Genre: Drama/Conspiracy/Thriller
Premise: (from Black List) With America’s first viable independent presidential candidate poised for victory, an idealistic young journalist uncovers a conspiracy, which places the fate of the election, and the country, in his hands.
About: The Independent made the semifinals of the Nicholl Competition in 2013 before later finishing high on the 2013 Black List. Parter is new on the scene. This is his breakthrough screenplay.
Writer: Evan Parter
Details: 114 pages

Redmayne for Eli?

Guess what day it is??

It’s ellllllllection day!!!

Yayyyy!!!

It’s time to vote for one of these two wonderful fault-free candidates we’ve decided are the best options to represent our country. And what better way to fire up those voting fingers than to review a political script?? Cause we all know how much I love politics. I talk about it all the time on Scriptshadow. Clintons, Bushes, Obamas. Sometimes this blog is so political, I might as well be blogging atop that big spire-like thing in Washington.

In all seriousness, I know very little bout politics, starting with what that spire-thing in Washington is named. In fact, I just learned a few months ago the purpose of voting for the Independent. I always used to wonder, “Why do people vote for this guy if nobody knows who he is?” But now I’ve learned that voting for the independent candidate isn’t a vote for them. It’s a vote against the system. You’re making, like, a statement with your vote that you don’t like America or something.

Might that be what The Independent is about? No idea. But who cares! I get to review a political script today. YAHOOOOOOO!!!!

Last year Nate Sterling wrote a book that sold 40 million copies and shot in him into the likability stratosphere. Sterling has used that buzz, as well as his innate charm, to climb the polls and become the favorite to win the United States presidency. The catch?

Nate is an independent candidate.

The United States has never had an independent president. So this is pretty unpresidented (heh heh – joke).

Across town, 28 year-old Eli Brooks isn’t exactly moving mountains like Sterling. But he’s an up-and-coming star at the Washington Tribune, the only paper in town that hasn’t succumbed to the evil internet news machine.

The chief editor at the paper implores his writers to hit hard and hit big. It’s the only way they can keep killing trees. And Eli’s got a story that’s going to knock out a rain forest. Eli believes that Republican presidential candidate and Sterling’s main rival, Roger Turnball, is siphoning money out of the state’s lottery coffers to pay for his campaign.

Eli lassos senior editor and mentor, Nate Sterling, into his conspiracy theory, and the two set out to prove Turball is a nasty dude. But just when the story’s coming together, they’re hit with a bombshell that will throw everything everybody thought they knew about Sterling on its head. The question is: Can they report it? And what will happen to them if they do?

Yikes.

This was so not a Carson script.

It had politics, politics, and… more politics! Had I paid more attention to the logline, I probably would’ve realized that.

Regardless of my personal feelings about politics, here’s my big issue with The Independent: It ignored its strange attractor.

Remember guys, your first order of business is to identify the strange attractor in your story. What is it that you’re bringing to the table that’s never been brought to the table before? I’d never seen the matrix before The Matrix. I’d never read a movie about a soldier who refused to use a gun before Hacksaw Ridge. I’d never seen a movie about magicians who pulled off bank heists before Now Your See Me.

However, that’s only THE FIRST PART of the equation.

The next part is that you must EXPLOIT THAT ATTRACTOR. In other words, you must show the soldier not using his weapon. You must show fighting that defies physics. You must show people using magic to steal money.

In The Independent, the independent candidate is your strange attractor. It’s what makes your movie unique. Yet there is nothing in here that exploits that. In fact, had you turned Nate Sterling into a Democrat, absolutely nothing about this script changes.

That’s when you know you’re not exploiting your concept. When you can change the attractor and nothing else in your script needs to be rewritten.

This script is more about a journalist trying to prove a presidential candidate is corrupt. I don’t know what that has to do with independent presidential candidates. And, quite frankly, that bummed me out. Because I don’t know much about the independent sector, and I was hoping that by the end of this script, I would know a lot.

Even if that wasn’t a problem for you, I was baffled by the fact that this script is titled “The Independent,” and yet 90% of the movie focuses on a journalist. Why aren’t we focusing on the most interesting part of your concept?

It just seemed odd to me.

As for the rest of the script, it was a mixed bag. I found the dialogue to be great when it was quick and punchy (“Listen up, buddy. Only eyes on that story are the ones you’re dotting.”), and insufferable when the characters couldn’t shut up (“There’s many wonderful things about a choir. Intimate friends, tight community, beautiful music. But, if you only sing in one choir your whole life, you’re only listening to one preacher… you’re only meeting one God.”).

There were so many lines like that last one, where characters would talk talk talk then summarize their thoughts with a famous quote or philosophical life lesson, that I felt like I was stuck in a Princeton Lecture Hall during some kind of Pretentiousness Competition.

That’s where this script lost itself, in its middle act. The characters couldn’t shut up, we the reader got bored, and both sides forgot what the movie was about.

The Independent almost saves itself with a wowzer of a late-story twist, but a lot of the impact of that twist came simply because I was bored. It was like, “Oh! Finally! Something’s happened!”

The Independent needs a lot of work. For starters, it needs to include its subject, Nate Sterling, more. It needs an investigation that’s more exciting than a corrupt lottery board. It needs to better explore its one interesting dynamic (spoilers) – that Eli’s fiancé works for the secretly corrupt Sterling. More time with her and more time with all three of them would be nice. And it needs to stop indulging in these endless 8-10 line pretentious dialogue exchanges that are more about sounding smart than pushing the story forward.

If The Independent can do all those things, maybe it makes it through the primaries.

Good luck to your candidate, everybody!

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

What I learned: One of the more common mistakes I see with new writers is dialogue that’s written to make the writer look good rather than to serve the story. The Independent is full of characters who talk forever but don’t actually say anything. It’s okay for a character to ramble on about something every once in awhile, but remember, even in the talkiest of movies, it’s more important to show than tell. And it’s more important to keep the story moving than listen to yourself talk.

Due to my impending death, I couldn’t get a full post up today. The good news is that a new Scriptshadow Newsletter is coming out within the next couple of days! In it, I’ll be reviewing another hot trend – studios buying specs to adapt into already-owned franchises. This one is a small but intense spec that a major studio purchased to jump start an early 2000s franchise that could’ve been awesome, but they screwed it up big-time (for those guessing, I’ve talked about the film here within the past year). So make sure you sign up for the newsletter if you’re not on it already. Just send the word “NEWSLETTER” to Carsonreeves1@gmail.com

Now on to today’s tip, which is actually inspired by yesterday. In the number 1 Blood List script, Orb, I discussed the notion of exposition in scene-writing, with backstory being a part of that. Backstory is any information you include about your characters or plot that occurred before your story started. If your main character’s mom died during child birth and you have one of your characters tell us this, or even jump back in time and show it? That’s backstory.

So today’s question is, when should you include backstory? The quick answer is: ALMOST NEVER. Seriously. Screenplays work best when they’re dealing with the present moment. Therefore, characters talking about the past or us going into the past is moving away from the strength of the medium. However, sometimes you need to add context to your plot and your characters and backstory is the only way to do that.

That leads us to the more involved answer: If the audience can approximately fill in the backstory themselves, you don’t need to include it.

“Approximately?” What the hell does that mean, Carson? Say we meet a Marlon Brando-like blue collar character who grew up on the wrong side of the tracks. Just from his weathered eyes, his defeated demeanor, some scars on his back, we know this dude had a rough life. Therefore, including a scene where he tells his girlfriend that his dad used to beat him up every Thursday after drinking with his buddies, doesn’t add anything to the narrative. We figured something like this must have happened, and this daddy abuse sounds about right. So it comes off as redundant.

However, if “Marlon” informed his girlfriend that, at one time, he was a chess prodigy ranked #3 in the world? That’s something we wouldn’t have guessed. This makes him a bit more interesting to us, and builds an extra layer into the character. Therefore, the argument for including this piece of backstory is much stronger.

Keep in mind, though, that as with any information you bring into a script, your backstory needs to be relevant to the story. If you’re going to tell us your character was a chess champion, that should pay off or slide into the story later. That doesn’t mean Marlon has to enter a chess tournament. But this “hidden intellect” might serve him well in a Good Will Hunting “How do you like them apples?” kind of way.

Backstory is a tricky monster that should mostly be avoided. But if you are going to use it, make sure it tells us things we wouldn’t have guessed ourselves. Or else what’s the point?

Genre: Sci-Fi
Premise: An astronaut in 1969 tries an experimental aircraft that accidentally sends him 50 years into the future.
About: This script finished with 10 votes on the 2014 Black List. The writer, Kimberly Barrante, graduated from the NYU Tisch School of Arts. According to an interview, this is the first script Barrante wrote, and one she started while at NYU.
Writer: Kimberly Barrante
Details: 111 pages

One of the things I’ve been struggling a lot with lately is originality. I’m reading the same shit over and over again, from concepts to execution, and, in most cases, am so far ahead of the script, I might as well skip to the last five pages.

This led to me asking the question: How do you find originality in a world with 100 years of cinema history and 400 tv shows? Do you just give up? Accept there’s nothing new to say and copy your favorite writers?

Then last night I turned on Black Mirror, the unexpected British hit on Netflix, which spurned Netflix to produce another season, recruiting top level talent from the acting and directing worlds (Bryce Dallas Howard and Joe Wright take on the first episode of Season 3).

The show is about modern technology’s effect on society – and it was from this synopsis that I realized: BAM. That’s where you find originality, in the ways our world is changing, in the new developments, whether they be technological or sociological or psychological, stemming from the way our world evolves.

Of course, there’s a caveat to that. You are now competing in a brainspace occupied by a LOT more people. For example, if you wanted to write a movie about the effect of Instagram on the populace, you’d be competing with the 50 million people who use the app and 50 million others who have heard of it.

In that sense, it’s a double-edged sword. You’ve been given some originality real estate, yet everyone on the planet already owns a piece of it.

The connective tissue between this and Celeritas is that writer Kimberly Barrante has somehow managed to find originality in a world where it doesn’t exist anymore. I’ve never seen a story told quite like this. But as we’ve pointed out here before on Scriptshadow – coming up with something original is one thing. Making it good is another. Let’s see if Celeritas is good.

It’s 1969 and Paul Hawkins is an ace astronaut about to get the opportunity of a lifetime. He’s been chosen for a top secret project called “Janus,” which will put him in an experimental aircraft that will attempt to break the speed of light.

Meanwhile, in 2020, NASA has just recovered a ship called “Janus” that has landed in the ocean. This is, of course, the same ship, which would imply the project was a success. However, NASA seems confused by the arrival of Paul, believing that his ship had blown up during take-off back in 1969.

Speaking of 1969, we repeatedly jump back to it where an entirely different story plays out. Paul has a twin brother, Norman, and both are in love with the same girl, Maggie. While Paul was always considered the Golden Child, Norman was more the workhorse of the family, the guy who gets all the shit done that nobody wants to do.

We keep cutting back and forth between the past and the future, eventually meeting Old Norman and Old Maggie, who are now married, as they attempt to break Paul out of NASA. Will NASA take Paul out? Or will this rag-tag group somehow escape? And if they do, how does Paul live in this new unfamiliar world?

Celeritas feels to me like a concept in search of a story. We have this pilot who jumps forward in time (the concept), yet the story doesn’t want to focus on that. It would rather focus on 1969 and the more mundane story of this twins love triangle.

It’d be like if you wrote Jurassic Park, but instead of focusing on a group of people getting stuck in a park with killer dinosaurs trying to chase them, we instead focused on a young man who was trying to be the first in his family to graduate college.

We have fucking dinosaurs man! But instead we’ve got our eyes on a Diplomasaurus.

Celeritas is also lacking major GSU. Now I’m aware I have a bias towards GSU. And I recognize it’s not the only way to tell a story. But when a script seems to openly avoid using any story-enhancer, I get frustrated.

Because without a goal, what are we looking forward to here? What’s the end game? What are these people trying to do? Even when they break Paul out of NASA, which is around page 75, there isn’t a plan to it. It’s kind of like, “Okay, let’s just go somewhere where NASA isn’t.”

The great thing about a goal is it gives your story purpose. The reader understands what needs to happen for the characters to complete the journey. And the added benefit with a goal is that you can now add STAKES, you can now add URGENCY, two things that turbo-ize a story.

Take the upcoming alien arrival flick, Arrival. That script could’ve been very similar to this one. Aliens are coming. But instead of focusing on them, you focus more on the psychological effects of people in a post-aliens world. There’s no point. It’s more of a character exploration.

But instead, Arrival gives us a clear goal – figure out the alien language so we can communicate with them. They then add stakes. Other countries are also talking to the aliens. Whoever breaks the language barrier first will receive alien tech that could alter the balance of the world. That naturally lends itself to urgency. It’s imperative that they beat out these other nations.

A lot of newbie writers make this mistake. They attempt to write character-driven fare, but do so at such an expense to story, that there’s no meat to the script. Sure, we’re kind of interested in how Paul lost Maggie to Norman back in 1969. But since the cool conceptual stuff is so passively developed, it’s hard to care that much.

There’s a brief moment in Celeritas where the honchos at NASA imply that Paul may be connected to the Soviets somehow. That there’s more going on here than meets the eye. I was like FINALLY! We’re exploring this cool concept! But that thread is dropped as soon as it’s raised, and we’re stuck again with more hang-dog looks between Paul and Norman as they reconcile Maggie choosing between them.

I give Barrante major props for trying something different here. And as I mentioned before, this script reads unlike other scripts out there. But creating something different is just the beginning. You need to embed a compelling story along with it, preferably one with those storytelling tenets (GSU) that can take an average tale and turn it into a kick-ass one.

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

What I learned: Be careful about running away from your idea. If you have a cool idea, it probably shouldn’t be the B-story. Doing so will definitely make your script more original. But unless you create a hell of an A-story, you’re going to have the reader wondering why you aren’t focusing on the coolest part of your premise.

Could is be? Did someone just write American Psycho with a 13 year-old girl?

Genre: Thriller
Premise: 13-year-old Emily Derringer seems like the perfect girl. But she’s not. She’s a serial killer known as “The Misfit Butcher.”
About: Another high-ranking Black List script from last year. Chris Thomas Devlin is one of the newer writers to make the list. This is his breakthrough script!
Writer: Chris Thomas Devlin
Details: 94 pages

Like I always say, one of the best ways to get noticed is to take a common genre or idea and come at it from a fresh angle. That’s exactly what Devlin’s done. He’s taken the serial killer genre and infused it with the most unlikely of killers – a 13 year old girl.

Herein lies the challenge with doing something new. When you’re looking for things that haven’t been done, you’re likely to find that there’s a reason they haven’t been done. Making a 13 year-old girl a serial killer sounds great in a logline, but practically speaking, has all sorts of challenges.

Serial killers need to be strong to kill their victims, especially if they’re doing it without guns. So now you’re rubbing up against suspension of disbelief, and some people won’t go there with you. I’ll give you an example from the script. At a certain point, there’s a second killer, a man (more on this in the plot breakdown), and Emily “confronts” him in the woods. So you’re saying that a grown killer is confronted by a 13 year-old girl in the woods and he’s not going to kill her right then and there?

There are ways around this. You can take on a more absurdist tone, a wink-wink understanding with the audience that, yeah, we both know this wouldn’t happen in real life. But let’s have fun with it anyway.

That leads to its own set of challenges. The further into the absurdist universe you go, the less clear it is what the rules are. And without rules, it’s hard to know what the audience will and won’t buy into.

All of this is a long way of saying, I wanted to see how Devlin tackled this unique premise. Let’s check it out.

Emily Derringer is a perfectionist. When she kills someone, she wants it done right. Killing is an art. And if it’s messy or lazy, it sheds a bad light on the person responsible. Therefore, our 13 year-old protagonist makes sure that everybody she kills is killed with respect.

After taking out the local priest, Emily preps for a killing vacation, that is until she attends the first day of school and runs into former best friend turned mega-bitch Pepper Devonshire. Just a few cunty words from Pepper and Emily decides she’s going to be next.

But then a problem arises. Emily’s new milk man, Garret Bluestone, kills the local soda shop owner. Nobody else knows this, of course. But Emily is a trained killer, and therefore recognizes others with the affliction. And Emily is pissed because Garret is sloppy. If people mix up his work with hers, it’ll ruin everything she’s worked so hard for.

She confronts Garret, tells him if he does it again, there’s going to be problems, and goes on her way. Meanwhile, Emily starts planning the school Halloween party with her favorite teacher, Mr. Goodwin. But things turn sour when he also pulls in, duh-duh-duh-duhhhhhhh – Pepper Devonshire!

Emily decides to use the time to plan Pepper’s murder. However, a strange thing happens as their meetings go on. Emily and Pepper begin to mend their broken friendship. The question is, will they be able to mend it entirely before Emily decides to kill her?

The Wretched Emily Derringer was pretty good.

There’s a lot for screenwriters to take away from the script, especially if you’re writing a serial killer movie yourself.

For starters, serial killer protagonists only work when you make their plight sympathetic ON SOME LEVEL. And there are some easy ways to do that. For starters, make sure the victims deserve it. All we need to see is a slimy priest who’s trying to snare little Emily off the street before we’re rooting for her to take him out.

We also have the lesser known “voice over” technique. Voice overs are tricky to execute. But they work well when your main character is a serial killer, since they put us inside their head. If our hero seems like a good person and she makes good cases for killing people, we’ll be on board.

Without the voice over, there’s a detachment there. We’ll never feel as close or sympathetic towards them as we would if we’re listening to their reasoning.

Bonus points if you can motivate the voice over. Sure, you could just place us in their mind. But it always feels more natural if it’s motivated. For example, lots of young girls write in diaries. So it makes sense that Emily has a diary. And her musings in said diary are where we get our voice over.

Another lesson we can take away from Emily Derringer is the idea of CONCEPT EVOLUTION. One of your jobs as a writer is to evolve your concept. If your concept stays the same the whole way through the script, it’s likely to be boring.

So here, the concept is a 13 year old girl who’s a serial killer. We could play that out from page 1 to 100 and have an okay story (focusing solely on Emily’s obsession with killing Pepper). The problem with that is, readers get ahead of you. You’re not evolving the concept so there’s nothing new to look forward to.

What Devlin does is he brings in Garret Bluestone – A SECOND KILLER. Now, a story we thought we had a handle on, takes an entirely unpredictable turn. We’re not sure where things are going to go. And, of course, that’s exactly why we keep reading.

The only thing I didn’t like about the plotting was the lack of a detective. One of the easiest ways to create tension in a story where your hero is the killer (or has killed someone in any capacity – by accident or otherwise) is to have someone on their trail. That way, the whole time we’re thinking, “Oh no, they’re catching up to Emily! Will they figure out it’s her?” It’s exciting.

And, actually, the thin page count here tells me that’s exactly what was missing. This is 95 pages but could’ve easily been 110. Those extra 15 pages are your detective storyline.

I don’t know if this is going to become a movie. It’s a tough sell to say the least. They have to play it really absurd and get a director who’s a complete weirdo. Because if this is played anywhere close to straight, people are going to be scratching their heads.

With that said, it’s the perfect type of script to get you noticed. And that mission was accomplished, since this made the Black List. Sometimes, it’s about showing you’re a unique writer, not writing the perfect Hollywood screenplay. Whatever gets you through the door, right?

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

What I learned: Your premise starts as a baby. It’s your job to help it grow. If it stays the same the whole way through, the audience will get bored. This advice isn’t just for your main plot. It’s for your subplots as well. Make sure your plot elements are changing and growing into the “adult” version of the ideas. Bringing in a second serial killer was exactly what this script needed to grow into an “adult” version of the concept. Without that evolution, I fear the script would’ve been too thin.

Genre: Drama?
Premise: After her daughter is brutally raped and killed, a woman living in a small town erects three billboards that ask the local police chief why he’s not doing anything to solve the murder.
About: This script was written and will be directed by Martin McDonagh, who famously wrote and directed, In Bruges. I’m one of the few people who didn’t connect with In Bruges (hey, I couldn’t understand half the things coming out of Colin Farrel’s mouth!). Nor did I like his later film, Seven Psychopaths. So it shouldn’t be a surprise that today’s entry into the McDonagh film club left me disappointed. You may be asking, “Carson, if you hated those films, why did you read this one?” I didn’t know it was written by McDonagh when I read it. I avoid knowing the writer whenever possible for this very reason. I don’t want to go in with any prior bias. The film has a great cast with Peter Dinklage, Woody Harrelson, Sam Rockwell, John Hawkes, and Frances McDormand. I had assumed the odd premise had to have been based on a real life story. But keeping up the strange vibe of Three Billboards, it’s complete fiction.
Writer: Martin McDonagh
Details: 102 pages

Today’s script was written by someone it feels like has never written a script before. Now I know that’s not true. Because I can look on IMDB and see that he’s written other screenplays, one of them beloved by many. But it still feels that way.

This screenplay makes so many frustrating choices, goes against the grain so many times, that it stops existing as a screenplay, and teeters on the edge of becoming some giant inside joke, or a piece of performance art whose purpose will be revealed many years from now.

It sure makes for an unexpected read. And you guys have heard me say many times that that’s a good thing. Except when you make so many strange choices, that the story stops having a point. That’s what frustrated me most about Three Billboards. I kept wondering what the point was. I thought I’d get some answers by the end. But even then, this baffling monstrosity has you asking why the hell you just wasted two hours of your life on it.

Mildred Hayes is a mean bitch. I suppose losing your daughter to a rape-murder will do that to you. But you get the feeling that Mildred was a horrible person long before that happened.

With that said, she’s a woman who takes action. And as nine months have passed since her daughter was raped and murdered, and the local police haven’t done anything about it, Mildred decides to buy three billboards for the month which she uses to ask the police, “Why haven’t you done anything about the people who raped and murdered my daughter?” (in so many words).

Those police are beloved Chief Bill Willoughy, and racist cop Officer Dixon. Why do we have a racist cop when this movie’s central concept has nothing to do with race? One of the many strange choices that you have to get used to while reading “Three Billboards.”

Anyway, these billboards were put up to put pressure on the police to figure out what happened to Mildred’s daughter. But do you think we actually follow that storyline? No. Since this script reads like it was written on drugs, the billboards inspire NOBODY to do anything about the investigation. That’s right. Not a single second is spent by anyone to look more into the case after the erection of the billboards.

Instead, Bill Willoughy dies of cancer (WHAT??????), a new black chief takes his place (remember, race has nothing to do with the concept here, yet race keeps getting brought up), and a lot of locals take pot shots at Mildred for stirring up trouble with the billboards.

SPOILER ALERT. All of this leads to… NOTHING. At the end of the movie, we’re no closer to solving the crime than we were at the beginning. In fact, Mildred instead decides to kill some random dude who raped someone in Iraq. Cause, yeah, that makes sense.

All I wanted with Three Billboards was SOME kind of connective tissue. I wanted any two parts of the story to come together in a cohesive manner. For example, this weird subplot of making the deputy a racist. Race is a non-factor in Mildred’s death. So why have a subplot about it? Remember what we said yesterday in the great “Storyville?” If the subplot has nothing to do with the main plot, DON’T INCLUDE IT.

If Mildred believed that a black man had raped and killed her daughter, now we at least have SOME connective tissue to tie that into Dixon’s racism. But nope. Dixon’s racism stands off on its own island, leaving us to question its inclusion the entire running time.

Or what about the concept itself. There’s something empty and boring about a woman putting up billboards to remind the police to look into something. Hey Mildred. Ever hear of e-mail? I heard it’s a lot cheaper. Had Mildred heard that the police were covering something up? And her billboards implied that? NOW YOU HAVE A FUCKING STORY!!!! But we don’t get anything even resembling a compelling setup like that. Just a glorified flier telling the cops to spend a few more hours a week on her daughter’s investigation.

I guess the argument for this story’s existence is that it’s less about the murder and more about grief and the uncontrollable feelings that come with being the surviving mother of a rape victim. But here’s the problem with that. If you set up a murder at the beginning of your story, and you build your concept around the idea that a mother wants answers regarding that murder, the audience is going to want to find out who the murderer is!!! If you don’t bother, then, investigating the case, don’t you think you’re pulling a bait and switch on us?

It’d be like in Silence of the Lambs, if they set up Buffalo Bill kidnapping this woman, and then focused the story on corruption in the FBI. We never went after Buffalo Bill. We just watched Clarice deal with bureaucratic red tape inside her division. That’s what the setup and execution of Three Billboards felt like.

If the script has a saving grace, it’s that it’s an actors wet dream. Whoever plays Mildred gets to act like a crazy lunatic bitch for 2 hours, which should surely earn then an Oscar nom. Someone gets to play a racist cop when racist cops are all the rage in the news. And every character seems to have a larger backstory, some legitimate depth.

But when your hero is the least sympathetic person in the script and the villain is the most sympathetic, it leaves the audience utterly confused about what and who they’re supposed to root for.

To top it all off, Three Billboards has an ending that is so shamelessly anti-mainstream, it’s begging you to hang a “keeping it real” gold medal around its neck as you walk out the theater. I’ll be surprised if anyone in the theater makes it that far though.

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

What I learned: Making your hero unsympathetic and your villain sympathetic will certainly win you style points with the film school crowd. But assuming you aren’t a director with the ability to get a film made, this is the fastest way to make your script unsaleable to every single producer in town.