Genre: Crime/Thriller
Premise: An inmate slash former Ranger gets a 48-hour furlough to attend his son’s funeral, but uses it to get revenge on the men who killed him.
About: This script sold a few years back to the production company with the best name in town – Lava Bear. If that name sounds familiar, it’s because they just produced the biggest surprise of the season, Arrival. However, the script seems to be stuck in development at the moment. I hear Colin Farrell is looking for a John Wick project. Could this be it? (Sherman Payne, the writer, is credited with some indie films, but still looking for his big break).
Writer: Sherman Payne
Details: 122 pages (6/9/12 draft)

It’s a happy time for those of us in Earthquake Land (and those of you living in that Arctic Tundra known as the East Coast). We’ve got Rogue One coming out in less than two weeks. We’ve got a Guardians of the Galaxy 2 trailer with Baby Groot. We’ve got a Mummy trailer with everything in it but mummies. And to top it all off, we’ve got Sony igniting the internet’s social justice warriors and trolls with the announcement that Amy Schumer is playing Barbie. Let the comment battles begin!

Oh, and we’ve also got a script review. Yippidee-skadoodle!

39 year-old Shawn Dianellos, a former Ranger in the Army, got stuck doing odd jobs for bad people after the war. As a result, he killed a man and is now doing time for it. The only thing that keeps Shawn going is the thought of seeing his son, Michael, now 20, once he gets out.

He gets to see his son all right, just not how he planned. Shawn gets word that Michael and his girlfriend were killed in their apartment over drugs. The warden awards Shawn a 48 hour “furlough” to attend the funeral and the wake, with the stipulation that he’s escorted by two badass cops, tough guy Sheehan and big burly Malcom.

Once home, Shawn starts sniffing around, and learns from his Greek buddies that his son was killed by the local Albanian gang, run by some dude named “Bad Rites,” named after his proclivity to turn right when he should’ve turned left (that’s a lie – I just made that up). Shawn easily dispatches of his detail, who turn out to be anything but badass, then starts his investigation of revenge.

Along the way, he learns that the Albanians are shaking down his old girlfriend and her shop, so he’s got to take care of that as well. But can he do that along with taking down one of the most powerful crime chains in the region all within 48 hours? Methinks he’s got a good shot at it because I’ve read the ending and I know what happens.

Ahhh! This one started off so fucking good!

My hopes were high.

There’s a wonderful opening sequence where we see this young couple get killed in their apartment, then we cut to Shawn, in a prison group session, reading a letter his son just sent him, the son, we realize, who was just killed in the previous scene. The juxtaposition between his joy and us knowing that these are the words of a dead man is heartbreaking.

I was in.

But the longer the script went on, the more plotty it got, and ultimately that’s what killed it. I mean we’ve got Greek gangs, Albanian gangs, Mexican gangs… I’ve seen less gangs in a Grand Theft Auto game.

Whenever I see a script that’s 120+ pages in a fast genre, I’m waiting for the moment when things get bogged down. And once Shawn got to the wake, it was one character introduction after another.

Worse than that, there were too many “people sitting around in rooms” scenes. You guys know how I feel about “sitting in rooms” scenes. You’re writing a movie. Movies need active characters. Active characters don’t sit around in rooms and talk. They go out and do shit!

There are exceptions to this. Certain genres or plot set-ups are more favorable to it. But not this one. I don’t remember John Wick sitting around and talking in rooms with people. Do you? He was always on the move. Always taking care of the next guy he had to kill.

Now if you’re writing this kind of movie and you do have a “characters talking in rooms” scene, make sure it has TENSION in it. For example, Revenge Protagonist walks into a car garage, catching his next victim by surprise, the owner. We know Revenge Protagonist is going to kill him, but he needs some information first. So we milk the tension through the dialogue before, finally, he blows his brains out.

What you DON’T want is a bunch of “characters talking in rooms” scenes where all that’s being talked about is exposition or backstory. Those scenes are almost always boring. And that was my problem with Furlough.

Instead of, say, the two escort cops hurrying after Shawn, we’d be in a motel room with them as they talked about if they should alert their bosses and what should the next step be.

I’m not saying you can never write these scenes, but you should actively avoid them if possible. And if you can’t avoid them, figure out a way to add tension or conflict or ANYTHING to make them more than just an exposition or backstory scene. Cause I’m telling you: THEY ARE SCRIPT MOMENTUM KILLERS.

Something else I want to talk about here. It’s important in these simple setups to EVOLVE THE STORY at some point. Otherwise, the audience gets bored. Being subjected to the same thing for 2 hours is boring.

But some people get “EVOLVE” mixed up with “RAISING THE STAKES.” Raising the stakes is still good, but it doesn’t change the story in the way that EVOLVING does. So in Furlough, around page 65, the media gets wind that Shawn is at large. Which means everybody’s now looking for him. This is good, as it makes Shawn’s job tougher. And we always want to make the hero’s job as tough as possible.

But it doesn’t change the story in an interesting way. Evolving, however, does, and I’m going to give you a recent example. This example kind of dropped the ball, which I’ll talk about, but it was the right idea.

The movie is Don’t Breathe (spoilers). It’s about a trio of kids who sneak into a man’s house to steal his money. When the man realizes they’re in the house, he locks the place down and starts hunting them.

That’s the setup. Now, we could’ve played this plot out the whole film. He hunts them, they try to escape. But is that going to be interesting for 100 minutes? Probably not. So you EVOLVE the plot. And what happens is that our protagonists slip down into the basement where they see that A GIRL IS BEING HELD CAPTIVE DOWN THERE.

This is a new element THAT SPINS THE STORY IN A DIFFERENT DIRECTION. That’s what evolving does. We’re no longer thinking just, “Escape.” We’re thinking, “Who is this and how does this change things?”

Now they don’t take this captive storyline in an interesting direction (spoiler – they kill the girl off quickly and her inclusion isn’t as mysterious as it could’ve been). But if they had, it would’ve been exactly what I’m talking about. You want to evolve simple stories with some kind of twist at some point, less we get bored doing the same thing over and over again.

Furlough is a script with potential but it gets in its own way with too much plot and too many characters. Too many scenes are passive instead of active. If you promise us the urgency of a 48 hour timeline, the script has to feel like time is running out in every scene. Until the last 40% of the script, the characters here felt like they were relaxing at Club Med. And that ultimately doomed the story.

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

What I learned: Once again, concepts that have a natural built-in tight time frame are perfect for screenwriting. One of the toughest things to do in writing is to come up with a time frame that adds urgency to a story that doesn’t want it. The great thing about Furlough is we never question the time frame (48 hours) because it’s built into the concept.

What I learned 2: Familiar situations breed familiarity. Like I said at the beginning of the analysis, we’ve seen the “Sit down in a room to receive bad news” scene so many times, that when presented with the moment in our own scripts, we’re like, “Yeah, we’ll just do the old sit-down in a room to receive bad news thing.” It’s these scenes SPECIFICALLY that you must identify and resist. These scenes are “cliche land mines” just waiting to be detonated. You must ask, in these moments, “How can we do this differently?” Backing up, showing us the son getting killed, then cutting to the incarcerated father reading a letter from his son to the rest of the inmates, thinking he’s still alive? That’s a much more interesting way to explore that scenario.

Michael Jackson once sang, “I’m looking at the man in the mirror. I’m asking him to change his ways.”

I don’t know if mega-star screenwriter Steven Knight (Allied) is a Michael Jackson fan or not, but I was reading an interview he did at Slash-Film the other day, and one of the questions asked of Knight was one that has pockmarked the screenwriting community for centuries. It’s the closest thing we have to a trigger question. Our equivalent of a political nut walking into a room and saying, “I can’t wait for Trump to build that wall.”

“SHOULD YOU FOLLOW THE RULES?”

Early in the interview Knight says that he avoids following screenwriting rules, specifically the one that states a character has to CHANGE over the course of a movie. When then asked which rules he isn’t fond of, Knight doubled-down on character change…

I mean, the arc thing is interesting. It’s good sometimes to have a character that starts as one thing and ends as another, but James Bond, Hercules, these are pretty enduring stories. [Laughs] Like a Greek myth. In a Greek myth, you can have the characters and objects, and it just goes through these events in the same as a computer game now.

I’ve always found this discussion fascinating because I believe it’s essential that a character change over the course of a movie. In fact, I’d argue that 99% of main characters in films do change, and that if your character doesn’t change in some way, we’ll feel let down, even leave disliking that character.

The only time a character doesn’t change and it still works is when that character dies because of their inability to change. I just watched Hell or High Water, and in that movie, the trouble-making brother lived a selfish sinful life. He never changed his ways (spoiler) and he ended up dying because of it. We also saw this with Robert DeNiro’s character in Heat.

Here’s where everyone gets tripped up though. They think that “change” has to happen along the traditional lines of assigning your character a flaw, and then having that character overcome that flaw by the end of the movie.

I agree that, when done well, this is the most effective way for change to work. When a selfish character (Trainwreck) learns to become selfless, we feel warm inside. When a stubborn character (Hoosiers) learns to listen to others, we feel tender inside.

However, the more scripts I read, the more I realize this type of change doesn’t happen often. And a look into history tells us why. The time when this advice became popularized was in the 80s and 90s, a period when comedies, rom-coms, and less serious fare dominated. In those movies, the “flaw-change” worked perfectly. The films (along with animated and sports movies), were already skirting reality, so the fact that this unrealistic 180 degree character turnaround occurs at the end of the movie didn’t faze anyone. They bought into it wholeheartedly.

But when you watch a movie like Drive or Bourne or Mad Max or Arrival – you don’t see traditional flaws explored. And because you don’t, you don’t see that arc Knight is referring to.

BUT…

Those characters still change. And the reason screenwriters miss it is because they’re looking specifically for the flaw-change. But alas, my screenwriting snickerdoodles, there are OTHER WAYS TO CHANGE A CHARACTER.

Two big ones, in fact:

LEARNING

and

OVERCOMING

Learning is just like it sounds. The character doesn’t have to become a different person by the end of the movie, which is where rule-defamers get their panties in a bunch. But they do need to learn something. I consider this a “mini-change,” and while not as earth-shattering as a core change, it still leaves the audience feeling good, since the character has evolved.

One of my favorite movies of all time is Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, a film used by flaw-change naysayers as proof that your main character doesn’t have to change over the course of the film. Ferris Bueller has no flaw, they say. And therefore he doesn’t fix his flaw by the end of the movie.

But let’s look at that analysis more closely. Is Ferris Bueller the same person at the end of that film as he was at the beginning? I’d say no way. Ferris has LEARNED two valuable lessons – the value of friendship (with Cameron) and the value of family (with his sister). If Ferris hadn’t changed, he’d still be joking around when Cameron has a breakdown destroying his father’s car. If Ferris hadn’t changed, he wouldn’t have connected with his troublemaker sister, who saves his ass at the end of the day.

The operative word here is that Ferris has LEARNED something. And if you’re not going to add a full-scale flaw-change, this is a nice secondary option. Make sure your character has learned something by the end of the day. It doesn’t have to be big. But it should make us feel that, going forward, the character is better equipped for life.

Next we have “OVERCOMING,” and overcoming comes in two flavors:

LOSS

ADDICTION

Movies that tackle these subject matters tend to be more serious. As a result, the gimmicky “overcoming a flaw” stuff doesn’t work as well (it can work, but it takes more skill to do so). The good news is, this is a fairly easy “change” to pull off. Since the problem is built right into the character, all you have to do is have the character overcome that problem and they have “changed.”

Arrival is an example of “overcoming loss.” Amy Adams’s character, Louise, has lost her child. Her entire life is defined by this loss. By the end of the movie, she’s able to find peace with the loss and move on. Louise is in a better place at the end of the movie than she was at the beginning (note: I know it’s more complicated than that because of the time stuff – but I don’t want to get into spoilers here).

I want you to think about that for a second because it gets to the heart of why, I believe, Steven Knight is wrong. If Louise is the same bummed out hopeless person in the last frame of the movie as she was at the beginning, would we be satisfied? I’m willing to bet you’d all have the same reaction: “Well what the fuck was the point of that then?” This is why change is important. It makes us feel like the journey we just went on had a point.

For an example of a character overcoming addiction, look no further than The Girl On The Train. That film is about a woman whose drinking is so bad, it’s preventing her from solving a murder. If she doesn’t change her ways (her drinking), she will wallow in this drifting pointless existence til the day she dies. Change is imperative for her to succeed and for us to feel satisfied. And she does just that.

And that’s what I want to get across here. Characters must change over the course of the story. It doesn’t have to be with a flaw. It can be by learning something. Or it can be by overcoming something within. But they can’t be at the exact same point at the end as they were at the beginning, or else what’s the point of making us watch your stupid movie for two hours?

I’m so sure of this, that I pose a challenge to you: Name me any good movie where the main character doesn’t change in the three ways listed above (flaw, learn, overcome) where the character doesn’t then end up dead.

And yes, I know the first film you’ll go to is the James Bond series. I don’t know these films well enough to argue against them. But I have a feeling that, in a lot of Bond films, Bond learns something by the end of the movie. Especially in the Daniel Craig versions, which are more character-driven. But what I’m really curious about is if anyone can give me examples other than Bond. And remember, the films have to actually be good! Meaning, the act of not changing the characters resulted in a strong film.

Go at it!

Hey guys, sorry for the lack of posts. I enjoyed the holidays too much, apparently. So here’s how this week is going to work. This is TUESDAY’S post. Wednesday is another review. Thursday is an article. Friday is the Scriptshadow Tournament. The good news is that tomorrow or Wednesday, I’m sending out a NEW NEWSLETTER! And I review a really good script from a really good screenwriter. Or, at least, it’s good so far. :) So make sure to sign up for the newsletter at Carsonreeves1@gmail.com.

Genre: Period/World War 2
Premise: A paratrooper finds himself stranded behind enemy lines when his plane goes down while on one of the most important missions of World War 2. Can he still complete the mission in time?
About: EDIT (UPDATE) – Oh wow, they just attached Bradley Cooper hours after review went up. Talk about timing this just right. :) Zach Dean is a mainstay on the Black List. This is either his 3rd or 4th entry on the list, and his writing seems to get better each time. This one finished on the lower half of the 2015 List. Atlantic Wall was sold in PITCH FORM in a competitive bidding situation. That’s what happens when you’re getting on the Black List every year, boys and girls. Companies start competing for your scripts!
Writer: Zach Dean
Details: 116 pages

If you’ve been here long enough, you know how I feel about World War 2 stories. There are in the neighborhood of 300 movies about World War 2. So if you’re going to bring a new story to the table, it better be unique. One of my favorite World War 2 movies is Life is Beautiful because it’s a CONCENTRATION CAMP COMEDY. How could that movie NOT be unique??

What I don’t like is when writers use a generic World War 2 situation that isn’t that interesting just so they can slap that “World War 2” label on their logline. Like that Daniel Craig movie – what was it? Defiance? About a bunch of people who lived in the woods during World War 2 (“We must go deeper into the woods, Frank.” “Deeper? But we’re literally 100 miles from civilization.” “God dammit, Frank, I said DEEPER!”) WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT MOVIE????

My favorite talk show right now is, by far, James Corden. My least favorite is Seth Meyers. The reason Corden is so good and Meyers is so forgettable is because James Corden asked the question, “What do we bring to the table that the other talk shows don’t?” Or, more to the point: “Why do we deserve to exist?”

By asking that question, they had no choice but to differentiate themselves. So they added a multi-interview format instead of one guest at a time. They created segments that were online friendly (Carpool Karaoke) and dance numbers (Intersection Musical). Meanwhile, what does Seth Meyers do? He brings the exact same no-frills format that talk shows have been using for 50 years and his late-night show is the least watched as a result.

This is a long-winded way of saying, your idea must have a reason for existing. If you’re just writing something because it has a cursory attachment to a high-profile event, it’s going to reflect in the execution. One of the reasons it’s taken me so long to read this Black List script is because I was afraid that was the case. I’m hoping I’m wrong. Let’s find out…

It’s 1944 and Britain is about to enact something called Operation Overlord, where they’ll fly over the channel and invade Nazi-occupied France. However, there’s a secondary component to this attack.

France has been using secret operatives who have been meticulously marking where all the key German gun points are. With this knowledge, the British-American Coalition will know exactly where to land, which areas to avoid, and how to attack to destroy the Germans. Without this information, they’d be walking in blind.

There’s only one issue. The map has only just been finished. And the attack is launching tomorrow. This leaves American Captain, Lowry Scott, and his team, just a tiny window to get in, grab the map, and get out.

So Scott and his team fly in. Everything seems to be going well. And then Scott’s plane gets shot down. Scott is the only one to survive, and finds himself having to evade the entire Nazi army to get to the rendezvous point.

Once there, Scott secures the map, but not without needing to slaughter a clan of curious Nazis. His attache, close to death, makes Scott promise he’ll take his 10 year old son, Jasper, to his sister. Jasper, ironically, is the one who performed all the reconnaissance for his father and is responsible for this invaluable map.

An annoyed Scott pairs up with Jasper and is able to fulfill his end of the bargain. But when a traitor disrupts the French resistance, Scott and Jasper will need to come together once again to both get out alive, and get that map to the higher-ups so that the invasion can be a success.

This was a lot better than I thought it would be.

There’s one thing you can learn right away from this script and it’s an approach all writers should hang their hat on. When you have a big idea, you want to find the small personal story within it.

A lot of writers will take an idea like this and cut between seven different groups of characters as they all get ready for the big invasion. It’s a common mistake when doing a period or war film and it results in too much jumping around where we never get to know or care about anyone, and therefore don’t give a shit what happens.

What Dean does here instead is he finds this personal story to tell. Our hero teams up with a kid and the two must escape an entire occupied country that’s looking for them.

This leads to the second thing Dean does well: GSU (goal, stakes, urgency).

Goal: Get the map back to his superiors.
Stakes: If he doesn’t, an entire operation will fail, and hundreds of thousands will die.
Urgency: The invasion is happening that day. So he needs to achieve this FAST.

When you combine this with an unresolved relationship between our two leads, Scott and Jasper, you have yourself the ingredients for a kick-ass movie.

This is where the World War 2 tag HELPS your script – when you’ve written something good. Because it acts as a PUBLIC IP in that everyone’s heard of World War 2. So, naturally, it’s easy to promote.

In a film market where everyone (and when I say everyone, I’m talking about the studios as well) struggles to make consumers aware of their product, paying hundreds of millions of dollars to do so, it’s nice to have something well-known in your back pocket (World War 2) to instantly create recognition.

Think about how hard it’s been for them to promote spec scripts Passengers and Collateral Beauty this holiday season. There’s nothing either film can throw at you that creates instant recognition besides movie stars. And movie stars, strangely, aren’t enough anymore.

In addition to this, Dean has researched the shit out of his script, making sure we believe what’s going on. I bring this up because there’s nothing worse than a World War 2 script where it’s clear that the writer doesn’t know a) How war really works, b) the unique details of World War 2 including weapons, vehicles, and protocol, c) the fine print of the subject matter he’s writing about.

I’m not saying the writer should go into exquisite detail about each German gun being shot (more on this in “What I Learned”). I’m saying that we never question any object, person, or interaction because they all felt so damn authentic.

And yet, despite this elaborate research, Dean never forgets to entertain. This is another common amateur mistake. Writers will get that research down, but then that’s ALL they get down. Everything is meticulously described and yet we’re bored to tears because nothing fun or dramatic is happening.

We get lots of Entertainment 101 scenes here, like the dickhead SS officer prepping to kill Julian for accidentally splashing water on his shoes. Or we get to know Scott’s entire team, only for them to be blown to pieces before the mission. That’s how you entertain – throw a plot twist in there that we’d never expect.

Atlantic Wall is a really well-researched fun romp with lots of GSU and, in my opinion, Dean’s best script to date.

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

What I learned: If there isn’t a lot of dialogue in your script, make sure you’re focusing on ACTION rather than DESCRIPTION. In other words, write less about what we’re looking at and more about WHAT THE CHARACTERS ARE DOING. As long as you’re documenting action, the reader feels that SOMETHING IS HAPPENING and is therefore less likely to get bored. It could be cleaning a house. It could be charging up to a bully to settle a score. It could be adding another target to the Operation Overlord map. What you don’t want is a lot of description of rooms or fields or people or vehicles. That’s not to say you won’t describe things. You’ll just do it quickly, expanding only if the moment is really important. But, for the most part, description equals to boredom. Focus on what your character IS DOING instead.

Genre: Science-Fiction
Premise: After earth becomes uninhabitable, a ship is sent into deep space to look for mankind’s next planet.
About: S. Craig Zahler is back. For the holidays! I mean what says “holidays” better than the man who brought us death by hamster insertion? The Brigands of Rattleborge and They Repair Us writer hits us today with some hard sci-fi. Let’s see how juicy an S. Craig Zahler science-fiction script gets! This seems to be an early draft (it’s called “Draft A”) so take that into consideration ya little turkey thieves.
Writer: S. Craig Zahler
Details: 156 pages (c’mon, what did you expect) – “Draft A”

It only makes sense after the last couple of days at Scriptshadow that we’d want to get as far away from planet earth as possible. And who better to take us there than the Director of Description, the Pioneer of Prose, S. Craig Zahler himself.

Before I summarize the story, I want to say that the “Leave Earth To Find A New Planet” scenario is one of the oldest plots in science-fiction. We saw it with Avatar. We saw it with Interstellar. I’ve even read three amateur scripts dealing with this subject matter in the past six months.

This setup requires embracing the un-obvious. Just like a romantic comedy writer has to find new ways into a romantic comedy so that it’s not just another romantic comedy, you, as a science-fiction writer, need to find new ways into old setups like this one so they’re not just another “leave earth and find a planet” flick. And since Zahler invented the un-obvious, I’m hoping he can do just that.

The first ten pages of “Conflicts” thrusts us through 150 years on earth. Our environment is going to shit cause we’re lazy assholes, which gives rise to fringe religious groups who take advantage of peoples’ fears. Religion meets terrorism. Attacks on the rich are made. It turns out Leo was right, and it’s only a matter of time before this garbage can we call “home” is uninhabitable.

So we build Elysabeth, a self-sufficient self-intelligent ship that’s capable of putting a thousand bodies on ice while it searches the universe for habitable planets. This is one weird ship. They’ve peppered it with hundreds of HUMAN EYEBALLS that stare out into the nothingness of space while we jet-set around on our intergalactic road trip.

Eventually, after 600 years, we find a planet that, because the ship is run by a bunch of boring scientists, we name, “Option 1.” Option 1 is not ideal. While it’s got rocks and water, it also has temperatures that swing 100 degrees in a matter of minutes. Not exactly beach living. Unfortunately, Elysabeth is falling apart, so they’ve got no choice but to make Option 1 their only option.

After exploring Option 1 for a few weeks, they come across a tiny group of intelligent beings who live inside a hollow mountain. These brash beasts invite the humans to build their own village next to theirs.

Meanwhile, a few religious nuts who stowed away in the cryo-beds want to kill everyone on Elysabeth then hijack the ship back to earth, where they plan to unfreeze their cryogenically frozen children that they’ve hidden underground. Yeah, cause that sounds doable. “Hey guys, I know it’s been 1700 years. But wake up!”

All of this implies the inevitable, that mankind is probably going extinct. If it’s not the planet, it will be the aliens. And if it’s not the aliens, it will be each other. Unless, of course, our crew can pull it together. But with noted pessimist Zahler at the controls, I sincerely doubt that’s going to happen.

I don’t know what to make of “Conflicts.” Either it’s an early draft or one of Zahler’s rare misfires. Notice how in my breakdown, I didn’t mention any characters. That’s not by accident. I couldn’t find any.

We bounce around between so many people that we never identify a protagonist. And I’ll tell you right now, if there’s one choice a screenwriter can almost NEVER recover from, it’s not having a clear protagonist. Readers are desperate to identify with and see the story through someone’s eyes. If you don’t give them that, they’re confused. But more importantly – DISTANCED.

Think of a story as a mother. And you, the reader, are a baby. If you don’t have your mom carrying you around, taking you from place to place, you don’t know what the fuck to do. You sit on the sidewalk and cry.

And the basic tenets of storytelling go out the window without a main character. You don’t have an active person driving the story. Which means you don’t have a strong goal. Which means no urgency. Which means no stakes. I guess you can include these things in the abstract. The “goal” is for the crew to find a place to settle. But without that one person who we feel close to leading the charge, it’s hard to care whether they succeed or not.

It’s the exact opposite of yesterday, where Ingelsby LOCKS US IN to one character and makes her SO DAMN SYMPATHETIC that even though nothing is technically happening, we still wanted to see what she’d do next.

That’s why, if someone were to put a gun to your head and say your script could only include character development or plot, not both, I’d tell you to go with character. Because people want to connect with other people, even if they’re imaginary. Nobody wants to find the Ark of the Covenant if Indiana Jones isn’t taking them to it.

There isn’t a single character in Conflicts who’s explored with any depth besides maybe Sven, a spoiled kid in his 20s whose father was a big-shot back on earth. And yet we barely know the guy cause we’re jumping around to so many other characters.

Another issue I ran across with Conflicts was backstory. And this goes back to yesterday’s script as well. One of the first things you learn in screenwriting is to come into the story as late as possible.

In other words, if you’re writing Star Wars, you don’t start six months ago, getting to know Darth Vader during a week-long vacation on Endor. You start ten minutes after the Death Star plans have been stolen with Darth Vader chasing your thieving ass.

Ingelsby threw this rule out yesterday, leisurely taking us through Deb’s daily routine for 27 pages before her daughter went missing. Zahler takes that to another level as we traverse 800 years in 30 pages before finally discovering Option 1.

In both cases, an argument can be made that we should’ve come in later. Do we really need 27 pages to set Deb and her daughter up? Do we really need 30 pages to set up how and why we left earth? Wouldn’t it have been easier to start with the characters waking up from cryo-sleep outside their new planet?

The reality is there’s no right answers to these questions. It’s a judgment call made by the writer. If you feel like you need extra setup, include extra setup. But I will say this. In screenwriting, it’s best to err on the side of less rather than more. It’ll benefit you to come in too late rather than too early.

But if we are going to come in early, I’d argue the long setup of Deb and her daughter was way more important to its story than the long setup of leaving earth was to Conflicts.

And I’ll tell you why.

Deb’s character is DEFINED by her loss. Everything she does is based on that loss. So it makes sense to draw out the relationship that led to that loss. With Conflicts, there’s no crucial character being built up here. In fact, all we’re doing is highlighting the same thing that happens in every “leave earth for other planets” story. The earth is dying. People are fighting each other. Build a ship. Leave.

That’s a key difference that I need you guys to realize. If your backstory is something the reader could’ve assumed on their own, you don’t need to show it. And, in this case, that could’ve saved “Conflicts” 30 pages.

With that said, I know we’re talking about Zahler. He doesn’t follow screenwriting rules and is usually better for it. Indeed, some of the trippy stuff he adds to our exit (spaceships with eyeballs??) can be used as an argument for their inclusion. But it’s always a balancing act. You have to balance what you like against what’s best for the screenplay. And I don’t think a backstory that’s 95% the same as every other backstory we’ve seen in these movies was best for Conflicts.

This early draft of Conflicts needed two things – a later entry into the story and characters we actually got to know. I have a feeling that if all Zahler had to concentrate on was getting us onto this planet and having strange shit happen to our characters, he could’ve written to his strengths, which, ironically, are really weird and powerful characters encountering memorably detailed fucked-up situations.

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

What I learned: One of the first things you should ask yourself when you come up with a movie idea is how late can you start your story and how soon can you get out of it? I’ll give you the perfect example. Star Wars. That movie could’ve taken place over 2-3 years. Instead, it took place over 1 week. Contrast that with, say, Revenge of The Sith. Remember how wonky that plot felt? A big reason for that is because Lucas came into the story too early and got out too late. All in all, it took place over 8 months I believe? Yikes. That’s Disaster Sauce when dealing with plots. “Conflicts” could’ve benefitted a ton form this line of thinking, at least on the front end, when we came in way too early.

P.S. I’m not saying all movies need to take place over a week. I’m merely warning you that the longer you spread your plot out, the harder your story will be to tell. I guarantee that. So get in late and get out early. Even if it means changing your planned plot. For example, I’m sure George Lucas would’ve argued, “It had to be 8 months. Queen Amidala was one month pregnant at the beginning of the movie and the ending is her giving birth.” Okay, so get creative then. Ask yourself if you can start the movie with Queen Amidala already 8 months pregnant. That’s what this line of thinking is all about.

Genre: Sci-fi
Premise: When a series of alien ships arrive on earth, it’s up to a linguist to learn their language and find out what they came here for.
About: This was one of those half-assignment/half-spec type deals. Eric Heisserer adapted Ted Chiang’s short story. The project was considered low-priority. But when it came together, everyone realized the film’s flashy premise provided them with an opportunity to draw in a bigger audience. Paramount became the primary suitor, eventually picking it up after a stellar preview at Cannes, and it came out this weekend to a higher than expected box office of 24 million bucks. For perspective, a Marvel movie will cost 4 times as much and land in twice as many theaters. So this is a huge coup for Arrival. One of the hottest directors on the planet, Denis Villeneuve, directs Amy Adams, Jeremey Renner, and Forest “Rouge One” Whitaker.
Writer: Eric Heisserer
Details: 1 hour and 55 minutes

Coming out of Arrival, I had the same reaction half the country did after the election…

“What the fuck just happened?”

Arrival is a testament to exploring a big idea on an intimate scale. It’s a script that should be lauded for its commitment to deeper introspective storytelling. But it’s also a cautionary tale for screenwriters – both in how the system forces your hand and how time travel mechanics are the biggest minefield in screenwriting.

Arrival follows Dr. Louise Banks, one of the top linguists in the world. Louise recently lost her daughter to cancer and therefore drifts though life, allowing her professorial duties at the local college to distract her as much as possible.

Her life is violently interrupted when twelve alien ships that look like giant tear drops arrive, hovering over twelve of the biggest countries in the world. Just as Louise is taking this in, an army colonel named Weber shows up and tells her her services are required. They need to communicate with the aliens, and she’s the only one they believe who can do it.

Louise is paired up with Ian Donnelly, a scientist, and the two join a small team that go into the alien ship every 18 hours to try and develop a common language with the aliens so that they can communicate.

The process is slow-going, and they’re repeatedly getting pressure from the higher-ups to speed it along. The big dogs believe that the other countries are making faster progress, and word on the bike path is that the aliens might be here to offer us a weapon. In some sort of twisted game, whichever country wins the language war, they will receive the weapon, and, if they so please, have the rest of earth at their mercy.

It’s a classic tale of of the tortoise and the hare, as Louise wants to learn the language from the ground up in hopes of a comprehensive dialogue, whereas the other countries are learning a few key words quickly so they get the message faster, even if that means error-prone communication.

Who will win? And what is the weapon the aliens have at their disposal? That’s the million dollar intergalactic question, baby.

Arrival is an example of the sign of the times. No, I’m not talking about how aliens relate to our political reality or any such nonsense. I’m talking about how in the original story, China plans to take over the world.

Oh no, but we can’t portray China in a negative light! Like, literally, we’re not able to. China is in the process of investing money in all seven studios with the stipulation that they cannot be portrayed negatively in any of the movies their money funds.

So what we’re seeing is scripts like Arrival have to be rewritten. And the results are anything but ideal. Instead of the Chinese being bad guys like in the earlier draft, the Chinese are now heroes, bravely defending the planet by threatening the aliens.

This sets a ticking time bomb up for the final act, as Louise and Ian hurry to learn the last bits of the alien language in the hope that they can prevent this attack.

At first glance, it’s a subtle shift. The Chinese no longer want to harm us. They want to harm the aliens. But in terms of stakes, it’s everything. Our characters and the United States are no longer under direct threat. No matter how you dress it up, there’s less stake in this scenario than a chicken sandwich.

Sure, there’s still “connect-the-dots” stakes. If China attacks the aliens, the aliens may attack earth, and everyone dies. But this scenario isn’t as clear, and the connect-the-dots nature of it makes it less scary than if China was threatening the U.S. directly.

So how do you deal with this as a working screenwriter? You can’t. There are things you have no control over. Studios are going to ask you to change things you don’t want to change all the time. And all you can do is do your best.

What sucks about Arrival is that it compounds this decrease in stakes with a risky story choice – adding time-travel.

[major spoilers below]

While I will never say “Don’t use time travel” in your screenplay, I will heed you this warning: Time travel is the hardest thing to get right in storytelling.

It goes back to Terminator. As a singular movie, that film worked because it was so simple. You didn’t have to think much. But once a second Terminator appeared in the second movie, it got everyone thinking: “Wait a minute. If they fail, why can’t they just keep sending Terminators back, one after another until they succeed?” That’s the pitfall of time travel. It opens up so many fucking, “Well wait a minute…” questions.

And Arrival is no exception.

The “weapon” that the aliens give Louise? Is the ability to see the universe like them – without the constraints of time. So Louise has the power to see forwards and backwards into her entire life.

Okay, now here’s where things get tricky, so stay with me. The daughter she lost to cancer? That hasn’t happened yet. What Louise is remembering in the early part of the movie is the future, not the past.

That daughter she had, she had with Ian (her co-worker). Which begs the question, where is Ian in all these future memories? It turns out he left when Louise informed him that their daughter would eventually contract cancer.

We then go back to the end of the aliens’ visit, where a troubled Louise asks Ian that if he could live a happy life despite knowing something terrible was coming, would he change it? He says no, he’d still live that life. And that’s the end.

Okay so, let’s get this straight here. Louise is having memories of her dead future child when we start the movie because the aliens gave her the power to see time forwards and backwards, which goes into effect retroactively, giving her that power to see the future, essentially, right when she’s born.

So then how come she didn’t know the aliens were coming???

Apparently this ability to see the future is selective.

Also, where is Ian in these future memories if he’s the father? Oh right, he left. Because when Louise told him that their daughter would eventually get cancer, he was so mad that he deserted the fam.

Let’s think about that for a moment, shall we? You leave the woman you love and the daughter you love because you’re mad your wife told you she’s going to get cancer. Does that make sense to you? Wouldn’t you stay and fight and go to every doctor on the planet to find preventative measures to stop the cancer, especially since you already know which cancer it’s going to be?

A little more digging however, tells us the real reason Ian isn’t there. If Ian was there, we’d have known the “flash-backs” were actually “flash-forwards.” They needed Ian out of the picture to execute the sleight-of-hand. Hence the artificial reasoning for him leaving.

All of this is an elaborate way of saying: If you’re going to fuck with time travel, be prepared to take it on the chin. The more embedded time travel is in your plot, the more plot holes you’re going to have. Period. If you’re okay with that, go for it. But I promise you, they’ll be there.

Despite this frustrating issue, I still liked Arrival. I loved the realistic approach it took to the arrival. I loved the unique manner in which contact was explored (with language). On a filmmaking note, I thought the score was amazing. And I thought Villeneuve shot the movie in a mesmerizing manner.

There’s this flying tracking shot early on, where we helicopter into the base outside the ship, and we’re floating down and around the make-shift barracks, and the score is booming and the clouds are sliding off the nearby mountains and this majestic ship is silhouetted by the sun — that shot fucking sold me. The aliens could’ve communicated in farts and burps at that point and I still would’ve bought in.

So warts and all, this was quite the movie-going experience. Not to mention it’s a great discussion piece for screenwriters and filmmakers alike.

[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the price of admission
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: There is such a thing as too much subtlety, you know. Writers and directors who prefer subtlety are terrified of coming off too “on-the-nose.” In principle, I agree that on-the-nose is bad. But if you go to the other extreme, where you don’t give us anything, there’s a chance we might not catch what you’re trying to say. This love story between Louise and Ian is dealt with so subtlely, we don’t even know it’s happening. There’s no kissing, no touching, no compliments, no looks, not even a hint that they like each other. So when they get together at the end, it comes out of left field. It’s fine to be subtle. But you still have to give the audience SOMETHING to let them know what’s going on. Every payoff in your story must be set up on some level.