You went searching for it, didn’t you? You went on a trek down the internet yellow brick road, through all its dark corridors and unsavory crevices, in search of the return of Mish-Mash Monday. You’d enjoyed it so much the first time, you just had to have more. It was like a moist Betty Crocker yellow cake with that chocolate frosting that’s light enough to float. I’d promised it would be back. So then why? Why did it disappear?

Well I have wonderful news for you, folks. Mish-Mash Monday is back! The special “Huge Screenwriting Advice” Edition. I’ll get more into that later, but first, I wanted to discuss one movie I didn’t see, and one movie I didn’t want to see, all in hopes of understanding this craft a little bit better.

It all starts with Spider-Man 2, a film I’d planned to see this weekend but couldn’t muster up enough enthusiasm to do so. I don’t know what it is about these Spider-Man movies, but if they were Christmas trees, they’d be that strand of lights right around the middle that’s always going dark. And no matter what you do, you can’t fix them.

I don’t know if it’s Andrew Garfield, who looks too tall and goofy to play the part of the web-slinger. I don’t know if the domination of the Marvel super-hero universe has made Spider-Man less relevant? I don’t know if the coolest aspect of Spider-Man (those fun POVs of him flying through New York) has run its course, not unlike Matrix bullet-time? But something’s definitely missing.

One thing that drives me bananas about these films is all the villains. Populating your superhero film with lots of villains so you can sell a bunch more toys is not a new idea. But Spider-Man always seems to go overboard with it. They almost look desperate, like they’re calculating, right there on the screen, that if they don’t have that third or fourth villain, they’re making 15 million less on toy sales and there’s no way they’re okay with that. I remember Sam Raimi complaining about this very problem in his last Spider-Man directing effort.

What the suits don’t realize is that this DOES affect the film. The justification for why a character is in a story is embedded into the very fabric of storytelling. The second a character feels wedged in for reasons other than the story itself, something starts to smell fishy to the audience. As writers, our job is to hypnotize. It’s to make the audience believe in what we’re telling them. And if you start planting things in that don’t make sense, the hypnosis starts to crumble, and before long, they’re no longer under your spell.

I watch these Spider-Man 2 trailers and you have Green Goblin, Rhino, Electro. It feels unfocused, like they’re unsure what the movie is actually about. That’s not to say other famous super-hero movies haven’t done the same. The gold standard for superhero franchises, Batman, had Two-Face and The Joker. But, for the most part, Nolan gave us one villain per Batman film, and he made that villain the star villain.

That’s the other thing. When you focus on one villain, you can actually give them depth. You can make him a worthy adversary to your hero. When there are two or three other guys, we’re only getting the bullet points of each villain. You don’t have enough time to delve into them, and the films feel more surface level as a result. So I’m not surprised to hear that’s a criticism these last three Spider-Man films have faced.

On the flip side of that world is a small movie I saw last week. You know a movie’s good when it doesn’t need pyro-technics or VFX wizards or a half-dozen car chases to keep you entertained. All it needs is people and words. Which is why, so far, Philomena is my favorite film of the year.

For those who haven’t seen the film, it’s about a journalist, Martin, who’s recently lost his job. He somehow gets sucked into a human interest piece about a former nun, Philomena, who was forced to give her baby up for adoption 50 years ago by the nuns at her convent. Philomena wants to find her son and meet him for the first time.

The first thing I loved about this movie was the RESISTANCE they built into the main character pairing. Any time you team up two people to find something (in this case, the woman’s son), you want to create resistance between them (from one, the other, or both), as it adds conflict. It’s not overdone here. This isn’t Ride Along. But Martin isn’t happy that his career has devolved into escorting a rambling senior citizen around the country. It adds such a charming sense of humor to the relationship, that even if there were no story at all, you’d still enjoy watching these two, something every “two-hander” should strive for.

But it was the MYSTERY that got me. I thought this was going to be one of those non-dramatic self-important indie films where two mismatched people drive cross-country and learn something about each other. But it was much more than that. I’ll tell you why.

It coincides with the exact moment I got hooked, which was when Philomena and Martin go back to the convent to ask for the records on her son. The Head Nun is very skittish and borderline rude, almost to the point that she seems like she’s hiding something. Hiding something is ALWAYS good for screenplays. Secrets are what make drama go round.

The nun tells Philomena that all those old documents were destroyed in a fire. There’s nothing they can do. She does, however, locate something Philomena signed a long time ago, where she promised never to go looking for her child. While they’re able to convince an old woman easily, Martin’s not so sure. Curious, he points out, that this ‘great fire’ destroyed every single piece of information that would help Philomena find her child, yet has preserved the one piece of paper that would prevent her from doing so.

I don’t know what it is about this simple set-up: bad people trying to screw over good people, but if you do it right, it’s so damn effective. However, Philomena finds a way to add a turbo boost to that tried-and-true setup, one you, as a screenwriter, should always keep in your bag of tricks as well: IRONY.

If these were, say, big corporate assholes preventing Philomena from finding her son, we’d be upset, but we wouldn’t be surprised. Men like that are expected to act that way. It’s that this a group of NUNS who are doing this that gets us. The people who are supposed to be the most trustworthy are screwing our main character over. That’s what draws us in, that terrible people masked as righteous people are screwing a poor helpless old woman over. That’s why we want to stick around. Irony. Never forget how powerful it can be!

Ahh, but that isn’t the only lesson you’ll learn today. I have one more mish-mash story I’d like to add to today’s post.

Awhile back, I was chatting with a writer whose script I’d read. The script was pretty good, but it had a big problem: It wasn’t marketable. Based on how these movies had done in the past, I didn’t think anybody would go and see it. When I tried to explain this to the writer, he vehemently disagreed. He insisted lots of people would show up. I made my arguments. He made his. Then at some point, we realized that neither of us were going to change each others’ minds, and we moved on.

Many months later, a movie came out that was very similar to this writer’s script. It wasn’t the same idea, but it was the same genre, same tone, same dark main character, same TYPE of story across the board. The movie did poorly at the box office, but I was long past proving my point. It was just something I passively noted.

Not long after, I ran into the writer again. After catching up, I remembered the film and I was curious about what he thought of it. I didn’t bring up any of our previous conversation. I just asked, like you would any movie, “What did you think?”

To my surprise, he replied, “I don’t know, I didn’t see it.” “Didn’t see it?” I thought. What did he mean he didn’t see it? This was the exact kind of script he was trying to sell.

And then it hit me. He didn’t go see it because he wasn’t interested in it. He wasn’t interested IN THE VERY TYPE OF FILM he was writing. I pointed this out to him and at first he was dismissive. He made some comments about how the two plots were different.

But as the night went on, I could see his mind working. Finally, it dawned on him. That movie WAS very similar to his, and he’d never even considered checking it out. If HE, the very writer WRITING these kinds of movies, wasn’t interested in seeing this film, why the hell would he expect the general audience to do so?

It was a valuable lesson to both him and myself: Don’t write a movie that you wouldn’t go see yourself. It seems like the most obvious advice in the world, yet I’m constantly reminded how many writers ignore it. I remember this guy who used to write all these goofy comedies that never quite got the tone right.  It occurred to me after awhile that I never saw him actually go to any of these movies. So I asked him one day, “When was the last goofy comedy you actually paid for?” He thought about it for a moment, then conceded he couldn’t remember.  Of course you’re not going to get the tone right if you’re not even interested in watching those kinds of films.

Guys, you have to be realistic. If you’re not paying your hard-earned money to see the very types of movies you’re writing, then why would you expect anyone else to? It’s hard to put butts in seats. Hollywood spends billions of dollars to figure out how to do it. But the cheapest research is also the most telling. If your movie can’t even get you to show up, you shouldn’t be writing that movie.

Mish-Mash Monday out!

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: Drama/Thriller
Premise (from writer): When a professional contract killer discovers he’s become the target of an assassination himself, he teams up with the would-be killer to figure out who set them up.
Why You Should Read (from writer): Been a screenwriter for a certain number of years, written some amount of screenplays, placed in various categories of various competitions, and done other unspecific things. But why should you read this specific script? I don’t know. Because I think it’s a decent script. Because I’m genuinely curious what kind of bashing Carson gives it. Also, this was a top 10 script in the Industry Insider Competition – Roger Avary round. No, it did not win the coveted honor of first place, but Fargo also lost best picture to The English Patient, so clearly people do make mistakes.
Writer: Matt Williams
Details: 114 pages

I don’t use Brad Pitt lightly for these posts, but he’d be perfect for this.

Ugh. Another hitman script.

In the immortal words of Darth Vader: “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO-OOOOOOOOO!”

Has there ever been a hitman script that didn’t follow the exact same formula as every other hitman script? A cursory glance through my memory banks says, “Nuh-uh.” And thus I’m stuck eye-muscling my way through yet another generic story with yet another generic outcome.

Unless! Unless, The Savage South locates the hitman-script-miracle-serum and injects itself before it’s too late. Maybe with the help of Kevin Costner? Hey, didn’t I just write an article about positivity yesterday? Shouldn’t I have hope? Shouldn’t I be channeling the sweet-sounding hum of Nutty Australian Lady’s soothing voice? Please, I want more money to show up in my mailbox!

40-something Jeff Hollis is a hitman in New Orleans haunted by his gangster father’s murder of his mother. He works mainly for a group called the Dixie Mafia. And while you’d hope there was something unique about this deep south band of criminals, they’re really no different from any other mafia. They do unsavory things. They make a lot of dirty money. And if someone steps out of line, they call on old Hollis to put a bullet in their cranium.

Except one day, all of that changes. Hollis’s boss, Myron, tells him to make a pick-up for him, a job he doesn’t typically do. When Hollis gets there, he meets Eddie, a pathetic sort who confesses that he’s been sent here to kill Hollis but can’t go through with it. By whom, Hollis asks. Hollis is shocked to learn the trail leads back to the man he trusts the most, his boss and friend, Myron.

So Hollis grabs Eddie and they go to kill Myron. But just as Hollis is about to pull the trigger, Myron asks Hollis why he (Myron) would send the most inadequate hitman in history to kill him? Hollis takes pause. It does seem rather strange. Myron goes on to say it’s because he wanted Hollis to live. He was actually following an order from the leader of the Dixie Mafia, the reclusive Dominic, an order he couldn’t refuse unless he wanted to end up sans life.

So Hollis and Eddie go to find this guy, only to learn that Dominic has sicked the number one hitman in the country on Hollis, a bad motherfucker known as The Irishman. And if that weren’t bad enough, there’s a cop named Kessler who’s chasing Eddie for another murder entirely. In other words, there ain’t a lot of wiggle room in this pursuit.

Along the way, Hollis learns about the elaborate string of secrets and lies that led to his mother’s death, and how they had nothing to do with his father, but rather all point back to Dominic. Problem is, finding this guy is impossible. That is until an unlikely ally joins Hollis at the last second, prepared to help him achieve the justice he deserves.

More on this picture in a second.

What the hell. This was really good!

To be honest, I was a little dreary-eyed at first. The script took its time getting started. And that’s its biggest weakness. I eventually realized that all the early scenes are setting up the cast of characters, which eventually pay off. The thing is, I’ve read so many scripts where writers do this only for things NEVER to pay off, that I didn’t trust they would here either. Once I realized this was the real deal, I actually went back and re-read a lot of the early scenes.

The strength of this script is in its incredible plotting. Every piece of information is important. Every twist and turn has a purpose. And every character is in the script for a reason. There were two hook points for me. The first was when Hollis gets set up. That’s when I sat up (literally) and said, “Hmmm, okay, I’m intrigued now,” (around page 27) and the second is when Myron explains to Hollis the much bigger plan going on (around page 60 – the mid-point shift). That’s when I officially said, “Okay, I’m in it now.” I honestly haven’t read a script this well plotted, amateur or pro, in a long time.

In fact, I want to do something today that I don’t usually do. I want to speak directly to the writer, because I feel like if he can fix some of this stuff, he can really have a special script here. So these are the things I felt needed work.

The first act – The opening scene was good. It catches our interest and makes us want to find out who these guys are. But after that, I was bored for 25 pages. I just kept meeting people who didn’t seem important at the time. Hollis kills a man who seems insignificant. Hollis talks to a bunch of people in rooms. Kessler talks to people in rooms as well. I think readers are going to zone out somewhere in the first 30 and start skimming on you. Either move these scenes along faster, condense this section, or make it more entertaining. I don’t know if the scenes need more conflict, a bigger mystery box, more suspense, or what. But I didn’t get hooked until Hollis and Eddie met.

You can do more with Eddie – I think I know what you’re going for here. You’re trying to make Eddie the lovable loser. The guy who we’re hoping we’ll figure his life out. While the backstory with Eddie and his family is good, Eddie is eventually relegated to the “question-asker” character (see Ellen Page in Inception), someone to have around so our main character, Hollis, can bounce exposition off him. I don’t think Eddie needs to be the outrageous comic relief or anything (Kevin Hart), but he needs more personality. He needs to stand out somehow.

The Irishman must be bigger – As I was writing the above plot synopsis, I started writing this line: “The Irishman is a hitman that would make even Quentin Tarantino blush.” But then I realized that wasn’t true. He wasn’t unique enough. Wasn’t big enough. The Irishman is a solid bad guy, but he’s nowhere near as nuts as he could be. You need to think Anton Chigurh territory, maybe not that bizarre but definitely that memorable. This guy slits the throat of a patron who mouthed off to him. That doesn’t even make sense (he’s endangering his mission, since the waitress would’ve tipped off the police on who to look for). I believe you’re capable of writing someone a lot more original.

Kessler – While I understand that Kessler’s cutaway storyline adds a sense of urgency (someone chasing Hollis), I never really believed he was going to be a problem for Hollis. Maybe it’s because of that opening scene, when we see that Hollis clearly has him under control, or maybe it’s because Kessler’s too “light.” That and his scenes aren’t very interesting. You can boil them down to a dozen variations of “Do you know where Hollis is?” Just like Eddie, just like the Irishman, Kessler’s gotta have more shit going on. I don’t know if he needs to be reckless or dirty or unpredictable, but if he’s this perfect polite cop who only exists to give us something to cut away to, I’d rather not see him in the story. We have to make this guy more watchable. (crazy thought: Maybe make him a woman instead?  Pitch it to Brad Pitt’s people as a way for Brad and Angelina to work together?)

The Dixie Mafia – Finally, I want to know more about and feel more of the Dixie Mafia. What’s different about these guys? What do they do that other mafias don’t? Find out what’s unique about them and exploit it. Remember that if you’re not exploiting the very things that are different about your story, then what’s the point of including them in the first place? Why not make them the Russian mob or the Italian mob? Do a little research, find out what makes this mob tick, and then slather your story in it. Because that’s one of the reasons I was checking out early. Things felt too generic – like every other hitman/mafia script I’d read.

Matt Williams, thank you for surprising me today. I had a long day (met some great Scriptshadow readers for 3 hours but they tired me out!) and was three-limbs into bed before this nice little gem pulled me back out. It’s not quite there yet, but dammit it could be. This was a cool script, and something that’s certainly worth checking out.

Script link: The Savage South

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

What I learned: Remember that if all the good stuff happens later in your script, you’re probably in trouble. Readers love to start skimming once they get bored. So you gotta grab them from the start and never let go. If you have a heavily plotted script like The Savage South and you need that first act to set up a lot of stuff, that’s fine, but REMEMBER TO MAKE THOSE SCENES ENTERTAINING AS WELL, AND NOT JUST SET-UP. Each scene should be a story in itself that you’re trying to entertain a reader with. If three scenes go by that are all set-up and no entertainment, that’s pretty much it for you. Whether they keep reading or not, the reader has mentally given up on you.

Would you rather work with this guy…

I feel bad about last week’s negative article. So I wanted to change it up today. Two things happened to me in a matter of hours Tuesday that reminded me of an essential quality all screenwriters must have in order to succeed.

It started when a writer informed me about an article they’d read in The Hollywood Reporter. In it, an anonymous working screenwriter complained that the life of a professional screenwriter, for the most part, sucks. The writer who’d read the article was upset. They said, “I’m working so hard to climb up this mountain, and this is what the end result will be? Misery 90% of the time? Why bother?”

I always get a little down when I hear these stories, and I’ll explain why in a second. But that afternoon, I had a meeting with another writer. For the record, this is a writer who’s had some success, but is nowhere near where he’d liked to be. He had this big smile on his face when I arrived and relayed how excited he was to talk about all the stuff he’d been working on. Before long, he was passionately telling me about all of his projects.

It didn’t even feel like a meeting. It felt like two people who love movies talking about writing them. I left that meeting with a noticeable hop in my step. Nothing earth-shattering happened. But I was happy. Why? The answer is simple. This writer’s overwhelming positivity had rubbed off on me. It had gotten me excited. It made me completely forget about that ridiculous article.

But something much bigger came out of that meeting. I realized how easily negativity can influence a writer’s life, and how quickly it can spread to others.

If that writer I’d met hadn’t been so immediately positive, I probably would’ve brought that negative energy into the meeting, and things would’ve gone very differently. Maybe I would’ve brought up the article, maybe we would’ve spent 30 minutes discussing if we thought it was true (being a professional writer sucks), then when the writer pitched me his ideas, they would’ve been laced with a sense of hopelessness, born out of our incorrect belief that making it was “impossible.” I would’ve left the meeting bummed out, and it would’ve taken me a day or two to get back to being excited about the business.

The thing about writing is that it’s such a lonely endeavor. And because you’re alone a lot of the time, your mind often drifts into the negative. “Can I do it?” “Is it impossible?” The doubts start creeping in. Rumors about how the only people who make it are those with family connections, or how nobody’s buying specs anymore, or how minorities don’t stand a chance, or how you have to live in Los Angeles to succeed.

Pay attention to what I’m about to tell you because it’s an often overlooked but ESSENTIAL component to your success in this business. Ready?

Negativity begets Negativity.

I know how crazy it sounds, but if you believe you’re never going to succeed, you won’t. You just won’t. Because you’ve already decided that you won’t. You’re just waiting for the official confirmation.

If you believe you’re going to succeed, you’ve got a chance. Because you believe. And as long as you believe, you’ll continue to make others believe.

You can see how that tiny insignificant Hollywood Reporter article spread like a virus from the original reader, to me, and almost to the other writer I met. Luckily a good dose of screenwriting chemo destroyed that negativity before it was too late.  The only way to make sure that didn’t happen again was to stay away from that kind of person, the kind who complains, who hates, who sucks the life out of things.  Positive successful people try to avoid those folks like the plague.

Again, if you believe in the negative? If you exhibit negativity? If you present yourself as a negative person, the majority of the experiences in your life will be negative. Negative people attract negativity. Positive people attract positivity.

Now I don’t know who this writer is in the Hollywood Reporter article. And I understand that his article is a tiny sample size of his career, but I’d make a strong case that the reason he isn’t as successful as he wants to be has a lot to do with how he sees the world. He sees screenwriting as a soul-sucking miserable existence. And there’s no way to mask that. Every meeting he goes to, every person he chats up, every job he’s up for, they see that. They feel it seeping out of his pores, or projected deep within his eyes. His negative posture, his lack of general happiness. They feel it, and they don’t want to be a part of it.

I used to think that it should be all about the writing. If the person is a good screenwriter, who the hell cares what they’re like? But I realize now how naïve that was. I still think it’s true for SUPER-STAR writers (David Koepp and Frank Darabont). But for everyone else, it matters tons. Some of the people I’ve met are such soul-suckers, that working with them for five minutes would depress the hell out me, much less five months. Even if the negative writer is the better writer, is it worth them always miserable, always complaining, always fighting every note, and generally hating work? It might take longer with the lesser writer, but their eagerness to get it right will trump the problem writer every time.

Negativity begets Negativity.

…or this guy?

I’m going to tell you a story that I’ve only told a few times (and have alluded to in my book) because I’m actually quite embarrassed by it. But it’s a story that completely changed how I approached life. This happened a little bit before I started Scriptshadow when I was a REALLY negative person. I was that annoying guy who always found fault in everything. I was always complaining about the business, hating on every movie, commenting on how stupid the entertainment business was. I was like Grendl on crack.

A lady friend at the time delicately suggested I read The Secret. She thought it would be good for me. Now if you don’t know what The Secret is, it’s this book/movie/audio-tape “way of thinking” by which a soothing Australian woman tells you to do things like “imagine success” and success will come to you. “Imagine money” and money will come to you. Your basic new age hooey-phooey.

But I was in a really low place and knew that my negativity had reached dangerous levels. So I thought, “What do I have to lose?” and started listening to the audio version of the book while I exercised. If you haven’t heard this woman, it’s quite amusing. She has this over-the-top hypnotic voice that promises you the world if you just think positively.

I started listening to it more as a source of entertainment than enlightenment. But the woman started issuing challenges. She’d say things like, “Go out and say five positive things to people today.” For shits and giggles, I’d do it (“Hey, that’s a nice watch,” I’d say to the cashier at the supermarket) and I must admit I was surprised by the response. People would offer back a genuine smile, thank me, and even start up conversations. More importantly, after every interaction, I felt better. And when I’d talk with friends later, they’d note that I was uncharacteristically “upbeat.”  Without me even knowing it, these positive experiences had started to improve my life.

But when the chapter about money came up, I couldn’t play the game any longer. What Nutty Soothing Australian Woman was saying was ridiculous. She posited that if you “thought” and “believed” that money would come to you, it would. In fact, she said, it would just show up in your mailbox in the form of a check. Money by just wishing for it! Who would’ve thought it was that easy!

I had never heard such blatant bullshit in my life. I had NEVER received money in the mail. Not once. So I decided to play a game with Nutty Australian Woman to prove her wrong. Over the next month, I would be genuinely positive about everything, and wherever I went, I’d believe – just like Nutty Australian Woman told me to – that I should receive money.

Over the next three weeks, I found my life improving dramatically. If a movie I didn’t like did well at the box office, I wouldn’t complain like I used to. I’d think, “Good for the writers.” I was genuinely happy for them. If somebody said something mean about something online, I’d try to find something positive to counter it. It almost became a game. No matter how negative a situation got, could you find a positive way to respond to it?

I noticed my friends were happier to be around me (I wasn’t interrupting every fun moment complaining about something), and because they were happier, I was happier. That’s the great thing about being positive. Whatever you give out comes back twice as strong.

But it was three weeks into my experiement that one of the biggest shocks of my life happened. When I went to get my mail that day, there was an envelope from the city of Los Angeles. I opened it up, and there was a check for $75. I shit you not. The letter was in regards to a parking ticket I had received last year. They went on to say they had made a mistake in the ticketing process, and were therefore refunding me.

Now as anyone who lives in Los Angeles will tell you, the LA parking ticket system is one of the most obsessive corrupt institutions in the world. They will wait at your car until your meter runs out in order to ticket you 1 second later. They’d rather commit Heaven’s Gate-level mass suicide before issuing a refund. I’m pretty sure I was the first person in the city’s history to receive money back for a ticket.

I couldn’t believe it. That freaking Nutty Australian Lady was right. I had received money in the mail. I was so excited (good God did I need that money), I had a newfound optimism about the world. That optimism led to me getting the confidence to do a lot of other things I’d been putting off. One of those things, a few months later, was starting Scriptshadow.

Now look. I’m not going to sit here and tell you you have to believe in some New Age Hooey in order to succeed. What I can tell you, from personal experience, is that trying to find the good in everything instead of wallowing in the bad, positively alters the way others perceive you. People will want to be around you. They’ll want to work with you.  They’ll want you in their lives.

Positivity Begets Positivity.

And look, it’s not easy at first (especially if you’re inherently negative), and I still struggle with it at times (I’m not sure how positive I was yesterday, although analysis does require certain negative reactions), but I’m telling you, it’s the unsung hero of success. And I just want you guys to know that the more positive you are, the more opportunities you’re going to get in this business. I can promise you that. Don’t believe me? Give it a shot.

Many people believe that the 70s was the second Golden Era of film, but whether the decade created amazing cinema or not, the reality is there are a lot more forms of entertainment these days, the movie-going demographic has changed, and we’ve been programmed to have shorter attention spans. So no matter how you look at it, the way we tell stories in the medium is different than it used to be. Which makes me nervous about propping up a 70s film to learn screenwriting. With that said, a good story is a good story, and I’m certain that this script would get made today (who would play McMurphy though??). It has that “No. 1 Black List Spot” feel to it. Its secret ingredient is its characters. The film has one of the best collections of characters in history.  For those who haven’t seen it, “Nest” is about a convict, McMurphy (Jack Nicholson), who tries to play the system by pretending to be crazy, believing it’ll be a lot easier to do his time in a mental facility than in prison. Once there, he rouses the other patients into action, helping them realize that even if they’re crazy, they can still have fun. But when the floor manager, the deceptively evil Nurse Ratched (one of the best villains ever), sees that she’s losing a hold on the patients because of McMurphy, she finds a horrifying way to solve the problem. One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest won an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay.

1) Starting as late into the story as possible – Yesterday we discussed how you want to start your script AS CLOSE TO the main action as possible. Here’s an example of that in action. In the script for “Cuckoo’s Nest,” we start off with McMurphy at prison, showing him causing trouble. Only then does he get sent off to the ward. In the movie, we don’t show that. We just show McMurphy showing up to the mental ward. It was a good decision. Why do you need to show McMurphy causing trouble at a prison when you can just show him causing trouble as soon as he gets to the mental ward? Additionally, we get to jump right into the story.

2) The “Institution Disruption” Flick – They used to do a lot more of these films (Cuckoo’s Nest, Cool Hand Luke, K-Pax, Shawshank) but you don’t see them as often these days. And I’m not sure why. They’re an excellent set-up for a story. You have an institution (prison, mental ward, school, army) that’s running smoothly, then you bring in a dangerous character who upsets the balance of the group. Conflict is built into the premise, since the establishment will want to regain control over the disrupting individual, which means that a lot of the scenes will write themselves (I’ve found that when you introduce natural conflict into a story, scenes write themselves).

3) How to name a villain – This is well-known device, but I’ll repeat it here anyway. To name your villain, find a negative and/or scary word, then move a few letters around until you get something that sounds similar. “Hatchet” is the operative word here, of course. The writers turned that into Nurse “Ratched.”

4) Ironic villains are typically the best villains – Nurse Ratched is one of the best villains in the history of cinema. But is it because she’s an outward bitch? Because she’s always mean? No. Nurse Ratched is actually quite logical. She’s also calm, and she genuinely wants to help everyone. Her motivation is noble. Had Nurse Ratched had a “Wicked Witch of the West” scowl the second we met her, the character would’ve been infinitely less interesting. This is yet another example of writing villains the OPPOSITE of what you’d expect a villain to be.

5) The dialogue before the storm – One of the things a lot of screenwriting books tell you to do (and I’ve said this too) is to start as late into a scene as possible. For example, if two partners are meeting to talk about their failing business, you’d cut to them in an office with the first line being, “How did we get here?” The thing is, you don’t always want to do that. If you do, your script will start to feel rigid and lifeless. Instead, write in some “dialogue before the storm” to give the illusion of “real” conversation. So when McMurphy is called in to the President’s office to discuss why he’s here at the ward, we don’t start with, “Why don’t you tell me why you’re here, Mr. McMurphy.” We start with McMurphy noticing a fishing photo on the president’s desk and asking him about it. It’s a slightly awkward conversation, since the president wasn’t prepared to talk about the photo, but more importantly, it felt natural. I wouldn’t use this approach in every scene. But you should do it every now and then to create the illusion of reality.

6) Give us one scene that encapsulates the world the protagonist is now in – In the “Institution Disruption” flick, it’s vital that you write a scene that shows the audience exactly what kind of world we’re in. One of the first scenes in “Cuckoo’s Nest” is McMurphy taking part in his first “Group Therapy” session. In it, one of the characters starts yelling at another. Another one quickly breaks down. Another one starts rocking back and forth. Everybody else takes sides, until everyone’s either screaming or yelling or arguing or rocking or making noises. McMurphy looks around at all this chaos. It’s at that moment that we know exactly what kind of world we’re in.

7) Mid-point shift – Remember that the mid-point shift is the moment in your script (roughly the middle of the movie) where something happens that SHIFTS the story in a slightly different direction. Without it, your script will start to feel redundant. The mid-point shift in “Cuckoo’s Nest” happens subtly, when McMurhpy brags to one of the guards that he’s getting out in two months. The guard corrects him. His prison sentence may have had two months left on it. But here at the mental ward, they can keep you… forever. McMurphy’s world is rocked. He had no idea that was the case. Now his “goal” shifts from “act crazy” to “escape.”

8) How to build characters in an ensemble – When you have a bunch of characters in a group, you don’t have time to explore them all. But each of them must still be memorable. To achieve this, give each of them ONE DOMINANT MEMORABLE TRAIT and then keep hitting on that trait throughout the script. One of the patients believes he’s smarter than everyone and looks down on the other patients as a result. Another is the “village idiot” who just smiles all the time. Another just wants everybody to get along. Another has zero self-confidence and is afraid to speak up. When you don’t find that trait, the character will disappear. Christopher Lloyd is actually in “Cuckoo’s Nest,” but you don’t remember him because they didn’t give him a specific trait. You can find this approach in Cuckoo’s Nest, Toy Story, Cool Hand Luke, Shawshank and many other films.

9) The anti-hero method for saving the cat – Anti-heroes shouldn’t save the cat like traditional heroes. Their saving should be a little more complicated. In fact, they might even kick the cat a few times before saving it. If you write them doing something overly nice in a way that’s completely out of character, the story will ring false and the audience will turn on you. The “Save the Cat” moment in Cuckoo’s Nest is when McMurphy tries to befriend the deaf and dumb giant, “Chief.” It’s his support of the character when nobody else supports him, that earns him our sympathy. The amateur writer probably would’ve written this scene with somebody bullying Chief, and McMurphy stepping in to save him. FORCED! Instead, what does McMurphy do? He makes fun of Chief! He does an offensive “How” impression of an Indian. Then does an even more offensive Indian dance to get him to react. It isn’t until later, when he teaches Chief to play basketball, that he starts to help him.

10) Writing a friendship into a story – There’s something about writing a friendship into a story that is so powerful if done right. From McMurhpy and Chief here, to Ratso and Joe Buck in Midnight Cowboy, to Red and Andy in Shawshank, to Vasquez and Drake in Aliens. When you do this, for whatever reason, it makes us like the characters twice as much. You guys are welcome to hypothesize on why this is, but all I know is that watching Chief and McMurhpy become friends made me like each of them that much more.

Genre: Fantasy/Family
Premise: (from IMDB) A vindictive fairy is driven to curse an infant princess only to realize the child may be the only one who can restore peace.
About: Malificent is one of the more daring movies Disney has ever released. As the title implies, the film is centered around one of the most famous villains of all time, Sleeping Beauty’s “Malificent.” For Disney to center a film around a villain is one thing, but to center it around a character this evil is a surprising move. Releasing the film in the middle of the year’s biggest movie season is yet another gamble. You’re competing against X-Men, Spider men, and really muscular men, all with bigger fan bases. I have to admit I’m fascinated by this choice, and am eager to see if anyone shows up. Writer Linda Woolverton has been writing for Disney forever. She wrote 2010’s Alice in Wonderland as well as the classics, The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast. In other words, if you’re going to do something daring with a Disney property, this is the woman you want writing it.
Writer: There’s no title page here, but this draft looks to have been written by Linda Woolverton. Disney favorite John Lee Hancock helped with rewrites on later drafts.
Details: 110 pages (unknown draft)

One of the age-old questions in screenwriting has been, “How do you make an audience root for an unlikable hero?” It’s easy to make someone root for an underdog like Forrest Gump or Wall-E. It’s not as easy to make them root for Captain Jack Sparrow or Cool Hand Luke. This question resurfaced when I heard they were having a hard time coming up with a Boba Fett spin-off film for the Star Wars franchise. Boba Fett is a bad guy. How do you make him the hero?

This argument typically parlays itself into the emergence of an antihero. In those cases our protagonist is just as bad as he is good, which makes us a little more uncomfortable about rooting for him. If you do this right, you can create a classic character. Everyone loves themselves a Jack Sparrow. But the ingredients are trickier to mix with anti-heroes. An extra dash here or a tiny spill there can be the difference between a perfect protagonist and a despicable one. Let’s find out which side of the forest Maleficent ended up on.

Now, I haven’t seen Sleeping Beauty in maybe 20 years. So I had to do some Wikipedia searching to catch up. But I realized this is basically Maleficent’s side of the Sleeping Beauty story. Maleficent starts out as a young, winged fairy who’s bigger than all the other fairies for some reason. She’s infatuated with a boy named Stefan, and it looks like they’re going to fall in love and get married.

That’s until he betrays her and joins the Human Land. After becoming chummy with the humans, Stefan tries to go back and kill Maleficent (man, that romance ended quickly), but instead is only able to clip off her wings. My man, Stefan. That was a baaaaad move. A wingless Maleficent is an angry Maleficent.

Many years later, Stefan becomes king (after standing by while the real king chokes to death – classy move) and has a child. This child’s name is Aurora (Aurora is the name of Sleeping Beauty. Did you know that? I didn’t. I thought her actual name was “Sleeping Beauty”). After a confusing array of events, a fairy casts a spell on Aurora that says when she turns 16, she’ll fall into a deep sleep and won’t wake up until her true love kisses her.

Afraid of Maleficent, Stefan hides Aurora in the forest with the fairies until she’s 16. But that incredibly genius idea turns out to backfire, since Maleficent lives in a hut only a short walk away. The two eventually meet up (ON PAGE 75 – THREE-QUARTERS OF THE WAY INTO THE STORY), and Maleficent actually ends up liking Aurora.

The two become friends, however, when Aurora turns 16, she falls into that deep sleep. Maleficent realizes she’s screwed, since there’s no one in the land whose kiss can wake her up. Which means she’ll have to find another solution. Whatever will that solution be….?

Before we even get to the antihero stuff, I have to say how freaking messy the structure of this script was. It kept jumping forward in time over and over again. No story was able to start as just when we’d get close to something happening, we’d jump again. We jump from Maleficent’s teenage years, to her young adult years. And then Stefan has Aurora, and SHE has to grow up, so we have to bumble through another 16 years. Which is why it took until page 75(!) before our two key characters even met!

I think that’s insane. Whenever you write a script, one of the key decisions you have to make is where to start your story. The idea is to start as CLOSE TO THE ‘KEY STORY’ as possible. The further back you start from that moment, the more mud you have to drag the reader through to get to the good stuff.

Take Die Hard for example. We could’ve started that movie back in New York. We could’ve watched John and his wife get married, have kids, fight, her get the job in LA, leave, see him alone for awhile, AND THEN show him come to Los Angeles. But how boring would it have been to slog through all of that? Instead, we started with John showing up in LA so we could get to the good stuff as soon as possible.

To me, the story here is Maleficent and Aurora. So why are we only getting to that on page 75? I understand that the movie is called “Maleficent” and they probably want to explore how she became this evil person, but to have to sit through 5 time bumps just to get to the good stuff? That feels sloppy to me. And the truth is, they didn’t even do a good job explaining how she became evil. Stefan betrayed her, but she was already a bitch before that.

Look at another fairy tale, Shrek. The timeline for that was three days! You can have time jumps in a script, of course, but you should try to contain them inside the first 15 pages if possible. Whether it be with Up or Frozen, we pass all the time we need to pass immediately, and then we can get to the story.

Now, on to the question of the day. How was Maleficent as an antihero? This is how I saw it: I never learned why Maleficent was a bitch. She hated humans from the beginning of the script, so I didn’t gain any understanding of why she was who she was. It’s not that I NEED to know that with every character. But this script is practically screaming the fact that it’s going to tell us this girl’s origins. So why aren’t we learning her origins?

Eventually Stefan steals her wings and becomes the king, setting him up as our “true” villain in the story. But I didn’t think he was any worse than Maleficent. A trick to making an audience like an antihero is to write a villain that’s way worse than him/her. We’ll want the villain to go down so much that we won’t mind rooting for a “bad” hero. But again, these two seemed about the same to me (with a VERY SLIGHT advantage going to Maleficent), so I didn’t have a rooting interest.

It seems to me that this story is banking on the fact that you know the Sleeping Beauty story like the back of your hand, and therefore will wait patiently until the Maleficent/Aurora storyline arrives. But since this will be for children, will these children have seen Sleeping Beauty? Likewise, will the parents remember it well enough (again, I forgot that Aurora was the name of Sleeping Beauty)? I don’t know. We’ll have to see.

One thing I’ll give credit to Disney for is taking a chance. This is unlike anything they’ve ever done before. And with all the money they’re making lately (no one’s making more bank than Disney these days), they should be taking chances. Unfortunately, I don’t think this chance paid off, UNLESS John Lee Hancock did an Almost Page 1 rewrite on it. We’ll have to see. But I’ll ask you guys in the meantime, especially parents with children. Are you interested in seeing this film?

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

What I learned: Dichotomy with anti-heroes – The trick with anti-heroes is to give them ONE GOOD THING they’ve got going for them (so there’s SOMETHING to root for), and then one element of darkness. That dichotomy of light and dark is what makes these characters so fascinating. A lot of the time, the “good trait” is humor (Jack Sparrow, Tony Stark, Cool Hand Luke, Randle McMurphy from Cuckoo’s Nest). And the “darkness” is self-destructive behavior (Henry Hill, Jordan Belforte). In extreme cases, the darkness is sociopathic or even psychotic behavior (Patrick Bateman from American Psycho). If you don’t have that perfect light/dark balance with your antihero, chances are, we’re not going to care about them. I’m not saying I didn’t care for Maleficent, but she definitely wasn’t interesting enough to keep me engaged the entire read.