Who says Civil War gets to be the only film about a modern day civil war?

Genre: Black Comedy
Premise: A recently heartbroken resident of LA hipster neighborhood, Los Feliz, is called into battle when the civil war that has been ravaging America finally reaches his doorstep.
About: Today’s writer, Sam Zvibelman, is best known for creating the highly niche yet beloved “Pen15.”  I’d heard about the show, which follows two 7th graders trying to make it through those tough years of junior high.  But I couldn’t for the life of me get past the bizarre decision to have full-grown adults play the 7th graders.  I know that people who love this show claim that’s why it’s great but some creative choices are too weird for me and this was one of them.  I’m open to people convincing me otherwise in the comments, though.  So if you loved Pen15, give it your best shot!
Writer: Sam Zvibelman
Details: 96 pages

Pat-attack for Neil?

Welcome to Civil War meets 1917 meets Edge of Tomorrow meets Juno.

Today’s script asks a question that I don’t think has ever been asked in movies before. A question so deep, so poignant, that the answer could rip apart the very fabric of space and time.

What would a hipster war look like?

There are a handful of ways to write a good script. But one of the best ways is to find a new spin on something old. War has been around forever. But nobody’s seen a war come to Los Feliz.

Los Feliz, by the way, is a giant hipster paradise in LA. You need 3 of the 5 to be able to enter the area: ripped jeans, tattoos, a handmade bag, those earrings that stretch your earlobes to quadruple their size, and a cynicism so deep that you can only pet puppy dogs ironically.

Los Feliz is in this weird section of the city, about 20 minutes east of West Hollywood, that feels like a dozen giants mashed up 50 blocks of space into 20. Half of it is crammed into the hills, and the streets up there are so twisty turny that nobody knew how to make it out of them until GPS arrived.

30-something Neil Mudd hasn’t gotten off his couch in weeks. This EVEN THOUGH a civil war began in the country three months ago. The thing is, the war was mainly relegated to the east coast and midwest. Up until this point, California’s been able to stay out of the fray.

That all changes when a plane crashes into a bunch of houses just down the street from Neil. The war is finally here. By the way, the whole reason Neil’s been moping around is that his ex-girlfriend, Emma, doesn’t want him back. Oh, and Emma just so happens to be the leader of the Resistance, aka the “Union.” So everywhere Neil goes, Emma’s face is all over the place.

Neil writes for a local Los Feliz paper but ever since the Emma breakup, he’s got writer’s block. His boss, Jacob, keeps begging him to come back and write. “People need to hear your voice right now!” “I’ve got writer’s block,” Neil proclaims. “During a war??”

As the war around Los Feliz heats up, Sean Penn and Jane Fonda, both major figures in the Union, come to Neil and ask him to head across enemy lines to deliver a critical message to the Union leader (aka, his ex-girlfriend). Neil resists at first, but when an abandoned horse named Guernica starts randomly hanging outside his place, he decides to join forces with the horsie and deliver that message!

Neil and Guernica unexpectedly become best friends as they endure their adventure across war-torn Los Feliz. Neil runs into a midget who fights for the other side (the Founders) and becomes temporary frenimies with him. He runs into his ex, who claims to know nothing about the mission he’s been sent on. And he also runs into his best friend from childhood, who’s become this script’s version of Civil War’s Jesse Plemons. As his journey winds down, Neil will have to figure out his most important battle – breaking free of his writer’s block. That way, he can write the words that just may save the Union, at least in Los Feliz.

Love and War and Guernica is kind of like Civil War in that it doesn’t really take a political side. It definitely demeans the evil conservative empire but it also makes fun of the fact that if war ever came to California, it would be up to a bunch of “liberal snowflakes” to defend the state and maybe that isn’t encouraging. In the end, I liked that it kept it all funny and light. It never gets mean-spirited. And that’s due to the writer’s voice, which is strong throughout.

This script reminded me of the value of adding HUMANITY to a screenplay. I’ve been reading so many paint-by-numbers thin-charactered scripts lately and you know EXACTLY where they’re going to go within the first ten pages. You see the entire movie in your head and don’t even need to read on.

But this script was different. There’s soul here. The writer is leaving his heart on the page. That’s worth something. And, as far as the plot goes, Neil achieves his goal (delivering the message to Emma) by page 65. So I had no idea where the script was going next. In fact, I didn’t know where it was going before that.

Sam Zvibleman keeps us entertained with a steady diet of offbeat humor. There’s this funny ongoing joke about how unsympathetic everyone is to Neil’s writer’s block. “How can you have writer’s block during a war?!” Neil is so devoid of any warring skills that he has to search YouTube for how to ride a horse. You’ve got Sean Penn showing up in the movie. On the one hand, I dislike celebrity cameos, but I think Sam is dead-on accurate with this one. Sean Penn would definitely be the face of the Union should a civil war come to Los Angeles.

In fairness, the script is messy. But it’s messy in the good way. Not the bad way. What do I mean by that? Most messiness comes from sloppiness and laziness when putting a plot together. The messiness here comes more from a lot of ideas. Our hero is trying to get over his ex. His ex is the leader of the resistance. We’ve got the writer’s block thing. There’s this “Paul Revere” theme running throughout the movie. There’s this relationship with this horse. We’re not sure if Sean Penn and Jane Fonda are real.

The reason it still works though is because each individual idea is fun. And Sam writes with this charming energy where you forgive all of the bumps and bruises. Also, the way he connects certain threads are quite clever. For example, our hero isn’t just delivering an important message a la 1917. He has to deliver it to HIS EX-GIRLFRIEND who he still pines for. That gives the objective extra stakes. Extra emotion.

Not to keep ripping on Rebel Moon Part 2 but when I said it was thin and that it reeked of a first draft, that’s what I meant by it. Zack Synder could never, in a million years, connect two plot threads like that in a clever way because he can’t be bothered. It’s not interesting to him to go deeper, to find those more exciting story avenues.

Continuing my month-long crusade of highlighting script dialogue (I encourage you to buy my new book on dialogue, the best dialogue book available in the world!), today’s script has a wonderful example of tips number 132 and 133, which cover dialogue “agitators.” Agitators are anything you place in a scene that complicate the conversation your characters are having. I talk about how a strategically chosen location can be a great agitator, which is exactly what Sam does here.

Our hero, Neil, finally gets to his ex-girlfriend, Emma. Note how this scene could’ve happened anywhere. They could’ve put it outside at a coffee shop, inside a bedroom, in the back of a car. But no. We use AN AGITATOR to give the scene more life. In this case, that agitator is A WAR GOING ON IN THE BACKGROUND.

Sam even took my tip to the next level. The agitator creates a layer of irony over the scene. Their talk is thick with subtext and “elephant-in-the-room” conflict (Tip #134!). That heaviness plays humorously as those heavy pauses are accompanied by people dramatically dying in the background.

This scene is a great representation of this writer and of his script. It’s more thoughtful than the average script on the Black List for sure and should’ve finished way higher than it did. In my annual end-of-the-year Black List re-ranking post, I predict this will finish in the top 10.

The only reason it doesn’t score that elusive “impressive” that I rarely award these days is that there were a few threads in the story that annoyed me. There’s way too much emphasis placed on Neil’s friends’ religious book. I had no idea why someone else’s book mattered in a script that had much more pressing goals to accomplish (winning a war, getting back your ex-girlfriend). Yet this book (that wasn’t even Neil’s!!) gets the third biggest storyline in the film. Come on.

To get that ‘impressive,’ I would’ve needed a simpler more streamlined narrative where we focus on the things that matter and nothing more. But it’s still way above most of these other scripts on the Black List. I tried to read that fruit one (where every woman’s name is a fruit) and it was borderline unintelligible. Yet somehow it got 13 more votes than this? Time for the Black List to rework its rating system or it will continue to be up to me to fix it at the end of every year. :)

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

What I learned: Know when to hold’em, know when to fold’em (subplots). Subplots are necessary in every script. But one of the worst things you can do is put too many in your script. Because what happens is every subplot TAKES TIME AWAY from the bigger plotlines. So when the reader is stuck reading some second-rate subplot that doesn’t have a huge effect on the story, they get restless. Or even angry. So choose those subplots carefully. Only include them if they’re REALLY DOING SOMETHING for your script. We could’ve gotten rid of Jacob’s religious book here and this script loses nothing. It actually gains something since we’d no longer have to endure it.

Have you been struggling with your dialogue? I have over (that’s right, OVER) 250 dialogue tips in my new book, “The Greatest Dialogue Book Ever Written.” You can head over to Amazon and buy the book, right now!

Also, you’ve got ONE WEEK left to enter The Tagline Showdown! Details Below.

The Greatest Dialogue Book Ever Written is a quick read and will revolutionize your dialogue. If you’ve EVER received notes on your screenplay like, “Your dialogue is too on-the-nose,” “There’s way too much exposition in this script,” or “Your dialogue is too bland,” then you need to buy this book right now. Honestly, just ten of the tips in this book are going to put you ahead of 75% of other screenwriters. To think you get 240 more AFTER that? I mean, come on, it’s the deal of the century. So head over to Amazon and grab it!

Also, don’t forget that we have Logline Showdown coming up at the end of next week. So get your entries in. I need your title, genre, logline, and also your *movie tagline*. Some notable movie taglines from the past…

“Live. Die. Repeat.” -Edge of Tomorrow

“If you see only one movie this summer . . . see Star Wars! But if you see two movies this summer, see Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me”

“If at first you don’t succeed, lower your standards.” -Tommy Boy

“The True Story of a Real Fake” -Catch Me If You Can

What: Tagline Showdown
I need your: Title, Genre, Logline, and Movie Tagline
Competition Date: Friday, April 26th
Deadline: Thursday, April 25th, 10pm Pacific Time
Where: Send your submissions to carsonreeves3@gmail.com

Genre: Comedy
Premise: When their embarrassing, sometimes filthy, possibly cancellable group chat falls into the wrong hands, a group of dudes must go on a madcap scavenger hunt around town to appease a mysterious blackmailer.
About: This script finished on last year’s Black List. The writers got their first big Hollywood job not long ago, writing Hotel Transylvania 4.
Writers: Amos Vernon and Nunzio Randazzo
Details: 120 pages

Donald Glover should be in this movie in some capacity.

I like this idea.

I like ideas that lean into recent culture.

I also like ideas that are relatable. When you read them, you nod your head, immediately understanding what the movie could be.

That’s how I felt when I read this logline. I’ve been on some pretty gnarly group texts. They can get saucy. Sometimes too saucy. What if one of those group texts got out into the ultra-senstive ecosystem that is America in 2024? It wouldn’t be pretty.

So that strikes me as a genuine high-stakes scenario.

Let’s find out what the writers did with it.

Studly Chance, Hipster Wyatt, Trainwreck Mitchell, and Preppy Dennis have been friends since high school. That’s when they started their group chat – Da Boyz. Cut to a decade later and they still have that group chat. It’s their favorite guilty pleasure. Whenever one of them wants to say something inappropriate that they cannot say in the world, they post in Da Boyz group chat, where they know it will be appreciated.

But the Boyz have a problem. Chance, who became an actor, has shot his first big movie, “Robo Zorro.” This is his coming out party. So he invites his friends to Hollywood to party on the weekend of the premiere. Chance has one request: We need to delete the group chat. There’s too much dirty crap on there. It’s the only thing in the world that can destroy his career. So the friends reluctantly have a funeral for the group chat.

They then get absolutely wasted and have the time of their lives at Chance’s house party. The next morning, however, they wake up and get a call. Some psycho has stolen Mitchell’s phone and has the group chat. Turns out stupid Mitchell didn’t delete the chat as instructed. And now texts are being released to TMZ.

Some of them are small: Chance stated in the group chat when he got the Robo Zorro audition that it was the dumbest sounding movie ever.

Some of them big: He only tried to get the role to get into the pants of Hollywood starlet Dipti Bardot, who has since become his girlfriend.

Our phone thief tells them that in order to prevent more leaked texts, they have to do what he says. So he tells them to go to the LA zoo and beat up a Komodo dragon. He tells them to go to the Dodgers game and pierce their nipples behind home plate. All of this while Chance’s publicist tears through the city trying to find the phone thief.

After a little detective work, they find out that the thief is an Andrew Tate type who they ran into at the party. Some crypto-loving gym rat who takes pictures with Bugatis and Samurai swords. Once they figure that out, they target his favorite 10 million dollar sword, thinking if they can steal it, they can make a trade for the phone. But nothing will prepare them for why this weirdo is actually doing this. They may know this man better than they think they do.

Blow Up The Chat starts out strong. I thought this early high school scene that introduces the group chat was funny. The teacher in the class has a rule that when students text, she reads the texts out loud to the class…

After that scene, I assumed the whole script would take place in high school cause why not? You just wrote a hilarious scene with a group of high school kids, proving you know how to make high school dialogue funny. Why move away from that? Stay with what’s working!

Cause once they became adults, their interactions were never as funny as that first scene. We see this a lot, don’t we? Wasn’t this my exact note in the last two comedy scripts I reviewed? The first scenes were funny and then nothing was ever as funny after that.

This is a FIXABLE THING. It happens because we obsess over our first scene and make sure it’s amazing. But the idea is not then to say, “Okay, I can relax now.” No, that scene then has to be the bar by which you try to clear with all your subsequent scenes. You want to try and outdo yourself. Not set your Script Tesla on cruise control.

Most scripts are average purely because the writers don’t have that “bar-topping” attitude.

In addition to this, the script didn’t approach its plot correctly. For a large chunk of the movie, the characters aren’t even going after the goal – which is to find the thief and get the phone back. They’re taking his marching orders and doing wherever he says to do. Reactive characters rarely work. Imagine if, in The Hangover, our characters didn’t spend the first half of the movie trying to find Doug. But rather went off on some other adventure. It would drift. It would feel lost. That’s the equivalent of how this narrative feels.

I suppose you could argue that this villain has the phone and therefore has the control. So he’s going to use it. But that was another problem. I never felt the stakes of this story. If they didn’t do what he said, he would release more information? But he’s already released a bunch of information. What’s to make us believe that this next bunch of information he releases will be worse? We don’t know for sure. So we don’t feel the stakes.

The best scene in the movie is one where the writers finally recognize the power of their concept and lean into it. This is almost always where you find your best scenes – when you lean directly into your concept.

Once our villain has Da Boyz in front of him, he tells them, sure, I’ll give you the phone back. But first, I want to share with you your SIDE CHATS. Side chats? The guys all look at each other. What’s that mean? The villain then starts reading the chats that are happening without Dennis. Or without Chance. Or Wyatt. Or Mitchell. In these chats, the guys talk behind each others’ backs.

Now we’re actually getting into some conflict. We’re getting away from the surface level stuff and going deeper. It’s the kind of revelation that is specific to this concept – a group of people texting. I wish there were more thoughtful plot beats like this.

Cause I pretty much checked out when a scene was built around them having to pierce each others’ nipples. It just became so overtly goofy that I knew the characters were safe. That nothing mattered anymore. You can make a scene SO MUCH FUNNIER by upping the stakes. I didn’t understand why we went in the opposite direction.

I’m not Captain Delete It with Blow Up The Chat. But like a lot of comedy scripts I read, the writers are more focused on having fun than they are writing the best comedy possible. Comedy needs tight structure to set up the scenarios that are going to make us laugh. And here, especially with the zoo scene and Dodgers game, it felt like the writers came up with the idea a minute ago and wrote one draft and that was it. It didn’t feel like they really thought through all the comedy scenarios and asked, “Is this the funniest scenario I can write?”

So, sadly, it wasn’t for me.

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

What I learned: This is the kind of concept where you need to ask if a dark comedy is a better vessel for the story than a straight comedy. This script always had one hand tied behind its back because it wasn’t willing to expose the kinds of texts that people would REALLY WRITE. The kind of texts that would REALLY CANCEL someone. But if you wrote this as a dark comedy, you could be more realistic about that stuff and have truly horrid texts. It would’ve been a different movie. But it would’ve been A WAY MORE TRUTHFUL MOVIE. And TRUTH is preferred in writing. Readers can tell when you’re fibbing.

This script has GSU for days. But does it have logic for hours??

 

Genre: Action
Premise: Following a severe, soon to be fatal, brain injury during a violent attack, an NYPD sergeant embarks on a harrowing journey of vengeance, which leaves her only a few hours of adrenaline-bursting consciousness to hunt down those who took her daughter and killed her husband before she dies.
About: Today’s writer, who got this script on last year’s Black List, has had some notable success as a TV scribe. He wrote on the Ridley Scott show, Raised by Wolves. He wrote on The Flash. And he wrote 19 episodes of the well-reviewed show, White Collar.
Writer: Julian Meiojas
Details: 110 pages

Alicia Vikander for Izzy?

A long time ago I wrote a time-travel script called “The Jump.”

It was about a guy whose wife disappears and he soon finds out she’s been kidnapped into the future. So he seeks out the people who can time jump and travels into the future to get her back.

For a variety of reasons (many of which weakened the script considerably), my main character was dying of a brain tumor. He only had a couple of days to live. The idea was, not only did he have to go to the future to rescue his wife. He had a limited time to do so, as his tumor was days away from killing him. But I always ran up against this issue of: if he was days away from dying of a brain tumor, how did he have all this energy to run around and save his wife?

These days, I would never have included the stupid brain tumor thing. I’ve realized, after reading thousands of scripts, that stuff like that overcomplicates what should be a simple narrative. If I could time travel in real life I’d go back and tell Past Carson to get rid of the brain tumor immediately.

The reason I bring it up is because today’s script is dealing with the same issue I was dealing with: how do you write a believable action movie around a highly mobile character whose sickness will kill her within hours?

Did Die Fast figure out the solution to that problem? Let’s find out.

Izzy is a 37 year old Brooklyn cop. She’s got a 14 year old daughter, Lola, who’s inherited her angry teenage rebellion stage a bit early. She’s getting in fights at school (in a very 2024 character beat, they are making fun of her sexuality). And boy would that get worse if she knew the truth about who her father was. He’s a famous bank robber who’s currently appealing a 60 year prison sentence.

Meanwhile, she’s dealing with her stepdad, David, who she kind of gets along with. Izzy and David are actually on the fence about whether they should tell Izzy the truth about her father when the two of them are attacked at their house. Some masked men want money although it’s not clear what money they’re talking about. They kill David and toss her out the window.

Three days later, Izzy wakes up in the hospital. She’s told that she has a critical brain injury and only has 5 hours to live. Even worse, the cops’ operating thesis is that SHE killed David. Luckily for Izzy, this unique brain injury allows for a final burst of energy before death. So Izzy is actually operating in an almost superhuman state. As soon as the doctors leave the room, she’s out of there.

Izzy only wants to accomplish two things before her death. One, go find her daughter, as she assumes that whoever came after her and David will come after Lola next. And two, get revenge on the people who killed her husband. This will be complicated by the fact that Izzy used to run with some sketchy cats before she became a cop. I’m not a psychic or anything but something tells me that bank robber dude had something to do with this. So get ready Bank Robber Dude. Izzy’s coming.

In regards to our “Is it possible to believably create an action character who’s hours away from dying” question, I must admit the writer did a good job.

Let’s be honest. There is no medical scenario on record that would support what happens to Izzy here. But with some fairly convincing exposition based on, what sounds like, sound research, I believed it enough to retain my suspension of disbelief.

So all’s good in the hood, right?

I would say more all’s average in the hood.

This movie is Crank. It’s a woman with a ticking time bomb in her head on a tear. And it’s hard to make a plotline that simple stand out.

However, we do have a recent comp that did stand out! I’m talking about David L. Williams’, “Clementine.”

So what was the difference between these two scripts that made that one so good and this one so average? The answers aren’t sexy. It comes back to nuts and bolts screenwriting.

David wrote a script meant to be enjoyed. Julian is writing a script that he’s trying to impress readers with.

What does that mean in layman’s terms? It means one guy is trying too hard.

Take a look at some of these lines from today’s script…

She finds an UNCONSCIOUS GUARD. Another gorehole mouth — the kiss of a shotgun’s ass. She pulse checks. Got it. Moves on.

Enter DET. OMAR NAZARIAN, 30s, fly-boy swag, but look close and you’ll see spit-up on this father-of-4’s Air Force 1s.

It’s overly specific try-hard too-cool-for-school writing, which often results in reader “double-takes” (the reader has to re-read sentences to understand them). When you’re writing a script like this one that is so reliant on its fast pace, double-take lines are script killers. Cause they create a stuttering effect that destroys the very pacing you’re going for.

The overwriting gets a little better as the script goes on. But not enough for my taste.

Also, I liked the character of Clementine more. Izzy was kind of annoying. She feels too written. Not authentic enough. Clementine felt like a real person.

How much you like the main character has an enormous effect on how you experience the rest of the story. In this case, if I had to give the Izzy character a 1 out of 10 rating for likability, I would give her a 6. With Clementine, I would give her a 9. That difference changes the ENTIRE WAY the reader experiences the script. Because when you like a character that much, you just care more about every story beat, every twist and turn, every character achievement.

Another thing that David did better was he put his characters in these situations that you thought there was NO WAY IN THE WORLD they were going to get out of. So you had to keep reading to find out if they would.

Here, every single time Izzy got in a tough situation, I knew without blinking she would be okay. There’s a scene where she takes on 10 guys in a hallway and I knew before the first one came at her that she was fine.

Look, I know that in 99.9% of movies, the hero makes it to the end. But there’s a special skill in screenwriting wherein, even though the reader inherently knows this, you have the ability to make them constantly DOUBT that it’s going to happen. And the way you do that is to put them in these scenarios that genuinely feel impossible to get out of. This script never passed that test.

Moving on to DIALOGUE…

This month I’m celebrating the release of my new dialogue book, The Greatest Dialogue Book Ever Written. So I wanted to cover some from Die Fast.

One of the things I talk about in the book is that certain genres aren’t conducive to writing dialogue. Fast-moving action films are squarely in that department. We see that here. There isn’t a lot of memorable dialogue and that’s because there’s no room for it.

Dialogue, I’ve learned, needs a runway to get going.

It’s hard to write good dialogue if all your dialogue scenes are three-quarters of a page long. There’s not enough runway to build a good conversation.

The only long dialogue scenes you get to write in these action scripts are exposition-driven. For example, there’s a scene late in the script where Izzy tells Lola the truth about her father. It’s a long scene but it’s all backstory. It’s not the kind of dialogue you can add flash or flair to. It’s just expository.

The good news is, if you’re bad at dialogue, then this is the perfect type of script for you to write. Because the dialogue requirements are minimal. You just need to know how to write exposition. Luckily, there’s an entire chapter about how to write great exposition in my book. So go buy it!

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

What I learned: We’ve hit the tipping point for “ass-kicking girl” scripts. They’re done. There are too many of them out there and it’s diluted their entertainment value. Plus, they don’t do very well at the box office. The last hope is Ballerina, the John Wick spinoff movie. If that does well, they may have a second life. But if I were a writer right now who likes the action genre, I’m writing an “ass-kicking guy” script.  Unless.  UNLESS!  You have a totally fresh new inventive take on the “ass-kicking girl” formula.

What I learned 2: How do you deal with difficult-to-buy-into scenarios such as people who can run around like Chris Hemsworth despite the fact that they’re supposedly going to drop dead in 5 hours? This script gives you a pretty good blueprint. Do as much research as possible to find the most convincing explanation for your wild scenario. Write a scene that incorporates that exposition. Then just GET THE F**K ON WITH YOUR SCRIPT. Don’t look back. Just go. Cause the more people think about it, the less they’ll believe it. So it’s best to address it as convincingly as you can, move on to the fun, and never stop. Cause if we’re having fun all the way through your story, we’re not thinking about the medical accuracy of your concept.

Have you been struggling with your dialogue? I have over (that’s right, OVER) 250 dialogue tips in my new book, “The Greatest Dialogue Book Ever Written.” You can head over to Amazon and buy the book, right now!

And I feel fine

The movie we were promised

Alex Garland’s “Civil War” pulled in 25 million dollars this weekend. On the surface, that seems like an average number. But when you look deeper, it’s staggeringly high.

This is independent studio A24’s biggest opening ever. The whole reason it’s an A24 film is that it’s an indie movie. Despite the way it promotes itself, which I’ll talk about in a bit, it’s a character piece about photojournalists. Most of the movie takes place away from the war. So, for a film like that to pull in 25 million dollars is gigantic. It rarely happens.

Now, I love Garland so I very much flirted with seeing this. But I ended up deciding not to. I’ll share with you why later. It does come down to a screenwriting choice Garland made, which is usually how it goes with me.

But before we talk about that, I wanted to discuss the marketing of this film. Cause the marketing is what allowed the film to achieve its unprecedented box office. And yet that marketing is deceptive.

It’s deceptive because this movie is not about a civil war. It’s about photojournalists. The negative reactions coming out of the film almost all revolve around the frustration of thinking they were going to get a movie about a civil war when, in actuality, they got a movie about how difficult it is to be a war photographer.

This is one of Hollywood’s best tricks. They know when they have a movie that if they marketed it honestly, nobody would show up. So they create a marketing campaign that promotes the aspects of the movie that are marketable, even if those elements are barely in the film.

They’ll even go so far as to misrepresent a movie if they fear that the truth will keep people out of the theater. They did this recently with the campaigns for both Mean Girls and The Color Purple. ZERO MENTION in the trailers of the films being musicals. Cause they feared that if people knew they were musicals, nobody would show up.

This becomes relevant to all screenwriters because, once you finish your screenplay, your job will be similar to the marketers’ jobs when promoting a movie – which is, you’ll have to send loglines to people and pitch people to get them to read your script.

As someone who does around 300 logline consults a year, I am particularly savvy in this department of deception because, often, writers will come to me wanting the sexiest logline possible even though the script itself isn’t sexy. And I’ll help them because I know that a better logline means more read requests.

But I do have the conversation with each and every one of them where I say, “Next time, before you write your script, don’t write the boring version of the script then try to come up with an exciting logline afterwards. Write the exciting version of the script to begin with so that your logline will be an accurate representation of your script. That way you get the best of both worlds.”

Because, inevitably, what happens, is that even if you are able to trick the potential reader into reading your script, there’s a high likelihood that they will leave disappointed because the screenplay you promised them never materialized.

That’s why some people are coming out of this movie disappointed. The negative reviews are almost all the same: “What I was promised never showed up.”

On the flip side of this, this movie shows you the power of concept – and more specifically: TITLE. How the title of a script or a movie can have so much influence over potential readers/viewers.

If you’re an indie writer and you’re tired of writing your indie scripts that no one seems interested in, do what Garland does here: Find a big sexy subject matter then hide your indie story within it.

Imagine, for example, that Garland had written a movie about news photographers trying to get the perfect photograph of drug addicts in drug-infested cities in an attempt to bring attention to the problem and hopefully make a change.

Sounds very noble. Sounds very indie. Sounds like 5 people would show up.

So you can see the difference by changing “drug infested city” to “civil war.” That’s what smart indie writers do. They find that sexy subject matter so that their character-driven scripts have an actual shot at getting noticed.

Ironically, the reason I decided not to see the film was that I heard, ahead of time, that it was not about a civil war. That it was about photographers who just happened to be operating within a civil war. That didn’t sound like an interesting enough movie to me.

The movie we got

And the more I think about it, the more I think Garland made a mistake. This is a movie that, if it would’ve committed to the Civil War angle, it would’ve made twice as much money this weekend.

It’s a reminder that point-of-view is SO IMPORTANT when writing screenplays. Think about it. You have a modern-day American civil war movie. Think about how many points-of-view you have at your disposal. Is a photographer really the most interesting?

You could’ve gone with a suburban mother, a soldier on the front lines, an abandoned child, a spy, a medic, the president of the United States, a drone pilot, a hacker, a farmer, a survivalist, a drug addict, a black market trader, an Uber driver driving people out of the city to safety.

All of those options would’ve been more interesting than a photographer. I’m not even convinced photographers are a thing anymore. We’re way more enamored with videos taken on peoples’ phones in 2024 than we are some amazing picture. This isn’t 1968 yo. The more I think about it, the more flummoxed I am by Garland’s choice.  He’s probably just really interested in photographers. 

But my point is, whenever you’re writing a screenplay, that needs to be one of your primary objectives: figure out what point-of-view is best for this story. Cause, often, we’ll go with what feels easiest to us, or the most familiar. And those aren’t the best options.

I’m still happy for Garland. His movies, while always artistically challenging, rarely connect with audiences. And here, with his last movie ever, he gets his biggest box office payout.

Now Garland is going back to writing, re-building one of his original franchises: 28 Years Later. But don’t count Garland’s directing career out just yet. When you have a clear number 1 movie at the box office, some big people start knocking on your door. However, from what I understand, Garland hates directing more than anything. So he may be able to withstand these mega-offers.

Did any of you see Civil War? What did you think?

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