for their arrival.

It’s strange because whenever I see the opposite — a lazy party scene where everyone is half-asleep and there’s no clear goal and we’re limping along through several character conversations, I say, “This scene needs urgency!” But Glatzer shows me that there is definitely a limit to how much urgency a scene can handle.

I also talk about “scene agitators” as a means to spice up a scene. Don’t just have two characters in a car talking. Have there be some third agitating variable to create conflict, like a cop car trailing them that may, at any moment, light up its lights and pull them over.

In the third episode, a looming brush fire is introduced. And I’m thinking, “Of course there’s a looming brush fire.” Cause it’s something that can provide this constant series of scene agitators wherever the characters go. We have to worry about that fire getting closer and destroying everything.

In the first three episodes, I’m guessing there are about 100 scenes. 80 of them have scene agitators. There is always something agitating the characters and it’s INSANELY ANXIETY-INDUCING. It’s not fun. That’s the thing you have to realize about these screenwriting tips. You don’t just use them to check a box. You use them specifically to make a scene more entertaining. If all you’re doing is creating more anxiety in the reader and making the scene needlessly messier, than don’t use the tool. The tool is hurting more than it’s helping.

I don’t know if I can finish this show. It creates too much anxiety in me and I hate everyone in it. But what I’ll give it is that it’s never boring. And since nearly every show I watch is boring, I’m inclined to see it to the end. I will say this. Most shows that start off with low episode IMDB ratings contain episodes that get lower and lower rated as the season goes on. But this is the rare show where the rating keeps getting higher and higher. So I’m wondering if Glatzer is just using these first four episodes for setup that he will pay off in an amazing way in the second half of the season.

What did you see (and not see) this weekend?

Give me your reviews!