Search Results for: F word
I get questions from writers all the time on things as varied as how to make a serial killer likable to how to end writer’s block. And what I’ve found is that all of these questions are stupid, just like the people who ask them.
I’m kidding! There’s no such thing as a stupid question. Most of the time at least. One of the things I’ve been asked about a lot lately is backstory. Now backstory, as most screenwriters know, is a bad word. We’ve all read or watched that mind-numbing scene where an unprompted character decides that he just has to tell the supporting character how daddy touched him when he was 19.
Backstory is the ugly cousin of exposition, a kid who’s already ugly as it is. And since exposition is often boring, the rule of thumb is to only include it when you absolutely have to. You want to extend that rule over to backstory. It is likewise evil, and therefore to be treated like a pimple on prom night. It MUST be eliminated.
I’ve found, by and large, that the longer screenwriters write, the less backstory they include. There are very successful writers, in fact, who believe that you don’t need any backstory at all. Since a movie takes place in the present, anything in the past is irrelevant.
And someone might argue, “But how can we really get to know a character if we know nothing about their past?” And Backstory Hater would reply, “The only tool you need to reveal character is choice.”
We figure out who people are by the choices they make. This is true in real life just like it is in the movies. If you’re on a first date and an elderly woman falls down in front of you, the choice your date makes is going to tell you a lot about them. If they walk around the woman, we know they’re an asshole. If they jump into action to help her, we know they’re good.
To these veterans, the idea is to create dozens of choices (small and large) throughout the script that your main character will encounter, and to tell us who he/she is through those choices. A small choice might be if your protagonist is given the option to order salad or a one pound greasy cheeseburger. Whichever one he chooses will tell us a lot about him. Ditto if he opens the door for his date or waits for her to open it while he texts away on his phone. Ditto if he chooses to drink 8 martinis or just one.
I tend to agree with Backstory Hater on this approach. I think backstory is troublesome even in the best case scenarios. The revelation of it rarely feels natural and any time we move into the past, we’re halting the present.
So are you telling us never to use backstory, Carson? Like, ever? Can we still visit our childhood friends? Reminisce about our first kiss?
No, you can’t do those things. I forbid it. But you can use backstory in one key instance: When defining what led your main character to inherit their FATAL FLAW.
A reminder on “fatal flaws.” This is the internal “flaw” that holds your character back from being whole. Even if they succeed at obtaining their goal (“Deliver R2-D2 to the Resistance to destroy the Death Star”), they will still have failed if they haven’t overcome the flaw within themselves. Why? Because there’s still imbalance within them. They’re the same person – still unhappy. Luke Skywalker’s flaw was that he didn’t believe in himself. He finally did in the end, which is what allowed him to destroy the Death Star and be happy.
Once you know your character’s flaw, you can target the specific moment from their past (their backstory) that brought it about. So in Good Will Hunting, Will Hunting’s flaw is his inability to let others in. Now that we know that, we can ask ourselves, “What happened when he was younger that stopped him from letting people in?” Well, his father used to beat him regularly. That had some impact. So that’s potentially something we could bring up in the story (which they did).
It doesn’t do the script any good if your hero babbles on about his former life as a male stripper if stripping has nothing to do with what he’s struggling with now. It’s just noise and can actually work against you, as your reader will try to find meaning and importance in a detail that contains neither. Now if your main character’s flaw is that he’s sexually promiscuous and it’s ruining his life, then maybe that stripper backstory becomes relevant.
So to summarize, avoid backstory at all costs. Try to tell us who your character is through their choices instead. But if you must include backstory, only include the details that inform your character’s fatal flaw. Since character transformation is one of the keys to emotionally engaging your reader, information about why your character is suffering from his flaw can strengthen our understanding of that transformation.
And with that, I’ll leave you with a few other tips on how to convey backstory in your script. If you must do it, do it right!
1) Have your character be forced into telling their backstory – If your character is forced into talking about their past, we’re more focused on them being forced than we are on the artificiality of a character discussing their backstory. If your character is being tortured, for example, and asked about his past, we’re not thinking, “Oh, backstory moment!” We’re hoping the poor guy lives.
2) Always keep backstory as short as possible – Just like exposition. Try to disseminate backstory in bite-sized nuggets. Instead of Indiana Jones going on a one-page monologue about the time he was almost killed by a snake, we see him react to a snake in the plane and scream, “I hate snakes.” That’s it!
3) Backstory-as-mystery is often more powerful than literal-backstory – You don’t have to tell us everything. You can hint at things. And this is actually more powerful because it forces the audience to fill in the gaps themselves. Remember in Alien when we saw that giant stone structure of an alien manning some kind of gun/telescope? Our minds were racing trying to figure that out. How boring would that have been if one of the characters knew what it was and explained it in detail to us?
4) Show your backstory. Don’t tell your backstory – The old show-don’t-tell movie rule is multiplied ten-fold when it comes to backstory. It’s always more powerful if you show us. In Bridesmaids, our two main characters walk past our heroine’s failed cupcake shop. There was tons of backstory in that one image.
5) Have others bring up backstory, not your hero – The less your hero is talking about their own backstory, the better. Always think of a way where someone else brings it up. This is why the “resume” scene works so well in movies. It’s an easy way for the interviewer to read off your hero’s backstory without the viewer getting suspicious.
6) Some genres are more accepting of backstory than others – Backstory doesn’t work well inside the faster-moving genres like Thriller and Action. But in a slower drama, it’s expected that some backstory will be offered.
7) A good place to include backstory is the first scene – The biggest problem with backstory is that it INTERRUPTS the present story. Therefore, if you give us a flashback before your present-day story’s begun, you’re not interrupting anything. This is why you see so many movies start with flashbacks and then cut to: “15 years later.” If you’re going to do this however, cover ALL of your backstory in that single scene. Don’t keep giving it to us 70 minutes later.
8) If you can find a way to make backstory entertaining, you now have super powers and all bets are off – This is what the pros do. They’ve figured out all the tricks to hide backstory inside of entertainment. And if you can do that, none of these rules matter because you’ve learned to make backstory just as entertaining as present story. Look at the scene where Clarice goes down to talk to Hannibal Lecter for the first time in “Silence of the Lambs.” Remember the moment when they show Clarice a picture of one of Hannibal’s victims? That’s a writer giving us Hannibal Lecter’s backstory. But we’re so focused on the anticipation of seeing this monster that we never consider for a moment that the writer is doing this. Master this technique and you will be unstoppable!
Genre: Biopic
Premise: Chronicles the early life of L. Frank Baum, the author of “The Wizard of Oz.”
About: Unknown scribe Josh Golden hit the kind of jackpot that can turn a black and white world into a color one. He was a finalist in the Nicholl Screenplay Competition (with this script), then sold it to New Line. He’s even got mega-producer Beau Flynn (San Andreas, Rampage, Requiem for a Dream) producing the movie. The script hit the trifecta when it landed on last year’s Black List, grabbing up 11 votes. Things could not be more yellow brick golden for Josh Golden.
Writer: Josh Golden
Details: 113 pages
I had to give up on a few Black List scripts before I got to this one. I don’t know what’s going on with the current state of specs but, sheesh, I’m struggling to find good material in this jungle.
It started with Tau, which was torture porn. I don’t know if movies about sexually torturing women are going to work in this day and age. The feminist movement has pretty much put the kibosh on that. Not to mention, the genre feels dated, like something you’d find on an abandoned Eli Roth hard drive.
From there I went to Professor Psghetti, about a children’s show host who hates children. This one barely crept onto the Black List. I love the irony of the premise but there are 5-6 of these scripts out there already. This is why it’s a good idea to track the industry. While an idea may not be well-known to the masses, it might be very well-known to all the agents in town.
Then I read Erin’s Voice, about a deaf man who discovers that he can hear his local barista (and only her). I went into this one thinking it was a comedy all the way, but everything was being played straight. I admired that for awhile – that it was different – until I hit Act 2 and realized I had no idea what kind of movie the writer was going for. A straight-forward drama about a guy who can magically hear his barista? Know your genre. Know what kind of movie you’re writing. Calgon, take me away.
That led me to “Oz.” I figured how bad could a biopic about the guy who created “The Wizard of Oz” be? Let’s find out!
The unfortunately named Lyman Frank Baum is a writer. But unlike today, in 1898, writing didn’t exactly pay the bills (that’s sarcasm if you couldn’t tell). His wife, Maud, is bummed that Frank’s giving up on writing so easily, but she’s pumped to start a family, so bye-bye dreams.
This sends Frank and Maud off to the booming town of Aberdeen, South Dakota, where Frank hopes to open a party store and take advantage of the new money in town. While working at the store, Frank helps tend to his niece, Dorothy, a beautiful young girl who’s beset by a crippling illness.
Because Dorothy isn’t healthy enough to go outside, Frank brings the outside to her, entertaining her with imaginative tales of far-off worlds where anything is possible. When Maud overhears Frank tell these amazing stories, she reminds him just how talented he is.
If he could, say, turn all of those stories into a book, he could entertain millions. But Frank doesn’t believe he’s got it, and when the shop fails, he becomes a travelling salesman, visiting the entire Midwest, selling fine China.
It isn’t until Dorothy’s health goes into a tailspin that Frank finally gives his book a shot. Using her as inspiration, he creates one of the most imaginative pieces of fiction of all time, The Wizard of Oz.
So there’s a cynical side of me that looks at this and says… haven’t we seen this before?
In Saving Mr. Banks? In Seuss? In The Muppet Man? In Finding Neverland?
Haven’t we been down this yellow brick road already?
Before I can get too upset about it, I must remind myself that the Author-Biopic is an official genre now. It’s not something where they made two of them and the world moved on. These are films that writers are going to keep writing.
Once you accept that, Road to Oz, like a well-toasted munchkin, is a little easier to digest. But may I offer an observation amidst this realization?
Once something becomes a “thing,” executing the most straight-forward version of that “thing” is no longer an option.
There was a time, long ago, where the only way you could get cheese was from a block. If you were in the cheese business, you were providing it in block form. So let’s say you wanted to break into the cheese business at that time. What do you think your chances would’ve been had you delivered your cheese in a block, JUST LIKE EVERYONE ELSE?
Maybe if your cheese was the greatest cheese in the land, you would’ve succeeded. But chances are it wouldn’t have been. In which case, your business would’ve died a miserable cheesy death.
However, what if you came up with the idea to SLICE the cheese? To offer it up in SLICES form? You would’ve found a new angle into the cheese market. Or maybe you lived in Wisconsin and thought to yourself, “Boy, cheese would be so much better in ball form.” So you created cheese balls. Again, you were FINDING A NEW ANGLE into this market.
It’s the same thing with movie genres. Even sub-genres. Everyone is delivering a cheese block. You need to give them cheese sticks. “Road to Oz” isn’t a bad script. But the execution is the exact same execution that all the author-biopics are using. Wikipedia timeline. Brief flashes into imaginative dream sequences. Clever nods to the writer’s most famous creations. The End.
And that’s hard to digest because The Wizard of Oz was one of the most imaginative pieces of fiction ever written. It became what it is because Baum took major chances. We don’t see that kind of bravery here. And I don’t know if a screenplay about Baum’s life should be held to that expectation or not, but we should at least see some imagination, right?
And it’s the obsession with incorporating these clever nods to the writer’s creations that really hurts these scripts (for example – a group of monkeys all of a sudden become FLYING MONKEYS in Frank’s imagination).
Because that’s not what these scripts should be about. They need to be about a PROBLEM that’s keeping the protagonist from achieving his life goal. Look at the script, Dalton Trumbo, which I reviewed a few weeks back. In that script, the PROBLEM is Trumbo getting blacklisted. There’s the obstacle that our hero must overcome.
I’m not sure what the problem is in this screenplay. I suppose it’s that Frank doesn’t believe in himself enough to write his book? But that was never infused into the story in any meaningful way. We’d just occasionally hear somebody – usually Frank’s wife – say, “You’re so talented. You should be writing your book.”
For a story to work, the problem must BLOCK THE CHARACTER from success. And it must be clearly identified so that we, the audience, know what our hero is fighting against, what he must overcome. If we don’t know what a character must overcome, how can we invest ourselves in their story? We’re not even sure what they’re trying to do!
One of my favorite screenplays of the year was another biopic, Joy. Joy’s PROBLEM was clear. It was this mop she invented. She couldn’t figure it out. No one would buy it. It became her obsession. So we wanted to see her conquer that mop. That was the PROBLEM that propelled our hero and our story.
Why didn’t we have that here?
I mean hell, The Wizard of Oz had one of the clearest problems of any movie ever. Dorothy needed to get back home. Why not use that as inspiration for “Road to Oz?” Frank was a travelling salesman. Why not go full-Kaufman and have him get lost in some far-off land from which he needs to find his way home? The Tim Burton version of the story. At least then it would feel unique.
I should finish this up by reminding everyone I’m not exactly in tune with why people see biopics. I think folks just want to see how someone got their inspiration, particularly if it takes them to another world (like 1898). And I should respect that it doesn’t have to be more complicated than that.
But the storytelling purist in me wants conflict. It wants problems that the main character must overcome. And the problems in Frank’s life – at least this version of his life – feel too lightweight. For that reason, I couldn’t get over this rainbow.
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Don’t think that because you’re not writing Die Hard, you don’t need a PROBLEM for your main character to overcome. You need PROBLEMS in character-driven movies just like you need them in high-concept movies. I’d argue that the problem is the movie. If you don’t have that clear DOMINANT OBSTACLE in the way, it’s difficult for your story to gain traction, since we’re never clear what it is our main character is trying to do. Again, in Dalton Trumbo, another writer-biopic, the problem is clear: He’s been blacklisted. That gives the movie form, it gives it clarity. It allows us to participate and understand what our main character must defeat.
What I learned 2: Never rest your author-biopic on gimmicky nods to the writer’s famous creations. In other words, if you’re writing a biopic about Steven Spielberg, don’t think that you can dress him up as a T-Rex for Halloween, give him a dog named “Jaws,” have a giant boulder nearly crush him at summer camp, and have his family see a flying saucer at Thanksgiving dinner, and call it a day. Those clever nods should be the icing on your story. They should never be the cake. The cake should be the PROBLEM that your protagonist must overcome (see above).
Get Your Script Reviewed On Scriptshadow!: To submit your script for an Amateur Review, send in a PDF of your script, along with the title, genre, logline, and finally, something interesting about yourself and/or your script that you’d like us to post along with the script if reviewed. Use my submission address please: Carsonreeves3@gmail.com. Remember that your script will be posted. If you’re nervous about the effects of a bad review, feel free to use an alias name and/or title. It’s a good idea to resubmit every couple of weeks so your submission stays near the top.
Genre: Comedy
Premise (from writer): Two brothers-in-law who hate each other must get along when their wives become pregnant and the couples are forced to move in together to save money before the babies arrive.
Why You Should Read (from writer): Having this kid is expensive. More than I even calculated for. And believe me, I calculated. I wonder if there is a simple solution to cut costs and release the worry and anxiety I feel about making all this work. My wife suggested moving in with her sister and her husband during the pregnancy. Smart. But I don’t care for that guy. Can’t stand going to dinner with him. Living with him for nine months? Nah. But my wife. My wife is persistent and she makes a good case. What if we all moved in? What if…
Writer: Emmitt Webb
Details: 104 pages
So I’ve come across “Pregnant Pals” a few times when picking Amateur Offerings scripts, and I’ve always passed over it. Why? To be honest, it felt contrived. I have trouble getting on board with the idea that two people who hate each other’s guts would willingly move in together. Even if you bring the wives into the equation. What wife, wanting her first pregnancy to go as smooth as possible, would bring into her home two warring husbands? It doesn’t feel realistic.
With that said, it’s a comedy. And comedies don’t have to make as much sense as other genres. So when Pregnant Pals won a spot in Amateur Offerings via “Random Picks” Week and then edged past the competition on a day when most people were focused on finishing their SS250 scripts before the deadline, I threw my preconceived notions to the curb and put my hope in the power of pregnancy.
So the plot is pretty much identical to the logline. On the one side we have Pete and Katie Gurley. Pete’s a super-confident guy who’s pumped that he just got his wife pregnant. On the other side we have Langford and Darla Winston. Langford’s a wet blanket serious type. And Darla is Katie’s sister. It just so happens that on the very same day, Langford got Darla pregnant.
What could be better than two sisters with the same due date, right?
Well, there’s a problem. Pete and Langford hate each other. Like more than Donald Trump and Mexico hate each other. And that wouldn’t be a problem except for that Langford just ran out of money, which means he can’t support his family.
Darla hints about their financial woes to Katie, and the next thing you know, Katie asks if they’d like to live with her and Pete during their pregnancy. Pete and Langford are strongly opposed to this, but when the wives insist on it, they have no choice. What follows is 9 months of a lot of anger, conflict, frustration, and, of course, shenanigans.
It took me awhile to understand what kind of movie I was reading here. At around page 40, I got it. This is Stepbrothers, the unofficial sequel. And when you look at it that way, you can kind of see it working. Because Stepbrothers wasn’t a movie that really worked on paper. It was an overly simplistic idea that got the perfect actors to play the two main parts.
So if this was cast well, maybe the things I’m about to say don’t matter as much. But I always subscribe to the theory, “Fulfill the potential of your script yourself. Don’t hope others see the potential and fulfill it for you.” To that end, there are some issues that need to be addressed here.
Let’s start with the first two scenes in the script. Both scenes are sex scenes between our main couples where the sisters get pregnant. In the first scene, Pete looks for positive reinforcement from Katie after the sex. It’s a chipper fun scene. I don’t have any complaints. However, in the very next scene, after Langford and Darla finish their sex, Langford ALSO looks for reinforcement about his performance.
Now their approach in seeking reinforcement is different, but this is the key moment in the story where you want to establish just how different your two main characters are. These are the characters who are going to be driving the conflict throughout the screenplay. By showing them essentially acting the same way, you’re telling the reader they’re similar. When you’re writing comedies, this moment needs to show how extreme the differences are between the characters.
The next issue was dialogue. I never got the sense that Emmitt obsessed over the dialogue. Partly because the jokes weren’t as clever as they could be, and partly because a lot of lines contained mistakes. Take this exchange between Pete and Katie. In it, Pete doesn’t want to have dinner with Langston and Darla: “I’ll give you one thousand dollars if I don’t have to attend tonight,” Pete pleads. Katie replies: “You don’t have one thousand dollars to bet.” This exchange doesn’t make sense. Pete never brought up betting. He said he’d GIVE Katie a thousand dollars. It’s a small thing but it’s a red flag. As a reader, I’m now, in the back of my mind, wondering if the writer has the chops to write good dialogue.
Later in the screenplay, there’s a scene where Katie forces Pete to text Langford. Langford gets the text, but doesn’t know who it is, so he asks. Pete writes back: “It’s Pete.” “Who?” Langford replies. “You mean whom?” Pete shoots back. The problem with this exchange isn’t the exchange itself. It’s that Emmitt would constantly misuse “your” and “you’re” throughout the screenplay. How can I trust characters correcting characters’ grammar when the writer himself can’t use the correct words?
And then there are basic lines of dialogue, like, “I don’t see what’s your issue with him,” which literally reads out as, “I don’t see what is your issue with him.” By itself, a reader can forgive this. When it’s surrounded by other dialogue issues, however, it becomes one more piece to add to the “Can I start skimming now?” puzzle.
And this is a script built around dialogue. It’s going for that quippy rom-com or bro-com fire-back-and-forth dialogue. In these types of scripts, you can be a little weak in the concept department. You can be a little weak in the plotting department. But the one area you can’t be weak in is the dialogue department. That department is your star. Under that reality, lines like, “I don’t see what is your issue with him” become script-killers.
If I were giving notes on this as an executive hoping to get the studio excited about the project, I’d come up with a setup that was much less convoluted. Have Pete and Katie living the dream. They just bought a new house, they’re successful, they got pregnant. They’re at the pinnacle of their lives. Use the first few scenes to establish that.
Scene four, the doorbell rings. It’s Katie’s long-lost estranged sister and her deadbeat boyfriend/husband (he refuses to use “labels”). They ran out of money. This is the only place they had to come to. Katie can’t turn her sister away. Of course she lets them stay. Of course, one week turns into two, two to four, etc.
In this new version, it’s not just Pete and Langford who have issues with each other (they’re from two completely different worlds), but also Katie and her sister, who need to resolve some life-long issues. They’re also both pregnant, which complicates matters. But the experience ends up bonding them, and everyone leaves happy.
Doing it this way would also allow you to do more with the story. One of the problems with the script now is that the husbands already hate each other when they move in. So there aren’t a whole lot of places to go with that. If the husbands didn’t even know each other, then the script starts off with them trying to make it work, realizing they come from two different worlds, going to outright hatred, eventually finding common ground, and finally becoming friends. In other words, there’s more of an ARC to the storyline, which tends to be more pleasing from a storytelling perspective.
But the point is, I think the setup here is more complicated than it needs to be. Simplify it. The great thing about Step-Brothers is how invisible the setup is. Right now, the setup for Pregnant Pals is one of the most convoluted I’ve seen all year! And like I always say: Convoluted is evil. Destroy all convolutedness!
Script link: Pregnant Pals
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: I find that writers needlessly overcomplicate concepts or plots to the point where they’re so convoluted, they don’t make sense. Always take a step back and look for ways to simplify the concept. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about screenwriting over the years, it’s that the simplest solution is usually the best one.
I’ve talked about this scene on the site before, but no matter how many times I write about it, I can’t get it out of my mind. To me, it represents everything that was wrong with the two Matrix sequels and every bad writing choice that could have possibly been made in a single scene. So I wanted you to watch the scene for yourself, then I’ll break down everything that’s wrong with it (there’s a lot) so that you never make the same mistakes in your work. Here we go. Are you ready? (I apologize for the badly synced Youtube video but it’s the only one I could find).
1) We don’t have any idea who this other character is – Outside of some vague reference of this old dude being important to the city, we have no idea who he is. If we know zero about a character in a scene, we’re probably not going to give a shit about what he says. And let me make clear that the main reason we don’t know who he is is because the Wachowskis do a terrible (lazy) job of setting him up. Set up your characters clearly so we know and understand what they’re about.
2) There is ZERO conflict in the scene – Outside of a couple of minor misunderstandings, this may be the most conflict-free scene ever written. It is so devoid of any drama that it is the embodiment of boredom. Always try to include conflict in every scene!
3) Philosophizing – This one gets me in trouble but I’ll continue to spread its message. Don’t have your characters philosophizing about things. It’s just boring to listen to unless you have an extremely unique view of the world and you’re a borderline genius with insight into things that nobody’s ever thought of before. Which neither of these two have. (While I didn’t like True Detective, I admit that Rust Cohle’s philosophizing would fall under the ‘good’ category)
4) Characters need goals in scenes – Scenes always work better when every character in the scene is trying to get something (or one’s trying to get, and the other’s trying to resist). Neither of these two characters are trying to get anything. They’re just leisurely talking about their shitty living arrangements. Compare this scene to the one in the original Matrix where Agent Smith philosophizes about how humans are a virus. Yes, I said “philosophizing.” Something I just told you not to do. Ah, but the big difference? AGENT SMITH WANTED SOMETHING (A GOAL) FROM MORPHEUS. He wanted the codes. He was trying to break him down. So the philosophizing a) was placed before an important moment and therefore we were willing to wait for that moment, and b) had a plot purpose. The closest thing to a goal in this scene is that Boring Old Guy likes water.
5) Zero suspense – It’s as if The Wachowskis forgot what suspense is in this movie. Look at the scene from the original film where Neo is going to see the Oracle. In that scene, we have what could be construed as a ‘boring” scene when Neo is stuck in a room with a bunch of child prodigies. The difference there was that the Oracle had been built up as this extremely important character who was going to give us incredibly important information (tell Neo whether he was “The One” or not). When you build something up that’s going to be anticipated by the audience (code word: suspense), then you can slip in exposition and philosophizing and backstory in the meantime, due to us being so eager to see what you promised us. When you don’t promise us anything, however, you get scenes like this, that just sit there.
6) Characters standing around – Characters standing or sitting around is usually the most boring way to present a scene possible and should be avoided at all costs. Instead, have your characters chatting on their way to something important – a goal they’re trying to achieve. If they’re not walking somewhere, have it so one of the characters has to be somewhere soon, and therefore must leave at any moment (which is the perfect segue into our next problem).
7) No scene agitator – There’s nothing agitating this scene. It sits there, unimpeded, allowed to be its boring self. Get someone out there (an “agitator”) that says they need Neo right now, so we feel a sense of tension in the scene, that they must finish this talk quickly. This will also create suspense, as the audience will be wondering, “Ooh, why is Neo being called away?”
8) Sloppily executed – Notice how we go from one boring standing talking scene TO ANOTHER ONE WITH THE EXACT SAME CHARACTERS. Your job as a screenwriter is to make things as seamless as possible. If they wanted Neo and this Councilor guy to look out at the inner workings of the city, for God’s sake, start them there instead of creating this awkward, “Let’s go take a look at the inner workings of the city, are you up for it?” transition moment. I mean would it have been that hard to start with Neo already on the lower level overlooking the city?
9) Dialogue that tells us things WE ALREADY KNOW – “These machines are keeping us alive while other machines are trying to kill us.” Jeez, Captain Duh, thanks for pointing that out. In general, never repeat things the audience already knows unless it’s a really important plot point that they might forget otherwise.
10) Scene didn’t need to exist in the first place – This is the biggest faux pas of them all. You should only include a scene if it pushes the story forward. How does this scene get our characters any closer to defeating the agents or preparing for the invasion of their city? It doesn’t. And therefore, it should’ve never been included.
Is “Billions” Showtime’s answer to “House of Cards?” It sure seems that way. So how does it stack up? Should Frank Underwood be worried?
Genre: TV Pilot/Drama
Premise: A New York City Attorney attempts to take down one of the richest and most beloved men in New York.
About: Billions has been building buzz for a few months now in anticipation of its late year launch on Showtime, which is quietly becoming a force in an increasingly competitive TV landscape. With Homeland, Ray Donovan, The Affair, and Masters of Sex, the longtime cable mainstay is even starting to make HBO sweat. The show has a stellar cast that includes Paul Giamatti, Damian Lewis, and Malin Ackerman. It’s written by Ocean’s 13 writers Brian Koppleman and David Levien, as well as Andrew Ross Sorkin, who’s the co-host of CNBC’s Squawk Box, whatever the hell that is.
Writer: Brian Koppleman & David Levien & Andrew Ross Sorkin
Details: 62 pages – Draft 1.5
So before I get into Billions, I want to share with you a little LA secret. When you come to LA on vacation… THERE’S NOTHING TO DO HERE. Nothing. One of the saddest things I see is tourists wandering around the concrete jungle that is Sunset Boulevard and La Brea, looking for something, ANYTHING to do.
But there’s nothing.
Disney Land? It’s Disney World’s pathetic little brother. The beach? It’s polluted. Famous restaurants? Try New York. Rodeo Drive? See how much fun steps are for more than 30 seconds. There is nowhere to go here and seeing the heartbroken tourists’ faces when they realize this is the case is heartbreaking in itself.
So I’m going to give you somewhere to go. Are you ready? Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles. I don’t know what kind of batter crack concoction they mix into their waffles and chicken, but when you go there, order both, and prepare to have a carnival in your tonsils. There are a few locations. I recommend the one on Pico, as that’s the only one I’ve been to. It’s great. And when you’re finished, just get on a plane and go home. There’s honestly nothing left to do.
And if you want to know what this has to do with Billions, well, if I were at Roscoe’s right now, I’d order a billion waffles. And so would an uncomfortable Paul Giamatti. They’re that good.
I’m not sure Bobby Axelrod would join us though. The 40-something’s 20-something physique seems very anti-waffle. The discipline of not dipping one’s fried chicken in syrup is the same discipline that’s likely made him a billionaire.
Across town (that town being New York City), Chuck Rhodes, the U.S. attorney to the Southern District of New York, is planning Axelrod’s demise. While the office doesn’t have any hard proof, all arrows point to Axelrod doing some not-so-savory financial naughtiness to build his company.
Here’s the problem though. Axelrod is beloved in New York. It’s made very clear that if Chuck goes after him and fails? He’ll be lucky to get a job at Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles on Pico. That’s how these power plays go down. If you go after someone and it doesn’t work out? Pack your bags, baby. And get ready to suck syrup.
And really, there isn’t much that happens in this pilot other than setting up that impending conflict. There’s also an overtly-manufactured storyline where Chuck’s wife works as the in-house psychologist at Axelrod’s company (how convenient for the story!) as well as some periphery players like an SEC lackey who wants Chuck to go after Axelrod and then swoop in and take all the credit. But for the most part, this is one big setup for the fun that will go down in future episodes.
Here’s a nice little tip for a lot of aspiring screenwriters out there. If you’re having trouble coming up with an idea for a movie/show? Or you want to juice up your current script, which feels kind of weak? Look to money. Outside of love, money is the most universally understood thing in the world. A 40 year-old billionaire in New York City understands the value of it. A 5 year-old homeless boy in Somalia understands the value of it.
So if you build a story around money – the need for more of it, the desire to steal it, the problems that come with it – at the very least, you’re going to have the core of something compelling.
And Billions taps into that. What we get from this pilot is that a war that revolves around moola is about to go down. And that’s exciting. I like wars!
But Billions may have forgotten about one of the unwritten rules of screenwriting. And that’s that extremely rich protagonists aren’t sympathetic, aren’t relatable, and are generally disliked. Unless you make them likable in other ways. But our co-protagonist here, Barry Axelrod, starts out the story answering the question: “Chopper’s waiting. We’re gonna be late,” with “How am I late when it’s my fucking chopper.”
Already, I’m not really into this guy. Even when we find out he sends kids to college based on a fund he built after his company was destroyed in September 11, he doesn’t seem happy to do it. In fact, he seems miserable.
In the show that Billions is trying to be, House of Cards, that pilot opens up with our main character, Frank Underwood, getting fucked over. He was promised a prominent position in the White House for his support during the campaign, and when the president won, he went back on his word and discarded Frank.
So even though Frank became a scheming manipulator, we were on his side. We saw these people screw him over. So we wanted him to even the score. It’s very subtle differences in screenplays like this that can have a huge impact on the story.
Another problem with Billions is that it’s very inside-baseball. And I love that they brought in the Squawk Box dude to help with the authenticity of the story. But they go so far with it that, at a certain point, I couldn’t relate to what was happening at all. Big guys with lots of money trying to screw over other guys with lots of money. Who am I siding with here?
The US attorney? He’s kind of a hard-ass dick. So again, that’s one more character I’m not relating to. The one character who sticks out is Dr. Mojo, the psychologist at Axelrod’s company. The character’s written as this female alpha-dog who doesn’t just give her thoughts on feelings, but tells her money-hungry clientele what to buy, what to sell, what to get rid of.
I’d never seen that character before and it reminded me how important it is to look at each character you’ve written and ask, “Am I writing this character the exact same way everyone else is?” Usually when I see a psychologist, she’s calm, soothing, there to bring out exposition from the other character. For once, we got less of “How does that make you feel” and more of “You need to do this, this and this.”
But I think the biggest Billions Blunder is that it doesn’t tap into the one thing that an audience wants out of a show like this – they want the poor to finally take down the rich, the rich who have been taking advantage of the poor for centuries. There are no poor people represented here. Just politicians trying to eliminate Axelrod. And it’s not even because they think what he’s doing is wrong. They just want to use the political clout gained from eliminating him to further their career.
When you add up all these issues to a script that feels drier than a Roscoe’s waffle that’s been left in the sun all day, you get a show with an uncertain future. With that said, I know they’re putting a lot of resources into this show. They really want it to work. So hopefully they’ve figured some of these issues out in the interim.
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Billions failed to answer a critical question all screenwriters need to ask themselves at the beginning of their story. Who is it the audience is going to root for? If you don’t have a clear answer to that question, you’re gonna be in trouble. Because if we have nobody to root for in a story that’s conceivably going to go on for 75-100 hours, we’re probably going to tune out pretty quick. I’ve heard Vince Gilligan talk about how worried he was that nobody would want to root for a guy who made and sold meth. But Walter White’s family needed him. Without that money, they were screwed. So of course we wanted him to succeed. What he was doing, he was doing for a good cause. There’s nothing like that here.