From Seinfeld to Inside Out to A Quiet Place to House of the Dragon, this may be the most mishmashy of Mish-Mash Mondays ever!

Because I watch Seinfeld so much, Youtube always recommends Seinfeld-related content to me.

Yesterday, it recommended me this couple, who had never seen Seinfeld before, watching a video compilation of “all the best Seinfeld moments.” The first scene in the compilation is a famous scene from an early season where Jerry and Elaine pick up a car from a car rental company.

In it, the car rental attendant tells Jerry that the car he reserved isn’t available. The next series of jokes is Jerry pointing out that the whole point of a reservation is that the car remains reserved. “Anybody can just TAKE reservations,” Jerry says.

The couple watching this clip laughed quite a bit because it’s a relatable situation that we all have been through in some form or another.

But then an interesting thing happened. As more “Best Of” Seinfeld scenes continued to play, many from the later seasons, the couple was laughing less and less.

There’s one scene where Jerry and Kramer switch apartments for reasons too elaborate to summarize here, and Jerry starts becoming Kramer (wild and untethered) while Kramer starts becoming Jerry (calm and sarcastic). The scene plays out with Jerry stumbling into “Kramer’s” apartment telling a wild story about what happened to him after staying up all night.

The couple didn’t laugh at all in this scene. Nor did they laugh at the next scene where Jerry and George are trying to figure out how to pull off the hardest move in the male-female relationship dynamic – the roommate switch. One of my all-time favorite episodes by the way.

It was at this point that I realized just how well these new scenes were written and how poorly that first car reservation scene was written.

You’re probably thinking, “Wait, Carson. You got that mixed up. You mean how good the CAR RESERVATION scene was and how weak the OTHER scenes were.” No, you heard me correctly. How good THESE NEW SCENES were. And I know I’m right SPECIFICALLY BECAUSE the couple wasn’t laughing at them.

You see, with good writing, the plot and the characters are so intertwined that if you just dropped into the show (or the movie) and watched whatever scene was next, you wouldn’t be able to enjoy it. At least to the extent that it was meant to be enjoyed.

Because the writers have been carefully setting that scene up through all the other scenes written before it. The scene with Jerry and George pulling off the roommate switch was prefaced by ten scenes setting up the fact that Jerry was going out with a really lame girl who never laughed at his jokes and who he didn’t have any fun with. One day he dropped her off at her apartment and met her roommate and her roommate was the opposite. She was fun and laughed at everything he said. She was his ideal woman. But it didn’t matter because she was his girlfriend’s roommate and, therefore, there was no way for them to be together.

It’s only when you’ve seen Jerry and the girlfriend together a few times and experience their lame dynamic then see how electric it is between Jerry and the other girl that you fully understand this scene where Jerry sits George down to try and figure out if the impossible – the “Roommate Switch” – can be done.

Now, if we go back to that first scene, with the car reservation – that scene was reflective of early Seinfeld episodes, where they would write individual self-contained scenarios that had little-to-no setup. It’s like the writers said, “What’s funny? Oh yeah, when you go to the car reservation place and they don’t keep your reservation.” Then they would write that scene regardless of whatever the plot was.

There was no connective tissue. They just found funny situations and would ram them into wherever there was a hole in the script.

That’s not to say that scene can’t be good or that the car reservation scene wasn’t funny. I was exaggerating when I said it was weak. But a truly good scene rarely works unless you’ve watched everything before it. Because an essential component of good writing is using each scene to build that which you will pay off later.

This is not just true for comedy. It’s true for everything. If you showed your favorite scenes to people who have never seen the movies before, there’s a good chance they won’t think the scene is nearly as amazing as you do. That’s because they don’t have the context you do.

The operative lesson here is, every scene you write should only fully work for those who have watched everything up to that point. If the scene works all by itself, it doesn’t mean the scene is bad. But it definitely could’ve been a lot better.

You know what doesn’t have to be a lot better?

Inside Out.

This is one of those box office anomalies they’ll talk about for centuries to come. Nobody could crack the 100 million dollar mark for six months at the box office, and in just two weeks, one movie has pulled in 350 million. And three-quarters of a billion worldwide!

Usually, any box office assessment is silly Monday Morning quarterbacking. Everybody’s guessing at why *this* did well or *that* did badly. It’s fun but not relevant.

However, when a movie outperforms the market this much, a market that’s flailing, you have to take notice. You have to ask why. I know this itches people the wrong way but the lack of any message-pushing is partly why it’s doing well. The fact that it’s animated means it has the biggest potential audience to pull from. It isn’t like an R-rated flick where you only have access to 60% of moviegoers.

Also, shout out to screenwriting. The first Inside Out had an amazing screenplay. The world-building alone should be taught in film school. I still think it should’ve won the Oscar. That definitely played a part in people eagerly coming back for more.

But outside of that, I don’t know why it’s doing so well. It’s not like it had Nemo or Elsa or Simba or Woody. I doubt anyone even remembers what the main character’s name is. So it’s a bit of a mystery. There’s some people who are going with the old air conditioner theory. It was scorching hot all weekend and everyone wanted air conditioning for two hours.

I don’t know. I *will* watch it when it hits streaming. But it won’t be a theater movie for me.

By the way, this weekend is going to be nuts for content. The 27th is when The Bear Season 3 comes out. Netflix releases Beverly Hills Cop 4 the next day. And A Quiet Place comes out with its second sequel.

And here’s something to keep your eye on. That movie IS NOT being shown to critics. That is a GIANT red flag. I was worried about this movie THE SECOND I read that Death of Robin Hood script. That script was AWFUL. And when I realized that he was the one doing Day One, all my excitement was murdered. Cause those trailers were sooooo good. But, hey, I’m still hoping for the best. And it’s always nice to go into a movie with zero critical analysis clouding your judgment.

Okay, on to House of the Dragon.

To give you some context here, I used to get a lot of e-mails asking me why I never reviewed Game of Thrones episodes. Which was because I stopped watching the show in Season 5. I remember watching 4 episodes in a row where nothing happened. So I was frustrated. It wasn’t that I actively stopped watching it. I just never got back to it.

So I wanted to be on top of things this time around. I wanted to be there at the ground level. However, I’m starting to read some House of the Dragon backlash online. The ratings, supposedly, aren’t that high. I don’t know if I believe that, though. People literally watch stuff 20 different ways these days. There’s no chance they’re able to track views across all platforms/media.

What I’m looking for in episode 2 is some actual CRAFT to the storytelling. It can’t just be exposition exposition exposition exposition SHOCK at the end, like last week. Let’s find out what happened!

From a writing perspective, this episode is interesting. Because it’s dealing with a sort-of problem. When you kill off an important character, it is necessary that you commit to the ramifications of that story choice.

In other words, you can’t just jump forward and not mention anybody’s reaction to the child’s death, so that you can get to more exciting story threads.

The problem is, even though the character was technically important, it’s not a character we knew. It’s a baby. So it’s not like WE THE AUDIENCE need to grieve.  Therefore, we would’ve been fine with moving on.

But since it doesn’t make sense for the characters to move on, the writers must commit to that choice. They must show us the funeral. They must sit in the sadness and the anger inherent in the multitude of characters close to the child.

To do this as a writer, you have to make a bargain with the audience. If you’re going to make them suffer through this, you have to give them some meat. And the best place to find writing meat is in the future. So, one of the first things we hear from the Hand of the King is: “Don’t worry, we’re going to go to war soon. But first we have to make some strategic moves to get a few more people on our side.”

This is the whole kit and caboodle with screenwriting. You have to promise the reader that, if they keep reading, they’ll be rewarded. “Cool shit is coming” is the gangster way of saying it. So we’ll suffer through eating soup for a few nights as long as we know we’re getting a five course meal (the war) at the end of the week.

But that doesn’t mean you can only focus on the sadness. We do get our share of sad scenes in the aftermath of this brutal assassination. But we need cool scenes. Scenes that grab us. And, in TV writing, the bread-and-butter way you do that is you put two people in a scene and ramp up the conflict.

So, the two big scenes in this episode are 1) When Rhaenyra confronts Daemon about initiating this assassination, which is going to weaken their support in the war. And 2) When the young King Aegon confronts the Hand of the King, Otto Hightower, about his crappy advice and forces him to give up his position.

The second scene stood out, in particular, because there was actually a consequence at the end of the scene. TV suffers from a lot of scenes where conflict happens but we’re at the same place at the end of the scene as we were at the beginning. So even though we got some drama, the scene ultimately feels unimportant. This scene actually ended in something happening so it became one of the best scenes in the episode.

The best scene of the episode, though, is at the end when the bad twin infiltrates the Queen’s quarters and tries to kill her.  Remember that no amount of dialogue conflict will ever beat a character actually TAKING ACTION.  When you have characters taking action, they are going to create SOMETHING.  So it’s always a good idea to keep your characters active as opposed to waiting for the next conversation.

I do think that House of the Dragon is well-written. I don’t like some of these scenes, such as rando King Number 7 laying in bed with his wife mumbling about who knows what. But that’s one of the challenges of writing a show like this. You need to keep those characters in the mix so we don’t forget about them and, sometimes, you don’t have anything for them to do, so you just give us a weak reminder scene. But it’s definitely one of the better-written shows out right now. What’s better?

Genre: Sci-Fi Fantasy (TV Show – Episode 4)
Premise: As evil twin Mae searches out another Jedi to kill on a forest planet, her good sister, Osha, joins the Jedi in the hopes of stopping her before she gets there.
About: You are looking at THE most talked about TV show of the year behind Baby Reindeer. Unfortunately, it’s for all the wrong reasons. To understand why The Acolyte is creating so much darkness in the universe, you must remember when it was greenlit. It was greenlit at the height of every social movement in the US. So it was a no-brainer season committal at the time for Lucasfilm. But, four years down the road, that vision of humanity doesn’t feel as fresh anymore. And hence, the show is getting attacked more than any other show in history. Today’s writers, Claire Kiechel and Kor Adana, have written for some good shows! Watchman, The OA, Mr. Robot. Can they counter the evil forces of online hate?
Writers: Claire Kiechel and Kor Adana
Details: About 30 minutes

What Disney has done – and what all the big studios are doing nowadays – is create divisions devoted to fake social media accounts so they can counter online dissension.

So it’s no surprise that Disney is going all in, online, trying to combat the hate being levied at The Acolyte. This is just one account that popped into my Twitter timeline today.

I learned something very early on at Scriptshadow. Which is that you can’t beat the internet. If the internet wants blood, you can’t pretend they don’t. Disney is giving it their best shot because they have enough money to do so. But they’re going to find out the same thing I did.

You can’t make people think something that isn’t true. You can’t seriously convince us that The Acolyte is an amazing show. I can buy some people thinking it’s a decent show. But a great show? Come on. Now we know you’re some AI bot deep inside Disney’s digital farm.

If you’re one of those people who’s struggling with The Acolyte, don’t worry! I am going to tell you how to fix Star Wars TV just as I fixed Star Wars movies on Monday.

But before we go there, let’s recap this episode.

Osha says bye to the one friend she made within the Jedi group, Jecki. Seems like there’s a potential love story brewing there. But before she leaves, Master Sol (Squid Game dude) learns that her evil sister Mae is headed off to kill the Wookie Jedi, Kelnacca (played by the same actor who plays Chewbacca by the way). They’re going to try and stop her and believe Osha can convince Mae to stop her serial-killing ways.

The episode, then, follows a dual storyline. Mae and her goofy friend, Qimir, head into the forest to look for Kelnacca. Sol, Osha, and the other Jedi get to the planet a little later and begin their hunt for Mae before she can do any damage.

Along the way, Mae has a realization that she doesn’t want to be bad anymore. She’s going to turn herself into the Jedi. So she allows Qimir to get caught in a trap and leaves him! I’m not sure why she does this. It’s not like he was making her kill Kelnecca. And this is where you start to see some cracks in the storytelling (potential spoilers follow).

Later in the episode, both the Jedi and Mae meet up to find that Kelnacca has already been killed… BY A LIGHTSABER SLASH! They turn around to see Mae’s evil masked up mysterious master (say that five times fast) arrive and pull out his lightsaber. Smilo Ren then force dust-attacks the Jedi and we cut to black. In other words, the reason we nonsensically left Qimir in his trap was to split those two up… because Qimir is secretly Smilo Ren.

All right. I’m trying to use my powers of screenwriting analysis to see through all the Acolyte hate and judge this show fairly.

What does today’s episode do well?

Well, we do have structure here. We have a goal: Mae is going off to kill this Chewbacca-like Jedi. Does that goal have stakes? That’s not as clear. I mean, we know she wants to kill it. But do we sense the importance of her needing to kill it? I don’t think we do. And if we don’t see why something is important, it’s hard for us to care.

Also, Mae is bad. So her goal is bad. Audiences aren’t as excited to get behind a character pursuing a negative goal as they are a character pursuing a positive one. These are things you have to think about as a writer. Because, if you don’t understand that the audience might not be onboard with your character’s goal, you need to figure out how to counteract that.

Which, to the writers’ credit, they do. And this is what I believe Leslye Headland is bringing to the series. She understands screenwriting. So, she adds this dual-goal narrative where we have the Jedi (including Osha) going after Mae. Their goal *is* a positive one. It’s to stop this killing of a fellow Jedi.

And that second journey does contain stakes, or at least higher stakes than Mae going after the wookie. We’ve met Kelnecca. We kind of like him. So we don’t want him to die! That gives the reader some desire to keep watching the story.

But is it enough?

It isn’t because I still didn’t care as much as I needed to for the story to work.

Why don’t I care enough about what’s happening?

That’s a great question that should be applied to any screenplay you write. If you’re a screenwriter who sends a script out and the script’s strength is the plot, yet readers still aren’t responding to it, it almost always means that they’re not connecting with the characters.

What sucks about that problem is that there are levels to what “connecting with the characters” means. Sometimes, I think the characters in a script are solid. I connect with them to the tune of 7 out of 10. Which is pretty good. But 7 out of 10 gets you a pat on the back and a dog treat at the end of the script. It doesn’t get anyone saying, “Oh my god! I have to tell somebody about this script now.” Or, in this case, “Oh my God, I can’t wait to break this episode down in my script review.” To get there, you need 8 out of 10 characters or higher.

There isn’t a single character in The Acolyte who is higher than a 7 out of 10. The twin sisters are where Headland has focused the majority of her energy and they just aren’t that interesting. Mae locked her sister in a room and tried to kill her in a fire, which felt overtly forced and therefore false. Which is the kind of stuff that weakens the characters in the audience’s eyes. If you’re not being trutful with what characters do, we stop seeing them as real people.

Star Wars thrived specifically because it leaned into crystal clear archetypes. The naive young hero with big dreams (Luke). The old mentor (Obi-Wan). The trickster (Han). The “Shadow” (Vader). The characters in this show are way more nebulous. We do have a trickster, in Qimir. But I couldn’t tell you what archetypes Osha or Mae fit into if you offered me a million bucks to do so.

The reason why that matters is because the more muddled a character’s essence and purpose is, the less invested in them we become. Cause we don’t understand them. It’s easy to convince yourself, as a writer, that vagueness equals “complexity.” But you can use whatever word you want. If we’re not clear on exatly who these characters are, we don’t give a crap about their goals, about their journeys.

Like Mae in this episode says, out of nowhere, “I don’t want to kill this Jedi. I changed my mind. I want to go help the good Jedi instead.” That’s the kind of thing an unclear character would say. Because if you understood who this character was, then something way more intense then a fleeting change of heart would cause an action like that.

What’s interesting about that is that Headland pitched this movie as “Frozen” in the Star Wars world. And we clearly see that with these two sisters. But Frozen actually didn’t have a well-conceived broken-sister relationship at the heart of its story. Elsa ran away because she was afraid her new powers might hurt her sister. It’s not like they hated each other or anything.

Then the movie was about bringing them back together. But the reason that movie is a classic has little to do with the conflict in that relationship and more to do with the greatest soundtrack for a Disney movie in over a decade.

Which means Acolyte is using that same weak sister-division story engine except without all the great music to hide that relationship’s deficiencies.

So how do we fix this and Star Wars TV in general? Well, I can’t fix this show. It’s too late. But I can fix future Star Wars shows. Oh, yes I can.

Star Wars has always been strongest when there’s urgency at the heart of the story. It was there in Star Wars and there in Empire. It was also there in Force Awakens.

It’s part of the franchise’s DNA.

I’ve noticed that these shows are weak mainly because there’s little momentum to them. We’re never moving forward fast enough, like the movies. Now, this is a problem that TV deals with with every show. And the way it handles this problem is by leaning into character conflict as much as possible.

So, you may watch a scene that barely moves the plot forward in a TV show. But we’re still into it because there’s tons of conflict built into the dynamics of the characters. That’s why one of my favorite shows ever, Lost, worked so well, despite its plot having to slow down so much. There were tons of characters who had unresolved conflict with each other. I always loved, for example, when Jack and Sawyer had a scene together.

But there’s a caveat to that working. You actually have to give a crap about the characters. And we don’t have that here. It’s not for lack of trying. I know for a fact that Leslye Headland tried to create the best show possible. But she built that twin relationship on a faulty foundation. Is there anyone who really cares whether these two twins make up or not? Come on. Be real.

So, what Star Wars needs to do on the TV front is pull a “24.” Not literally. But they need to build a show around urgency. And that way, it’s going to feel a lot more like Star Wars.

Cause they still haven’t figured out how to have two Star Wars characters casually talking in a scene and it work. Star Wars wasn’t built for “casual.” Watch the very first scene in this episode to understand how that plays out. Osha says bye to Jecki after her Jedi practice. The scene is the definition of casual and something we don’t need. But they need to fill up that episode somehow so they put it in there.

Some of you will be happy to hear that it is officially my last Acolyte review. I’m morbidly curious about what happens next but I’m no longer going to subject you to these experiences. May the Force be with you. Always.

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

What I learned: If you feel like you’ve got a good concept, a strong story, and an exciting plot, yet people tell you your script is boring or slow – an analysis that makes no sense at all? That almost always means they’re not connecting with your characters. Don’t settle for 7 out of 10 characters. They won’t get you anywhere. What does a 10 out of 10 character look like? Both the characters in Baby Reindeer. Ken in Barbie. Logan Roy. “Wonka” has about 8 characters who are an 8 out of 10 or better. If you want people to really be engaged, that’s what you bring to the table on the character front.

Rumors swirled online all week that this would be the episode to end Star Wars. Yoda doing weird dances? The Force designed by women? A witch’s brew?

Genre: Science-Fiction Adventure
Premise: We head back in time 16 years when twins Osha and Mae were being raised by a coven of witches. But when the Jedi find out about this illegal activity, they come to retrieve the girls.
About: The writers of today’s episode are fairly inexperienced. Jasmyne Flournoy has never written a television episode or feature film in her life. Eileen Shim did write one episode for House of the Dragon (the show debuts this Sunday by the way!).
Writers Jasmyne Flournoy and Eileen Shim
Details: 42 minutes

I’ve tried my darndest to stay away from the online chatter of The Acolyte because I know it’s all about divisiveness and how there can’t be fire in space or something. None of that has any effect on anything AS LONG AS THE STORY IS GOOD. And, so far, the story is good.

However, despite my best efforts, I could not avoid hearing that today’s episode was going to create a firestorm. I mentally prepared myself. But I’m committed to judging this series on the story and the story alone.

And look, just to be clear – for the people who are saying this series is stupid and it’s making all these dumb choices. Dudes. Star Wars has always been a bit silly. Little teddy bears are responsible for defeating the Empire. You can’t slam Star Wars for being a little silly.

The only time I get mad in Star Wars is when things get sloppy and, as a result, the storytelling suffers. If you’re putting 100% in and you have some modicum of talent, which Leslye Headland does, you’re going to write some good Star Wars episodes.

Famous last words, right?

Here we go!

**Carson watches Episode 3 of The Acoylate.**

Osha and Mae are 9 years old in today’s episode. It’s 16 years in the past and they’ve both been found by a coven of witches. The two head witches, who are also married, argue extensively about how to raise the children.

There is a big ceremony in a couple of days called “The Ascension” which will officially make these two witches. There are going to be a few challenges that are force-related so they do their force exercises whenever they can fit them in.

But just as the ceremony gets started, four Jedi show up (including a Wookie Jedi!) saying what the witches are doing is illegal. They know the two girls are force-sensitive and want to give them the Jedi test. If they pass, they will come to Coruscant.

For this reason, their two mothers tell them to deliberately fail the tests. But while taking the test, Osha can’t help but be truthful. So she passes. Mae is so infuriated by this that she locks her sister in her room and starts a fire! Osha is barely able to escape, but all the other Jedi, including Mae, die in the fire. Osha then hops on the Jedi ship and heads back to the Jedi temple.

Today’s episode had a surprise treat in the credits. One of my favorite up-and-coming directors, Kogonada, directed the episode!

That was cool to see.

I did think the episode was well-directed, although Kogonada seems to have been restrained from adding too much of his own style.

But let’s talk about the writing.

As I always say, the third episode of a TV series is where the rubber meets the road. If it’s bad, your series is bad. If it’s good, you could have a show on your hands.

Unfortunately, the series decided to gamble and use episode 3 as a flashback episode.

Flashbacks are more evil than Sith themselves. Not because they don’t work. But because only a tiny percentage of screenwriters understand how to make them work.

CATEGORY 1
Most screenwriters believe that the audience will blindly want to see what happens in the past because of how it will add more context to the characters.

CATEGORY 2
Better screenwriters understand that audiences don’t like going backwards. Therefore, they have to add more than just character context. They have to add a story to the flashback.

CATEGORY 3
The best screenwriters understand that going backwards is a gigantic gamble. It is taking the story away from the present, where the audience wants to be. Therefore, if you’re going to do it – especially a flashback that’ll last an entire episode – it has to be a great story in and of itself. And if they can’t come up with that great story for their flashback, they don’t write the flashback.

Because they know how quickly viewers can tune out of a series. Which, by the way, is 10 times faster than it used to be, when there were only 50 shows on TV. Flashbacks are a “f*ck around and find out” gamble.

So, where do today’s writers fall?

To their credit, they knew enough to get to Category 2.

There IS a legit storyline to this flashback episode. We’ve got the goal – the ceremony, the stakes – they become official members of the coven if they pass, and the urgency – the ceremony takes place in a couple of days.

We then have the complication that throws everything into disarray – the Jedi show up and say they want the children for themselves.

That IS a story. The problem is, it’s only a mildly entertaining one. And this is what keeps decent writers from becoming great writers. Just creating an okay storyline so that you can give us more context about your characters isn’t going to move the needle.

Let me be clear about this. If you fumble in a present-day storyline, the audience will forgive you more than they will if you fumble in a flashback episode. Because when a flashback episode is weak, not only were we not entertained, but the story didn’t move forward at all.

Remember what we talked about last week. Headland had made the smart decision to use what TV does well to create her series: The Acolyte was an investigative mystery. You didn’t do that this week. You went back to the mistakes that all these other Star Wars shows have made which is to force movie-like storytelling onto the TV format.

Movie-like storytelling is built upon the concept that the viewer gets to experience the entire story NOW. If you take away the NOW part, we get movie-like storytelling without all the payoffs.

So does that mean all flashbacks suck? No. I actually did a feature consult recently where the script was about a famous director. And he used flashbacks throughout. The difference was, his flashback story was even better than the main story! So whenever we flashed back, I was excited. Cause I wanted to see what happened next in that story.

That’s the way you got to think of it. You can’t think of it as a second-banana storyline. Try to make it as good or even better than the main storyline and that way we’ll WANT to flash back.

On a personal level, I didn’t like today’s subject matter. I know some outlier Star Wars comic books have witches in them. But witches aren’t Star Wars. So when you put them on screen, you’re losing a LOT of your audience. Probably almost your entire male audience. So I don’t know why they would do that.

Read the room.

It can’t be all about you. “I want witches cause I like witches!” No. Ask yourself if the audience for the subject matter likes witches. If they don’t, you probably want to go in another direction.

I will say that Headland seems to understand the Jedi better than a lot of the previous Star Wars showrunners. I say that because this Jedi group is a cool group. They all feel like Jedi. They act like Jedi. They talk like Jedi. They basically saved this episode.

This episode isn’t nearly as bad as everyone is saying it is. Someone was telling me that they were going to announce that the force was “female” in this episode or something. None of that nonsense happened.

But they need to get their act together for Episode 4 next week.

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

What I learned: If you’ve got backstory you need the viewer to know, do the hard work and slip it into conversations. Show it through character actions. When Han Solo chirps at Luke in their first meeting at the cantina, saying, “And who’s going to fly it kid, you??” Luke says, “You bet I could, I’m not such a bad pilot myself.” That’s how you slip in backstory (that Luke is a pilot). You don’t have to do an entire episode on a coven for us to know Osha and Mae were once part of a coven.

Has Hollywood just birthed the next movie star?

Genre: ???????
Premise: A part time cop pretends to be a hit man to trap people hiring contract killers but changes tactics when one of his clients ends up being hot and sexy.
About: This movie was born out of an online article that I reviewed last year. It should be noted that this is one of the best ways to sell a movie idea these days. You find an interesting story out there in the real world and you write about it. The movie paired longtime collaborators Rinchard Linklater and Glen Powell, whose finished product ended up being one of the big purchases at the Venice Film Festival, going for 20 million dollars to Netflix.
Writers: Richard Linklater, Glen Powell, and Skip Hollandworth
Details: 2 hours long

So let me explain to you how these things work.

This movie sold for a giant amount of movie to Netflix after its debut at the Venice Film Festival. The non-initiated would assume that that must mean the movie was amazing. But that’s not how the movie business operates.

The reason this movie sold for so much money is because for the first time in a long time, Hollywood believes they have a movie star in the making in Glen Powell. Top Gun Maverick made SO MUCH MONEY that they figured SOMEONE had to come out of that as a rising star. And with Miles Teller already getting his shot, they went with Glen Powell.

Anything But You’s runaway hit status only bolstered this belief. Glen Powell HAD to be the next big thing. Or did he? It was easy to make the argument that the only reason Top Gun Maverick made so much money was because of superstar, Tom Cruise. But a good case could also be made that the only reason Anything But You made a ton of money was because of Sydney Sweeney. Which would mean that Glen Powell just got lucky.

It’s notoriously difficult to identify movie stars. You don’t know until they happen. From Alex Pettyfer to Eric Bana to Sam Worthington to Clive Owen to Colin Farrell to Josh Hartnett, Hollywood has a long list of “swing and a miss” movie star hopefuls.

And it goes both ways. I’ll never forget watching Bradley Cooper in Jim Carrey’s “Yes Man” and thinking how sorry I was for him. I thought, “That’s the kind of guy always meant to get second billing. He’ll never be the top dog.” I turned out to be a little wrong on that one.

The only legitimate movie star we’ve found in the last decade was Chris Pratt, which may have been the hardest to predict in history. The guy was known as the overweight 10th billing crappy boyfriend on Parks and Recreation.

In other words, who knows what’s going to become of Glen Powell? He’s certainly getting his shot. We’ll see just how much star power he has later this year when Twisters comes out. But, for right now, let’s look at his splashy new streaming flick, Hit Man.

Gary Johnson is a nerdy philosophy teacher, cat owner, and part-time desk cop. One day, he’s thrown into action as a fake hit man. The cops need him to entrap someone who’s trying to kill a business partner. All Gary has to do is convince this guy he’s a hit man, get him to give him the money, and admit that it’s for murder. And, what do you know, Gary is AWESOME at it.

He’s so awesome that he becomes their go-to “hit man.” The great thing about Gary is that he caters his hit man persona to whoever he’s talking to. If there’s a lonely housewife, he’s more sexy. If it’s a crabby old gun owner, he’ll throw on tattoos and swear like a sailor. At one point he even plays a heartless German dressed in black, complete with accent.

Gary’s hit rate is close to 100%.

But that all changes when he meets Madison. Since it’s a younger woman, Gary goes with his rugged edgy sexy persona, “Ron.” Ron is a smooth operator, a ladies’ man, and we can feel the crackle of electricity between them. But when Madison is about to give him the money to kill her abusive husband, Gary improvs and tells her to keep it and use it to escape him. He doesn’t want this woman going to prison.

Weeks later, Madison calls Gary and wants to see him. Of course, he’s not Gary to Madison. He’s Ron. So he must see her as Ron. When they meet, she thanks him. She ran away from the guy. She’s single now. And… maybe it wouldn’t be too bad to go back to her place. We can figure out what happens next. A whole lot of sexy time.

Before Ron, I mean Gary, knows it, he’s in a quasi-relationship with Madison. Which is tricky because, well, he’s not himself. He’s this persona. And the more time he spends with her, the more lines between his real self and persona get crossed. But that turns out to be just one part of the problem. The other is that Madison may not be as innocent as she first implied. Maybe Gary should’ve been able to figure that out since, you know, what kind of woman goes out with a hit man?

Hit Man is a Hollywood engine trapped in an indie chassis. It’s a weird movie with a weird script. Linklater can’t shake his indie roots. He’s never understood the “dumb fun” nature of Hollywood movies – stuff like Bad Boys – and therefore can’t help but add 5 minute scenes of characters arguing about the existential conflict inherent in marriage. Which is what keeps this movie from ever finding its groove.

It’s a comedy! No, wait. It’s serious! Oh wait, it’s a comedy again! Wait, it’s a romance. No, now it’s a sexy thriller! Actually, hold on… it’s a crime movie. The tone is shiftier than a drug addict on the corner of Hollywood and Vine.

Linklater’s confusion is evident when we watch Gary and Madison’s first scene together. The movie had been rolling along as a comedy for a while. Yet this scene is both serious and sexy. There were numerous opportunities to cut back to the cops listening in and making fun of how Gary’s clearly gone gaga over this girl, yet for this scene, comedy was abandoned. It was strange. You never had a feel for what the tone was.

From a screenwriting perspective, the script should work, as we’re using one of the more reliable tools in the screenwriting toolbox – dramatic irony. Dramatic irony is when we know something that one, or more, of the characters do not. It’s an important tool that I dedicate an entire section to in my DIALOGUE BOOK.

We know that Gary is not who he says he is. He’s a cop. But Madison DOES NOT know this. Whenever you build a romance around a lie, there’s going to be interest from the viewer about how that ends. Because we know it can only end badly. And we want to stick around to see what ‘badly’ looks like.

But the use of dramatic irony is pretty basic stuff. You’ll see it almost every TV show going, in some form or another. The good writers can twist and turn dramatic irony in ways that the average writer never would’ve thought of.

(Spoiler) In Hit Man, the central line of dramatic irony is between Gary and Madison. We know Gary isn’t really a hit man. She does not. That’s where the viewer’s intrigue lies. But about 70 minutes into the movie, the gig is up and Gary has to admit to Madison who he is. She confides to *Ron* that she killed her husband and he loses it. He admits that he’s not Ron. He’s Gary. He’s a cop. Hence, the dramatic irony *between them* is over.

But then Gary heads back to the station for an emergency meeting. The captain believes that Madison is the primary suspect for the husband’s murder. And hence, A BRAND NEW LINE of dramatic irony begins. Almost all of the cops don’t know that Gary has been secretly seeing Madison. Nor do they know that he now knows that she killed him. BUT WE DO. And that’s how to cleverly utilize dramatic irony. The second you cut it off in one plot, you add it to another.

It’s actually a more sophisticated scene than even that since one of the cops in the room spotted Gary on a date with Madison once. So he knows Gary isn’t telling the whole truth. This is an advanced form of dramatic irony that has to do with inferior and superior perspectives which I go into in my dialogue book. If you want to become a master at one of the most valuable screenwriting tools there is, make sure you buy that book.

Despite its wonky tone and inconsistency, it all comes together in the end with an unpredictable final turn. Now, does this movie prove that Glen Powell is a movie star? That I don’t know. The only reliable metric I’ve come up with for what makes a movie star is, “Can you not look away whenever they’re on screen?” Doesn’t matter if you like them or hate them. Can you not look away? And, for the most part, I think I wanted to watch Glen Powell. *I think.* Maybe I need more evidence. What do you guys think?

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

What I learned: You may have wondered, why did this article – out of millions of articles published online – become the one that was purchased to be made into a movie. Nobody but the people involved know for sure. But always factor in movies that have roles which allow the actor to play multiple parts (in this case, multiple personas) – those are highly coveted by actors. So there’s a good chance some very good actors are going to want to be in the movie. No doubt that helped Linklater snag one of the fastest rising stars in Hollywood.

Genre: Suspense
Premise: (winning logline) A recently demoted executive finds himself being harassed by a dangerous thug sitting next to him on the last bus back home to the suburbs.
About: The Short Story Showdown was one of the tightest races we’ve ever had. The top three vote-getters were separated by less than 3 votes. The story that won ended up being the only one of the writers who vetted their logline in the comments section. Could lead to similar strategies in the future.
Writer: Jason Diggy
Details: 8 pages (4800 words)

William H. Macy for Daniel?

Short stories.

They’re ELUSIVE!

What makes a good one?

I don’t know. I think it’s one of those deals where you know it when you see it.

If you’re anything like me, you want to find out if The Empty Seat is one of those ‘know it’ stories. Let’s find out!

Daniel Lowry is an aging office worker with a lousy boss and mostly lousy co-workers. He’s upset because he was told by his boss that he had to work late. This screwed up his transportation so now he has to take the late-night bus home.

A lot of this story focuses on Daniel’s wait for the bus. During that time, we learn more details about how much of an a-hole his boss is. Daniel spots a half-drunk woman from his work who he suspects is trying to get ahead through physical means with her own superior and he hates her for it.

As Daniel laments the late bus, he thinks about how he’s only got a couple more years before his kids are out of the house. Then he’ll have a lot more power at work. He won’t have to kiss the ring every single day and do whatever he’s asked. But right now, the bills are large and they’re frequent which means he has to suck it up and do whatever his stupid boss says.

Finally, the bus comes and it’s almost full. Daniel finds two seats together and semi-straddles the adjacent one to make sure nobody sits by him. We hit another stop, some more people get on, Daniel is antsy about whether his precious adjacent seat is going to be used. But luckily no one takes it.

That changes at the next stop. Some 25 year old punk with long hair gets on the bus and, this time, the seat gods do not bless him. The guy goes straight to Daniel’s seat and sits next to him. As the bus starts up again, the guy starts smoking. The smoke is going right into Daniel’s face. Daniel can also feel a potential weapon (a gun? A knife) in the guy’s pocket as it keeps bumping up against him.

Daniel starts to freak out. But he finally gets to his stop, he leaps up, and slides past this seat demon, then hurries down the block without looking back, convinced that this punk is going to chase him down. Daniel clears a corner, stops, catches his breath, and waits. Was all that just in his mind? Or is Daniel actually in danger?

In the comments section of the Short Story Showdown, ChinaSplash posted their logline which began a discussion about why I didn’t choose their story for the showdown. It came down to that the logline promised a big sci-fi concept, which was what hooked me, yet the story started with a woman who really wanted to eat a donut. My feeling was, “What’s the point of including that? It’s a short story. You don’t have time to waste. Start deeper in when the story is already moving.”

I feel the exact same way about this story.

If you read this logline, you assume you’re getting a story about a guy who deals with a scary, potentially dangerous, individual who sits next to him on a bus.

But that’s not what we get. Our malcontent bus villain doesn’t sit down next to our hero until halfway through the story.

To me, that’s unforgivable. I was even getting antsy that we weren’t in the bus conflict by the end of the first page. Yet I had to read three more pages to get there.

But let’s look at this from Jason’s point of view. I’m guessing he wanted to do some character development first. He wanted to get you in Daniel’s head so we could learn what makes him tick. Because what good is an antagonist if we don’t understand the person he’s antagonizing?

That’s a fair argument.

However, there are ways you can achieve this that are a lot more likely to keep the reader’s interest. For example, when we’re waiting at that first stop with Daniel, introduce the scary rider then. He’s standing over by the side but you can just tell there’s something off about him.

Now, when we go into Daniel’s head and learn about his day and what makes him tick, we’re doing so underneath a line of suspense. Because we see the antagonist. We know the situation with him is only going to get worse. So we’re more compelled to turn the pages, even though “nothing” is happening yet.

The Empty Seat was struggling in another area as well, which was that Daniel wasn’t a very likable guy.

When I originally heard this pitch in the comments section, I endorsed it! I said, “This sounds good.” But the way it was pitched, I was imagining a weak, potentially cowardly guy, who was being unjustly bullied. In other words, an easy person to root for.

But that’s not Daniel. Daniel is King Complainer. Give this guy a topic and he can give ten hours on things he dislikes about it. He’s complaining about his boss, his co-workers, the women there, the transportation, his bills, the other riders.

But the action he took that killed it for me was when he sat down on the bus and took over two seats to make sure nobody sat next to him. How am I rooting for that guy?

I honestly thought, at that point in the story, that Jason was flipping the script on us. He was making us think Daniel was our hero when, in actuality, he would be our villain. And the guy who sat next to him would end up being the “character who was intimidated by another passenger” – Daniel himself.

But no, Daniel was just a really upset guy who hated his life and wanted to get it all out of his system. It compromised the character to such a degree that it was impossible to root for him.

I actually see this issue occur frequently once writers enter the short story (or long-form storytelling) format. Unlike screenplays, you can now take us directly into the character’s mind. And often, since our characters represent us, we use that character to get out all of our own frustrations.

I’m not saying that there isn’t value in observation and frustration. But you have to be careful with this stuff because when the reader is introduced to your main character, one of the first things that goes on in their head is, “Do I want to go on a journey with this person?” If the answer is no, you’re screwed.

I don’t think Daniel is someone you want to go on a journey with.

One of the most successful character types you can write is not the guy who gets kicked to the ground and complains. It’s the guy who gets kicked to the ground, but gets back up and keeps trying. Audiences LOVE those characters.

The Empty Seat’s potential to redemption was the antagonist. If that interaction was strong, I think we could’ve turned things around. But there’s not much to it. I understand what Jason was doing. He was exploring how we can get lost in our heads and build things up that aren’t there. I do think that’s an interesting topic to explore.

But, in this case, the logline kind of promises conflict and we don’t get much of it. It was too much of a tease.

Story link: The Empty Seat

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

What I learned: One of the hardest characters to make likable is a complainer. It’s not impossible! But the only times I see it work are in comedies. In one of my favorite movies ever, Office Space, Peter is a serial complainer. But he’s also funny. So be wary of going the complainer route. If you do, make it a bug, not a virus.