Is this Tony Gilroy’s Megalopolis?

Genre: Drama
Premise: A womanizing cellist lands a job scoring a new film, prompting reflections on the journey that brought him to this moment.
About: To some, he wrote the best Star Wars material since the original trilogy. To others, he sucked every ounce of fun out of Star Wars and bored the fans to pieces. Well, now that Gilroy is finally finished with a galaxy far far away, he can take us into his obsession with scoring movies with classical music.
Writer: Tony Gilroy
Details: 128 pages

This may be the first time I’ve ever seen a writer write a script for the age 85-100 demographic.

Ho-boy.

I know I shouldn’t say this. Cause it’s going to piss some people off. But I have to be truthful. If I’m not being truthful with you guys then what’s the point?

Tony Gilroy is a REALLY REALLY bad screenwriter.

I’ve always felt like something was off about his writing. This confirms it. There’s a lack of focus to his material that is consistently infuriating. We saw it in Andor. Five full episodes would go by before an important plot point arrived.  Every once in a while in his scripts, he does stumble into a good scene. But, in the meantime, it’s like listening to a homeless man ramble.

And that’s exactly how I would describe this script. A homeless man rambled it off in one sitting.

Oh boy. How do I summarize this plot?

So, there’s this cellist named Alex. And he’s a ladies’ man. He plays in a bunch of different orchestras and makes sure to bang the hottest girls in the orchestras wherever he goes. Honestly, I could stop there and you’d have 98% of the story, lol. I’m not lying. That’s pretty much ALL THAT HAPPENS.

And some of you might say, “Actually, that sounds pretty good to me, Carson. We get to see this guy hook up with all these hot ladies.” No.  No, it’s not. It’s sooooooo boring. We just see him talk to a series of girls over the 20 years he’s been in the orchestra: sometimes before sex, sometimes after sex. And they all fall in love with him but he moves on to the next chick and leaves them behind.

I suppose there’s one special one named Nadia. He had a bang-buddy relationship with her while she was preparing to get married to some other man. And then, 20 years later, she dies. So he goes to her wake and meets some other girl who knew her and the other girl says Nadia’s dying wish was for Alex to have sex with her too. So he does.

And I guess the main storyline is happening in the present. There’s this movie that needs to be scored and Alex is no longer a hotshot cellist. But he’s still really good. So he’s working on the movie.

There are zero stakes to this job. It doesn’t matter if it works out or not. He’ll find work somewhere else tomorrow. Like everything in this movie, we don’t care about the story at all. It actually feels like it was designed to bore readers. I’m not even lying. There’s no other way to explain this atrocity of a screenplay.

The climax has Alex obsessed with a teenager named Viviana, who’s a trip-hop artist. They’ve interacted for like two seconds in the script before this. But now we’re supposed to care that Viviana is taking over for the lead orchestra position in the movie that’s being scored. Without spoiling things, we learn something “shocking” about Viviana and how it relates to Alex. And that’s the movie! The end!

How do you know a script is bad?

There are numerous ways. But I just found a new one! You have no idea what to write for a logline until you read the entire thing. Good movies let you know what the concept is by the end of the first act. This one did not give me that information! Heck, I don’t even know if Behemoth had acts!

How else do you know if a script is bad?

When there’s a car crash in the first twenty pages AND IT DOESN’T HAVE ANY EFFECT ON THE PLOT WHATSOEVER! The Uber driver was even killed! But Alex got a couple of scrapes and bruises and just headed home the next day and the movie continued. WTF????

How else do you know if a script is bad?

The scenes have no structure. You just drift into a conversation between two people with no point. They talk about absolutely nothing that anybody would care about. “Where are you now?” “Boston.  What about you?” “I got a new house.” “You must love it.” “I do.” That’s paraphrased but VERY ACCURATE trust me. 95% of the scenes read like that. It’s either that or this endless montage that Gilroy writes in. We’re whisking from one area to the next.

I have no idea what Tony Gilroy is trying to do here.

Maybe he’s on such an advanced path of screenwriting that he’s five generations ahead of the rest of us and we can’t comprehend how baller his writing is. Maybe in the future, scenes don’t need a point. Who knows?

But come on. Let’s be real here. In the first 60 pages, there is one significant scene between Alex and his lover, Nadia. And then on page 60, we’ve flash-forwarded to Nadia’s wake. And everybody who knew her, including Alex, talks about her and plays music in remembrance of her. And it’s supposed to be this really important moment in the screenplay.

WE KNEW THIS BITCH FOR ONE SCENE!!!

WHO CARES???????

Now, if one other person makes it through this script and therefore knows what happens, they might say to me, “But Carson. That sequence is actually important because it sets up the big reveal at the end of the movie.” No. That only works when the rest of the script is compelling. You don’t get to write a setup on page 60 and write a payoff on page 128 and then fill the rest of your script with rambling conversations and montages and call it a movie.

That’s not how it works.

One of the biggest things I look for when I read a script is something I can tell that the writer slaved over. I can tell that they were OBSESSED with making every scene perfect. OBSESSED with their plotting. OBSESSED with every line of dialogue. OBSESSED with every single word that was written in the script.

You DEFINITELY do not get that feel here at all. You leave this script feeling like… hmmm… what’s the best way to put it? ……… This is the type of script I would expect someone to write who has not had a single person be honest with them for decades. They just assume everything they write is gold. And the irony is, it’s the complete opposite.

Look, I’m guessing this is a writer-director thing. And since Gilroy has 856,921 orgasms describing different classical music pieces in this, it can’t be fully judged until we’re watching it on screen with the music. But I just don’t see how this can possibly overcome such a rambling narrative. It’s sooooooooo all-over-the-place. There is no plot. And you know how I feel about scripts with no plot. They’re narcissistic experiments forced upon the masses. Or, in this case, forced upon the five people who will pay for this movie.

This was not it, guys.

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

What I learned: Give the reader a steady diet of entertaining plot points. This script had one single entertaining plot point. Its ending reveal. That was it! A good script should have a solid plot point, where something interesting happens that moves the story forward in an entertaining way, once every 15 pages.

What I learned 2: Be careful about writing a movie completely on “feels.” No structure. No plan. Just feels. When you do that, you get this, which always feels amazing to you, the writer, cause it’s got all those feels you felt down on the page. But to everyone else, it feels like landing inside the brain of a madman.

I had an insane amount of stuff to do this week so I’m going to include the newsletter here on the site, as well as send it out to everyone. Hope you enjoy!

HALF-OFF SCRIPT NOTES DEAL (ONLY 3 AVAILABLE!!!)
I’m currently working with several produced writer-directors on their screenplays at the moment. Every time I give them notes, they tell me that they’ve never gotten better feedback in their life. “Carson, I went to USC for film school and I learned more about screenwriting from these notes than I did the entire time while I was there.” It’s time to stop fooling around. It’s time to get professional feedback that’s going to change your script’s life. Don’t you want to change your script’s life? Don’t you care about your script? If so, you can get some life-changing notes for half-off. That’s $249 for 4 pages of notes on either a feature or pilot script. I’m going to give the first two deals out to the first two writers who e-mail me. Then I’ll give the last one to the 15th person, just to make sure that if you’re in a different time zone and asleep when I send this newsletter, you still have a shot at it. To get a deal, e-mail me the subject line “249” to carsonreeves1@gmail.com!

As most of you know, I’m a big tennis guy.  I used to compete when I was younger. I played in college. And I even played some smaller professional tournaments out of college, before realizing that I wasn’t ever going to be able to reach the level required to make it on the pro tour. So I said, “I’m going to do something easier. Become a professional screenwriter!” lol.

But I’ve never abandoned tennis. Usually when I work, I have The Tennis Channel playing in the background. I closely follow my favorite players on Instagram. I still play and try to improve parts of my game. I love it! It never gets old.

Part of this love has led me to discover the rapid emergence of tennis-related social media accounts. It became common, if you were a coach for example, to start a Youtube channel and use it to give tips or commentate on the pro tour. This “tennis influencer” industry has opened up a whole new way for tennis aficionados to engage with the sport.

There’s one influencer, in particular, though, who I want to talk about today. His name is Winston Du and he’s one of the more popular dudes on the tennis social media landscape. His channel is based on a very simple premise. He records himself playing against other players and posts the matches on his channel.

Winston’s channel started blowing up several years ago and it’s not hard to figure out why. He’s an affable sweet guy who really enjoys the sport and, when he started, I don’t think many players were recording their matches and posting them. So he benefited from being the first.

For context regarding Winston’s level of play, the USTA uses a 1.0 – 7.0 rating scale. A 1.0 is someone who just picked up a racket yesterday. A 7.0 is Raphael Nadal. By the time Winston started his channel, he was a 3.5. A 3.5 is a level that you can achieve fairly easily if you play 2-3 times a week for a year.

Now, you have to understand that the way tennis works is that you get better by playing better players. Better players hit the ball harder, forcing you to be faster. They put soft shots away, forcing you to hit harder and deeper. They hit their serves bigger, forcing you to improve your reflexes. They’re more consistent, forcing you to improve your own consistency. And they run you around more, forcing you to improve your cardio. The fastest way to become a better player is to play better players.

But the tennis community has this quirky little bug embedded in its system whereby players only want to play against players who are better than them. It’s kind of like dating. Everybody wants to date someone hotter than them. But if no one is dating down, then nobody ever gets together. This makes it difficult to get better in tennis. Cause the better players don’t want to play with you.

How do you circumvent this? You must get lessons, you must practice, you must play matches. In other words, you must BUILD A STRONG FOUNDATION FOR YOUR GAME. The more practice hours you put in, the better you get. The better you get, the better level of coaching you get invited to. The more tournaments you play, the more experience you get. The more you win, the more times you encounter those better players, the ones who push your game to the next level. All of this takes time. Years in fact!

But Winston Du didn’t have to do any of this. He’s found a loophole in the system that allows you to skip to the front of the line. He gets to play against the 200th ranked tennis player in the world simply by having a YouTube channel. He’s been granted instant access to an advanced level of tennis without having to earn his way there.

Now, why am I going on about tennis influencers in a screenwriting newsletter? Because Winston Du’s Youtube channel is the perfect metaphor for what AI does to aspiring screenwriters. Both are shortcuts that grant you instant access to advanced-level output without requiring you to build the foundational skillset that makes that output possible. Just like Winston’s channel became a loophole that let him bypass years of practice and coaching to play elite players, AI is a loophole that lets new screenwriters bypass years of learning to produce professional-looking scripts.

All a new screenwriter has to do to write a scene now is tell AI what the scene is about and it will write it for him.

It sounds like screenwriting utopia. You don’t actually need to learn the craft anymore!

Right?

Well, not so fast. Let’s talk a little more about Winston Du.

Despite Winston having instant access to top level tennis, he hasn’t gotten much better. He started at a 3.5. And now he’s a 4.0 (he says he’s a 4.5 but he’s not). His backhand has gotten a tiny bit better. His forehand’s improved a little. But his serve hasn’t improved at all. His footwork hasn’t improved either. He continues to make basic mistakes, such as running backwards from hard hitters instead of standing his ground. Overall, his game looks very similar to what it was when he started.

Why is that?

I’ll tell you why. Because he never built a foundation. He never had coaching. He never had someone explain to him how a body-to-ball positioning difference of 3 inches can completely change your swing, losing you 20 mph on your shot. He’s never been told the importance of a deep knee bend on a serve. Or how to pronate your wrist to add more power. He’s never done any footwork drills. He only gets as ready as early he needs to instead of getting ready as fast as possible. Nobody’s ever gone over with him the importance of hitting cross-court as opposed to down-the-line.

In other words, Winston Du never had an education. He doesn’t understand what he’s doing or why he’s doing it. He just sees the other players he invites on his channel and tries to mimic them. He’s playing at a level he hasn’t earned the right to inhabit.

This is exactly what’s happening with AI and new screenwriters. Like I said above, AI can write a scene for you. You can give it all the variables along with some direction and it will give you an approximation of the scene you want. You can then go in there and make some changes, turning it more into the scene you want. And, voila, with very little work, you have a scene.

However, if that’s how you learn to write scenes, you haven’t learned anything. Just like Winston, you’re writing at a level you haven’t earned the right to inhabit. Nobody taught you to come into the scene as late as possible and leave as early as possible. Nobody taught you how conflict is the lifeblood of every scene and how you need to identify where that conflict is coming from for the scene to shine. Nobody taught you how to hide exposition in dialogue. Nobody taught you how each character must have a “want” in the scene. You’re just hoping AI figures out all that stuff for you.

And if AI doesn’t include these things, you’ll never know. Cause you never learned it in the first place. So, if the scene isn’t working, you don’t know how to tell AI how to fix it. This is the same scenario Winston is in. If he’s always hitting the ball late, how does he fix it if he never learned all of the reasons why you hit late in the first place? Winston’s channel, ironically, has done more damage to his game than good. It’s put him in a position of power without requiring him to understand how he got there.

This is what the next generation of screenwriters will look like. They’ll be wielding a sword that’s too heavy for them. Their screenplays will look like screenplays. But they won’t feel like them. Most of the stuff they do, they won’t understand why they’re doing it. They’ll just trust AI with the process.

But guess what? Hollywood is a business of rewriting. The guys who get paid the big bucks get paid to problem-solve and know how to fix things. If you were hired to write Star Wars Episode 11 and your second act is boring as hell, AI is not going to be able to fix it on its own.

Implementing changes in a screenplay is all about understanding the intricacies of how a screenplay works. If Disney wants a protagonist to be more likable, that might mean changing your hero’s flaw. And well-taught screenwriters know that the hero’s flaw is tied to everything else in the movie. So changing the flaw will mean changing numerous other things in the script. AI doesn’t know that!

And even if, theoretically, it gets to a place where it did, it still needs you to guide it. But since you never built your foundation, since you skipped to the front of the line like Winston Du, you won’t know to tell it that. You’ll be just as clueless as the dumb executive who hired you. And if you’re just as clueless as them, why do they need you?  They can prompt AI to write a scene just as easily as you can.

So, here’s the cool part about all this. If you’ve been reading my site for more than two years, you are part of the last generation of real screenwriters. Everybody coming up now will know less about screenwriting than you do. They will depend on AI for an increasing amount of the workload and, in doing so, destroy any chance of developing the screenwriting skills they actually need. This means that the studios will want YOU going forward. Not these fake AI screenwriters. And I think that’s pretty fucking cool. That we were the last ones who actually learned the craft. I can’t emphasize how valuable a commodity that is.

Now, if you are a young screenwriter making your way up, my advice to you is to STAY THE HELL AWAY FROM AI. It’s a shortcut that is going to prevent you from learning. You need to make your own mistakes. You need to read all the screenwriting books. You need to write bad scripts. All AI is, is your dad doing your homework for you. Yeah, it got done. And it saves you time so you can go play with your friends. But you didn’t learn jack shit. And if you’re not continually learning in this craft, you will never get good enough to write a good screenplay. Are you a Winston Du?  Or are you a Winston Don’t?

BLOOD & INK SCREENPLAY CONTEST UPDATE

In one of the most popular months on Scriptshadow, thousands of writers pitched their horror movie ideas to try and get into the Blood & Ink Horror Screenplay Contest. 97 pitches were accepted. Those writers are now (hopefully) hard at work writing their screenplays for a finishing date of late February.

I’m trying to do a Blood & Ink related showdown every month in order to keep the participants motivated. I know how easy it is to get derailed while writing a script. What was once so obvious now seems like hieroglyphics in your head. My advice is to STAY THE COURSE. All screenplays have periods of frustration baked into them. You have plots that have lost momentum. You have weak story beats that feel unsolvable. You have characters who are way too boring. It’s all part of the process! Just remember that every single movie you’ve seen has been through the same thing and the writers of those movies always talk about how solving these problems was the breakthrough that opened the rest of the script up. I would go so far as to say, if your script is easy to write the whole way through, it’s probably not very good.

This past weekend, I had a Scene Showdown for the contest. A little less than 40 of the contestants decided to enter. You can take a look at all five of the chosen entries here and see if you agree with the winner of the competition. Keep visiting the site for announcements on when the next showdown will be!

AROUND TOWN

Osculum Infame Begins – Osculum Infame is a script by German screenwriter Bernd Bachmann. It is a script that came to me several years ago for a contest. It’s a real-time contained horror thriller set in the 1600s about a woman assumed to be a witch who’s hanged on a tree and left to die. To this day, it is the single most intense reading experience I have ever had. But it also has a woman getting brutalized for 90 minutes and I didn’t think Hollywood at the time was ready for that. But deep down I knew that its time would come. Recently, I decided I was finally going to expose it to Hollywood. I was nervous but my gut told me that the writing and story were so incredible that someone was going to buy it. Now, you have to understand that, normally, it takes sending a script out endlessly to get a sale. Yet, in the case of Osculum Infame, the very first producer I sent it to e-mailed me 48 hours later and said, “We want to make this movie and we want to make it now.” And so in the past week, both the writer and I have signed deals (myself as a producer) and now we’re in the process of putting the package together and getting financing. It’s a very exciting experience for both me and the writer. But it should also act as a reminder to all screenwriters. Bernd wrote a screenplay that you literally couldn’t put down if you tried. It never lets up. Not for a second. And he does an amazing job of putting his hero into situations where you’re certain she will die and she somehow finds a way to survive. I honestly think that if it’s filmed as written, it will be the most intense movie ever made in history. That’s not hyperbole. And I’d bet that those of you who have read the script would agree. That’s really cool – to be able to do something that’s never been done before. The lesson?  Make your script unputdownable.  This is a SPEC SCRIPT.  Those need to be fast.  They need to grab readers and never let go.  The slower your spec script is, the harder you’re making things on yourself.  — Now I don’t think the production company is okay with me sharing too much information about the movie. I know that part of the plan is to keep this quiet then unleash it upon an unsuspecting world. But I will try and share with you what I can in these newsletters. Assuming you guys are interested. But, very cool success story for both a Scriptshadow writer and Scriptshadow. :)

5 million views in 2 weeks
Pluribus Trailer – Something that’s always fascinated me about Hollywood is how quickly you can fall from its heights. You would think that if someone created an amazing show, they’d be a superstar forever. But tis not the case. What happened to Nic Pizzolatto, who wrote True Detective? What happened to David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, who ran Game of Thrones? What happened to David Chase, who created The Sopranos?? Vince Gilligan is very close to being a member of the ‘What Ever Happened To’ club. Ever since the end of Breaking Bad, he’s been invisible. Better Call Saul was decent (if slow and clunky) but he wasn’t nearly as involved in that as he was Breaking Bad. The man has been MIA, particularly when it comes to new ideas. Well, he finally has a new idea and it’s one that he’s so precious about that he wouldn’t even reveal it to his own family. That idea is finally here in trailer form and… it does not look good. I know that Gilligan is trying to purposefully keep the concept vague but it’s usually a bad idea when your trailer is confusing as hell. And it’s rare that one of those becomes a riveting series. Don’t get me wrong. I like that he’s trying something different. And I will watch because it’s Vince Gilligan and anything from the creator of Breaking Bad makes me curious. But expectations after THIS trailer?? They’re low.

4 million views in 2 weeks
Send Help Trailer – It’s hard for me not to get excited about a spec idea. By the way, a “spec” idea is a script with a big concept and a high-octane engine. Everything feels big or fast or intense or terrifying. Or a combination of all four. These are the scripts that sell. Stuff that’s hard to put down. Like Osculum Infame! And the smart writers look to add irony to them. Cause they know irony is the best bang-for-your-buck way to supercharge a concept. Here, we have an asshole boss who makes his assistant miserable. The two then crash land on an island where he gets injured. This means his life is in her hands. The assistant is now the boss. The boss the assistant. These spec ideas do have a trap door, though. Which is that they tend to feel dated. Specifically because spec ideas aren’t as popular anymore. So it feels like we’re going back to a time past. Honestly, Send Help is giving me those vibes. It feels like a movie that could’ve come out in 2003. But look. I was one of the few people who liked Flight Risk, another spec idea. So, who’s to say I won’t like this too?

Something is Killing The Children – Blumhouse is panicking. The little horror house that could made its name on producing 3 million dollar horror movies with no stars, with one out of every 3 of them breaking out and becoming a money-printing machine. Then M3gan 2 happened, scaring the bejeezus out of everyone there. Since that fateful opening, rumor is that people at the Blumhouse offices are “spooked” (ironic, cause they make horror films) and meetings were called. This deal seems to be the first peek into what new company philosophy came out of those meetings. They have officially snatched up the biggest-selling horror comic since The Walking Dead, about a world where children can see monsters but adults can’t. Blumhouse outbid the likes of Lionsgate and Netflix, outfits with much deeper pockets. It’s a total 180 to what Blumhouse was built on, signaling that they’re looking for a big franchise, and maybe to move into TV as well. As for the concept, it goes to show that simple, but big, ideas always hold cachet. However, if it’s excessively simple, like this, it helps to have some visuals as well as some prior success. An interesting side bit about this is that Netflix dumped a lot of money into developing “Children” for a while, with Mike Flanagan guiding the project, but ultimately, the option ran out. Only when it got hot around town again did they decide they wanted it back.

Shiver Spec Sold – If you put Deadpool creator Tim Miller in a project with Keanu Reeves, I’m going to pay attention. And this project comes from one of the more prolific screenwriters out there, Ian Shorr. Shorr has written tons of scripts that got on the Black List, back when the Black List was cool. Many of them were very high concept. But, if I’m being honest, of average execution. He wrote that Mark Wahlberg movie, Infinite. It’s yet another reminder of how important concept is. It can make up for so many other issues in your script. I don’t have a logline for this but it’s said to be about a smuggler who gets double-crossed in the middle of the Caribbean, a sinking occurs, and the smuggler is surrounded by hungry sharks and evil mercenaries. Oh yeah, and this keeps happening over and over again because………… TIME LOOP. That’s right. The loop sub-genre is NOT DEAD YET. A concept like this is interesting because it’s got a lot of flash to it. But there’s not enough connective tissue. You need that connective tissue to create an idea that sounds clever. But, look, it got this package together, which is pretty impressive. And it’s another script success story, which we now have three of in this Around Town section. I’d call that a win. :)

SCRIPTSHADOW TIP OF THE MONTH 
Up your concept’s stakes (especially important for TV show ideas)
We talk about stakes all the time on my site but here’s a story that emphasizes just how important they are. Nobody Wants This, starring Kristin Belle, is a breakout show on Netflix about an atheist girl who falls for a Rabbi. They try to make a relationship work despite the fact that “none of their friends or family want this.” What I recently learned was that the creator, Erin Foster, had been pitching this show around town for half-a-decade and nobody wanted it. However, there was a huge difference in her show’s concept back then. It was still about a girl dating a Jewish guy. But the guy wasn’t a rabbi. He was just… Jewish. When she pitched that show, everybody kept coming back with the same note: “It feels too small.” At her wit’s end, Foster brought on one of the co-creators of Modern Family and he demanded an immediate change. Instead of just making the boy Jewish, make him a rabbi. Now, it wasn’t just his family life that could be disrupted, it was his job. The project was purchased quickly afterwards. The lesson here? Look for ways to increase the stakes of your concept. Here, a seemingly minor character profession change created much higher stakes, which then led to a sale. You should always be looking to do the same, ESPECIALLY if you’re writing something on a smaller canvas, like Nobody Wants This.

SCREENPLAY REVIEW – KITTEN

Genre: Horror/Action
Premise: When a brilliant but reckless inventor accidentally shrinks himself and his sister to six inches tall, they must outwit her suddenly monstrous house cat and survive long enough to reverse the experiment before it’s too late.
About: There’s a guy in Hollywood who’s the only person I’ve been able to find who reads as many screenplays as I do. And I asked him the other day if he’d read anything lately that he liked. He immediately sent over this screenplay. Let’s see if our tastes mesh!
Writer: David Christopher Bell
Details: 116 pages

Here kitty-cat!

Here kitty kitty kitty!

Come on kitty!

To me, the most fun scripts to write in the world are the ones like this. You come up with a wild premise then you think up as many ways as possible to exploit that premise. That’s the main way I judge these scripts. I’m looking for AMAZING SET PIECES. Cause that’s what the concept promises so that’s what you gotta deliver. Remember, Steven Spielberg went to David Koepp and said, “I need these five set pieces in Jurassic Park. You figure out how to connect them together.” That’s how important he knows set pieces are FOR THESE TYPES OF MOVIES.

Ironically, Jurassic Park is a great comp for today’s script. Cause the danger is similar. Let’s take a look.

30-something inventor Garth Chapman (think a young Doc Brown) lives in his loft with his slacker, 20-something sister, Nahla. Nahla has absolutely zero going on in her life besides streaming shows she likes and hanging out with her cat, Kitten. Meanwhile, Garth has turned the sauna on the ground floor of his loft into a shrinking machine.

Garth is shocked when billionaire Noel Monk, who invented a rideshare app, and who Garth has been informally talking to, says he’s coming over right now to check out the machine to potentially invest in it. This is how Noel likes to work – on the fly. Noel brings his wife (who’s also his business partner), Alice, his security guard, Leonard, and decides to also bring along the rideshare driver who’s driving them, Adnan.

When they get there, a nervous Garth shows them how the machine works. You have to turn the safety switch off upstairs then go downstairs to the sauna room to operate it. Everybody THINKS the safety switch is on. But Kitten goes exploring on top of the control panel and accidentally turns it off.

I think you know where this is going. The group heads into the sauna, there’s a crazy ass explosive noise, and the next thing they know they’re all six inches tall. While everyone else is freaking out, Noel is celebrating. It works! This is going to make him billions! Until he sees what’s just outside the sauna door. It’s Kitten! And now, compared to all of them, Kitten is the size of a bus!

When they realize that the only way to fix this problem is to head back up to the control panel to reverse the process, and that if they stay in this sauna for too long at this size, they’ll overheat and die, a plan needs to be made quickly! But while nobody’s looking, an unafraid Noel just walks out of the sauna, decides to try and calm the kitty down, then proceeds to get sliced and diced by the cat, who treats him like a cat toy. A cat toy that must be destroyed until there’s nothing left of it.

Uh oh.

The rest of the group freaks out and realizes they need a REAL PLAN now. They decide to split up, one group to try and distract the cat, the other to get to the control panel. This results in Garth and Alice attempting to pull a cat wand up the back of the refrigerator and dangle it so the cat obsessively watches it. That half of the plan doesn’t go well for Alice. Nahla and Leonard then head for the control panel. That doesn’t go well either when Leonard sees an open window and figures he has a better chance outside than in here with this monster (he doesn’t). Meanwhile, Adnan goes rogue – full Arnold Schwarzenegger in Predator.

Our story concludes with Nahla having a face off with her cat. Unlike the others, the cat only decides to play with Nahla. But a cat isn’t the best judge of what “playing” means when dealing with a fragile 6 inch piece of flesh. In one intense moment, Nahla is thrust inside Kitty’s wet cat food that she wouldn’t eat earlier, pushed deep down into it, and almost drowns in cat food goo. (Spoiler) What a way to go that would be! But not to worry. Nahla survives and becomes big again. As for the others? I can’t promise the same.

Ever since this stuff started happening with Osculum Infame, I noticed, subconsciously, that I was reading scripts less from a script reviewer point of view and more from a producer point of view.

When I read scripts as a script reviewer, all I care about is, “Did the script entertain me?” But when I read scripts as a producer, I care only about, “Could this be a movie?”

And with Kitten, I’m on the fence in that department.

I know this. I WOULD MAKE IT!

I think the premise is hilarious and ripe for all sorts of set pieces that nobody’s ever seen before, which is one of the big things you’re looking for as a producer. You want to give people something new.

But the tonal execution must be so precise here that, if it’s even a little bit off, the whole thing is stupid. Because unlike Honey I Shrunk the Kids, which doesn’t really take itself seriously because it’s only got to win over family audiences, Kitten is darker and more serious. If you play that too lightly, it’s silly. If you lean too hard into it, it becomes ridiculous. Cause you have characters acting like they’re in Predator here. Yet they’re in an apartment facing a cat. That’s not an easy note to hit.

But I love this idea so much. I’m always looking for those great ironic premises. And this one hit the bullseye. The least threatening thing in the world all of a sudden becomes a T-Rex.

And I love that Bell didn’t hold back. When the cat jackrabbit scratches the entire front side of Noel off, with all of his flesh and skin splattering up against the sauna door, I was giddy with excitement. We’ve already seen the safe version of this premise. It’s time to get uncomfortable!

And I loved the final “showdown” between Nahla and Kitten.

But goodness gracious me does this writer get in his own way. Every single paragraph is at least double the length it needs to be. A script like this needs to MOVE. But there’s too much description. And it’s not like you shouldn’t describe what’s going on here because we are talking about a scenario that needs the world explained.

But that was ANOTHER thing that was so frustrating. With all the extra description, Bell wasn’t actually describing the things that mattered! I couldn’t figure out, for the life of me, how they kept opening and closing the sauna door. The sauna door would be impossible to open if you’re 6 inches tall. But people kept opening it and closing it no problem.

You’re skipping over the fun part of these screenplays – that the things we take for granted all of a sudden become impossible. Getting stuck in the sauna because you’re six inches tall could’ve been one of the best set pieces in the movie. Cause if they don’t get out, they basically sweat to death. But the writer ignores these possibilities.

And then the set pieces that he does write, he takes for granted what the reader is seeing. It’s strange because he’s overwriting and underwriting at the same time. He’s overwriting all of these unimportant details yet not meticulously describing how the back of the fridge is set up so that we understand what we’re looking at when Garth and Alice are trying to climb it.

I was getting super frustrated because this premise has so much potential. It’s the dark version of Honey I Shrunk the Kids.

And the writer didn’t do his homework trying to figure out what fun situations might come up when you’re this small. For example, there comes a point where they have to enter a code on an iPad to restart the machine. That’s something we take for granted. But if that iPad is really big compared to them, just entering the code alone would become a challenge. I wanted to see more stuff like that.

But I always say that great concepts are the deodorant to poor writing. There’s nothing that covers up the smell of weak writing like a strong concept. Cause all I kept thinking was, “This would be a really fun movie.” And there was the occasional strong moment – like Noel getting killed. Like Nahla’s battle with her cat in the end. It just needed more of that.

And it needs to both slim down all of its unnecessary text while doing a better job at describing what we’re looking at. If it can do all these things, I would hope that some risky production company would make this. Cause I think it could be awesome.

Script Link: Kitten

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

What I learned: Spec scripts – especially high concept contained ideas like this – need to be SHORT and LEAN. This script should not be a single page over 105. Yet it’s 115 pages long. And what was my main complaint? Overwritten. And that’s what overwritten gets you. It gets you to 115 pages. This is not a criticism I came upon in retrospect. I noted it the second I saw the page-count before reading. I saw 115 and thought, “That’s not good.” For simple premises guys: 105 pages. No longer. If you’re writing Oppenheimer, go ahead and shoot for 140. But not ideas like this.

Read the five scenes. Vote on your favorite one. Winner gets a review!

Okay, guys. Sorry for the delay on getting this up. But I promise you it’s for a good reason. I’m not going to get into the details but myself and the writer of a certain earth-shattering insane script that may or may not be over there in my Top 25 are in the process of putting the movie together. Contracts are being signed. Directors are being Zoomed with. I’ll have more to report in the newsletter. Stay tuned.

Onto the Showdown!

The Blood & Ink Contest has caused some confusion so I want to make all of this as clear as possible. I created a Horror Screenplay Contest (The Blood & Ink Screenplay Contest) where you had to pitch your concept to get in. You only got in if I approved of your concept.

97 concepts got in. Those writers are now writing their scripts, which will need to be finished by February.

In the meantime, to keep all 97 participants writing, I’ve been doing showdowns. Blood & Ink Participants can either participate in these showdowns or skip them. It’s up to the individual.

This month, we’re doing a “That Scene” Showdown, where the writers submit one of the best scenes from their script. 38 of you participated. These are the top 5 scenes (subjectively speaking, of course) from those 38. Your job is to read as much of each scene as possible and vote for your favorite in the comments section.

You have until Sunday, at 11:59PM PACIFIC TIME to vote.

Happy Halloween and GOOD LUCK TO THIS SHOWDOWN’S SCREENWRITERS!

P.S. I’m going to try and have a newsletter out by Sunday night. So if you don’t receive it by Monday, make sure to e-mail me.

Title: Slumlord
Genre: Horror
Logline: A transient carpenter, tracked down and compelled to take over the decaying complex his ordained father managed before his mysterious death, learns all the tenants are failed exorcisms secretly contained by the Catholic Church. With the unsecured residents set for relocation, he must fortify the building and monitor the conspiring demons during their final week.
Context: This is day one of the protagonist’s task of securing the building and preventing the tenants from escaping before the Church evacuates them to a new location. JAKE (33), with the help of his father’s longtime assistant, SISTER WINSLOW (48), is conducting a general inspection of the building, the units, and the tenants, to see what he’s up against. We’ve seen that Lillian Thorne is likely responsible for the death of Jake’s father. Jake is unaware. The scene takes place early in Act Two.
Full Scene Link: Slumlord Scene

Title: The Devil in 5D
Genre: Horror
Logline: (Temp til someone sends me the real one) A young woman begins to suspect that the devil is living in her apartment complex.
Context: None
Full Scene Link: Devil in 5D Scene

Title: Karoshi: The Drive
Genre: Horror
Logline: A reporter investigates the stories of people who are literally working themselves to death, then realizes she can’t eat or sleep or rest either, so she must keep working on the story, hoping to undo the curse before it kills her too…
Context: Maria, a reporter, has been asked to check on a colleague Derek, who is working on the story of the taxi driver who crashed – because Derek just submitted a draft of the article that’s over 400,000 words long! And seems to still be working on it…
Full Scene Link: Karoshi Scene

Title: Transcranial
Genre: Horror
Logline: To disprove the existence of the Devil (and perhaps by implication, of God), a ruthlessly ambitious neuroscientist creates an artificial demonic possession. But his breakthrough unleashes something new, an undeniably supernatural force that could destroy humankind…and only his own ultimate sacrifice may be able to stop it.
Context: The scene takes place in the aftermath of neuroscientist Richard’s successful simulated demonic possession of Daniel, the young experimental test subject. Daniel has now been dialled down, and is ostensibly back to normal.
Sarah, a devout Catholic, resigned to having her religious beliefs regularly denigrated by her scientific peers, is about to conduct the exit interview with Daniel, to ensure that he is okay.
Richard and James remain in the observation room. Richard is able to communicate with Sarah via an earpiece.
The scene begins with Sarah entering the main experimental chamber where Daniel is sitting, waiting….
Full Scene Link: Transcranial Scene

Title:  It’s The Worst Time of the Year
Genre: Psychological Horror
Logline: Two successful, single business women from the big city get trapped in a Hallmark movie nightmare where it’s always fall — but weirdly somehow also always Christmas. They’re forced to open a bakery, enter the pie contest, solve the weekly town murder, and date the impossibly hot plaid-wearing widower — all while trying to find a way to escape before increasingly aggressive townspeople trap them in this hellscape, force them to give up their lives and drink pumpkin spiced lattes….forever.
Context: In this scene, Sarai, a bull headed New Yorker who doesn’t take shit from anyone, has been trapped in this Hallmark town that demands compliance and cheerful participation in your assigned roles. After multiple failed attempts at escape, she tries to exert control by resisting the system and refusing to play into the Hallmark narrative. As Sarai refuses to comply, the townspeople are essentially brought in as oblivious enforcers of the rules.
Full Scene Link: Worst Time of Year Scene

Here are some scene breakdowns to get you motivated!

Next weekend, aka Halloween Friday, we’re scheduled to have a showdown for the 97 participants in the Blood & Ink Horror Script Showdown contest. The showdown is titled “That Scene” Showdown and it involves submitting “that scene” from your script, aka, that amazing killer scene that will be remembered for decades once your movie comes out.

But I’m starting to get worried because only three people have submitted their scene so far. I suppose that since it’s just one scene, writers may be using every single second they have to perfect it before they submit. But if I get anything less than 20 scenes, I’m going to cancel the showdown. Which means you guys will have nothing to participate in while you stuff all your Halloween candy down your gullet.

After a little self-analysis, I realize that I might have set the bar too high. Telling writers to come up with the best scene ever is kinda intimidating. So, I’ve decided to dial things back. Just send me a good scene. If you have a good horror scene in your script and you are one of the 97 Blood & Ink participants, submit it to the showdown. Here are the details.

For Blood & Ink Contest Participants Only!

What: “That Scene” Showdown
When: Friday, October 31st
Deadline: Thursday, October 30th, 10pm Pacific Time
Send me: title, genre, logline, up to 100 words of context for the scene, a PDF of the scene
Sent to: carsonreeves3@gmail.com

In the meantime, I want to talk about some of the memorable scenes I’ve seen this year to give you guys an idea of what constitutes a good solid memorable scene.

Eddington: The Power of Tension

One of my favorite scenes in Eddington is when Sheriff Joe Cross, played by Joaquin Phoenix, goes into the supermarket during Covid to get a few things. A big theme in the movie is that Joe refuses to wear a mask or physically distance himself from others. So when he walks into this supermarket, everyone turns to him and starts staring. Some people take out their phones and start recording him. The grocery store manager comes up and tells him he has to leave unless he wears a mask. He refuses. And that’s pretty much it. That’s the scene.

Why does this scene work? The scene works because it leans so heavily into tension. Tension is a subcontractor of conflict. And conflict is the lifeblood of drama. If you have drama, you have entertainment.

So just seek out scenarios that have tension and you’ll naturally have an entertaining scene. It’s also important to note here that there isn’t any huge yelling or fighting going on. That can work in certain scenes. But if you’re not careful, it will feel on the nose.

With tension, you don’t have to worry about being on the nose. You just put your character in a scene where the variables surrounding that scene make one or more of the characters uncomfortable. The more you dial up those variables to raise the temperature of the tension, the more uncomfortable people will be, and the more entertaining the scene will be.

Weapons: Suspense Through the Unknown

Another good scene this year came in the movie Weapons. The scene occurs near the middle of the movie when a druggie, James, is looking for a quick score. He needs money so he can buy drugs. He comes across a house that looks empty for the moment. He sneaks off to the side, breaks a window, and slides inside to the dark living room.

Once inside, he starts looking around for valuables, only to turn around and see that, sitting perfectly upright on a couch three feet away from him, are a man and a woman. Their eyes are wide open. And yet they’re not moving. He gets closer to them to try and see what’s going on and he eventually concludes that they’re incapacitated. So he ignores them and goes looking around for things he can steal.

Meanwhile, the camera always has this couple in the background just sitting there, lingering. And at some point, unbeknownst to him, they stand up. The rest of the scene evolves from there.

This is a classic horror scene setup. You place an element of danger in the scene and you draw out the suspense of how that danger is going to develop for as long as you can. And then, usually, you let the danger loose.

These scenes are always better, however, if you can find a new spin on them that the audience isn’t used to. Which is why this Weapons scene stands out from the competition. We don’t understand the rules of this scenario yet. We don’t know why this couple is frozen. We just know it’s creepy as hell. Our lack of understanding is what supercharges the suspense here. We know something may happen while James is looking for dough. We just don’t know what. And it adds this extra tension to the suspense that really brings the scene alive.

The Ballad of Wallace Island: Conflict Within Desire

Let’s take a left turn and talk about a scene from another favorite 2025 movie of mine, The Ballad of Wallace Island. This is a small movie about a once successful married couple folk band, Herb and Nell, who have since broken up and gone in different directions with their lives. Years later, their number one fan, however, pays them to come play a concert together on his remote island.

The scene in question happens about halfway through the movie. After a lot of frustrating moments together, Herb and Nell realize that they have to practice to make sure the concert goes well. They haven’t played together in years.

The two sit down together out on the porch with their guitars and they just start practicing. Now, of course, the songs they became famous for were songs they wrote about each other when they were falling in love. So the songs have a lot of history to them that, just singing them out loud, forces them to revisit their relationship, whether they want to or not.

Things start out cordial and, because of the songs, become flirty. It’s clear that there are still feelings between these two. But the other personal and business shit that gets in the way of that is what eventually destroyed them. And that reality starts coming out, leading to them ultimately fighting again.

The reason the scene works is, again, due to conflict. This will be a theme you can consistently draw on when your scenes aren’t working. You want to find the conflict in the scene and build the scene around that. But what’s great about this scene is that the conflict isn’t clean cut. It’s not just, “I don’t like you and you don’t like me.” Or “I like you but you don’t like me.”

The reality is, they still like each other. But they know that they can’t overcome all the other shit to make it work. So there’s this tug of war going on within each character, for Herb a little more than Nell, that’s making his goal (to be with her tonight) impossible. That’s where character work tends to be the most interesting. When two people want something but there are other factors keeping them apart.

And this device has been used forever. Romeo & Juliet. They want to be together. But their families forbid it. There’s something so much more frustrating about that than “one person doesn’t like the other one” and that’s why they can’t be together. But I find the situation in Ballad even more frustrating because the thing that’s keeping them from being together is self-imposed.

I bring this specific scene up because it’s all character and backstory. It’s a reminder that you don’t need a lot of bells and whistles to write a good scene. You can write a good scene with just two characters sitting down, as long as you’ve drawn those characters up in a way that creates a charged atmosphere every time you put them in front of each other.

Nobody 2: Using Your Unique Element

Finally, I want to highlight a scene from an underrated movie in 2025, Nobody 2. If you want to sit back and gobble up some snacks and enjoy something without having to think too much, this is the movie to rent.

The movie has Hutch, Bob Odenkirk, who’s a secret undercover assassin, take his family to a small town water park for a summer getaway. But what he doesn’t know is that the town is run by a powerful hillbilly drug ring.

On the first day there, the family, namely Hutch’s teenage son and daughter, go to play at the arcade. Once there, some kid picks a fight with Hutch’s son. It’s 100% the other kid’s fault. But when Hutch comes to take care of things, the big ugly muscled scary manager of the arcade starts yelling at Hutch to keep his son in check.

Hutch keeps apologizing but tries to make the point that the other kid was in the wrong. The manager gets angrier, puts more pressure on Hutch to leave. And then, at the last second, the manager gives a little shove to Hutch’s daughter as they exit. Hutch continues outside, pauses, tells his family he forgot something. He’ll meet them back at the room. He then proceeds to go inside and kick the living hell out of the manager along with all the other roided up coworkers.

So why does this scene work? A couple reasons. Let’s start with the big one. Whatever you have that is unique to your story, you want to use that to drive scenes when possible. That’s what’s going to make your scenes different from other movies.

Hutch is a secret hitman. That’s called (as I point out in my dialogue book) reverse dramatic irony. It’s the same principle that guides scenes with superheroes out of their costumes, like Spider-Man or Batman. When Bruce Wayne or Peter Parker is dealing with an asshole, the reverse dramatic irony of us knowing that they’re picking a fight with Spiderman creates an intense amount of energy within the reader where they cannot WAIT to see what happens when Peter becomes Spiderman and makes this jerk pay. It literally works EVERY SINGLE TIME.

And it works here as well. Hutch is a secret superhero. We know that. They don’t. He can beat up all these guys but he has to keep his “superhero” persona under wraps while he’s here. But we know it’s only a matter of time before he cracks and fights back. And the time between the manager confronting Hutch and Hutch cracking is the line of suspense that makes us obsessed with the scene. I am telling you, it would be literally impossible for anybody watching that movie to walk away during that scene. Because they HAVE TO SEE Hutch crack and beat the hell out of this guy. That’s when you know you’ve got a good scene.

But there’s more going on in this scene as well. Audiences react strongly to certain triggers/hot buttons. Injustice is one of them. Bullies is another. Corruption. All three of those things are going on here. So they help supercharge an already charged scenario.

But the big note here is to USE THE SPECIFIC SPECIAL THING that you have in your screenplay to drive scenes, just like Hutch’s secret superhero status drove this scene.

The Takeaway

Okay, that’s it, folks. I hope these scene breakdowns have inspired you. Now submit your own scenes so that Scriptshadow can have a Happy Halloween next weekend! I need a good reason to take down 26 Reeses Peanut Butter Cups. You know, besides, “It’s Friday.”

Scriptshadow called it the best script of 2024. How did it hold up!??

Genre: Drama
Premise: A Yale professor up for tenure must navigate a rape accusation from her most cherished student against another professor, who happens to be her best friend at the school.
About: After the Hunt was one of the buzziest scripts of 2024. When Julia Roberts hopped on to play the lead role of Alma, the Oscar statuettes began humming into the ethos, beginning their manifestation of Julia Roberts winning a second Oscar. But when the movie “only” received a 6 minute standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival (the best films routinely get over 13 minutes these days), worry began to permeate the post-festival game plan. Then came the critics’ response. The film is hovering around 45% on Rotten Tomatoes, a shocking score when you consider the talent involved (the movie is directed by current indie god, Luca Guadagnino). It is near impossible to get me to the theater for any movie that scores lower than 80% on RT. But I figured, since I loved the script, it would be an interesting case study on what went wrong. Imagine my surprise when I realized NOTHING WENT WRONG. That the movie was actually awesome. What makes this script-to-screen tale even cooler is that the writer came out of nowhere. Nora Garrett had zero footprint on the internet as a screenwriter before After the Hunt changed her life.
Writer: Nora Garrett
Details: 130 minutes

There was a time in Hollywood when studios would make movies and let the audience decide which were good enough to promote as an Oscar contender.

Those days, unfortunately, are long gone. They’ve been replaced with studios treating their “Oscar movies” like Marvel films, planning them 2-3 years in advance. They say, “This will be our Oscar film for 2025!”

They’ll then build marketing campaigns well ahead of time doing everything in their power to manipulate the general audience into believing that their movie is the most important piece of digital celluloid anybody will ever see.

The problem with that is audiences are pretty hip to the game these days. We can smell the manipulation. It smells like old car grease. And so it becomes this frustrating experience of watching a movie we’ve been told is amazing when, in actuality, it’s just some average adult-skewing film with more mature themes than usual.

One Battle After Another is a textbook example of this, and it frustrates me to no end that so many viewers are falling for it. It’s no different than when we thought we loved Chocolate, The Shape of Water, The Artist, or The English Patient. These movies were, at best, average. But the marketing campaigns gaslit us into believing they were masterpieces.

After The Hunt is a stupendous movie. I loved it. But it is not immune from this criticism. This movie wants to win the Oscar even worse than One Battle. At least One Battle has action scenes. This is just people in rooms talking.

But boy are they delicious ‘people in rooms talking’ scenes.

As some of you may know, I reviewed the script a year ago and called it the best script of 2024. The finished film started screening a few weeks ago and the critics were not kind, giving it a 45% Rotten Tomatoes score, effectively ending any chances of it winning Oscars.

What went wrong? It’s hard to tell! I don’t understand why people aren’t loving this film. I’m going to break down several areas that I believe may have caused the critics to sharpen their knives. But it’s disappointing because I think they’ve got it all wrong and are ignoring one of the best movies of the year.

After the Hunt is a simple story. Alma is a beloved professor up for tenure at Yale. Rumors are that her star student, Maggie, is putting the finishing touches on an amazing dissertation.

Alma is married to Frederik, whom she no longer finds attractive, but poor Frederik is in complete denial about it. Alma is best friends, drinking buddies, and flirting buddies with Hank, known around campus as the hot, cool professor.

One night after professors and students mingle at a party, Hank walks Maggie home. The next morning, Maggie comes to Alma and claims that Hank raped her. Alma, in a state of shock and confusion, is far from supportive.

This begins a series of “he said, she said” interactions where Alma, being violently pulled in opposite directions by each party, finds herself trying to gauge what the truth really is. But because her support for Maggie isn’t absolute, Maggie turns on her, putting Alma’s shot at tenure in question.

Let’s talk about the first screenwriting reason why I think people aren’t connecting with this film. The main character, Alma (Julia Roberts), is inaccessible. She’s cold. She’s unable to connect with others on any emotional level. She can’t be there for Maggie in her worst moment, she can’t give love back to her over-loving husband, and she’s able to heartlessly cast off Hank, who has fallen in love with her.

It’s very hard to pull people in when their entry point is a person who doesn’t let anyone in. That’s screenwriting 101. If you create a warm main character, we feel warm. If you create a funny main character, we feel good. So that’s definitely something to keep in mind when you write a script.

Now, the reason this didn’t affect me personally is that I am fascinated by these types of characters. I have had people like this in my life. And I can sometimes be this way myself. So that’s another lesson in why storytelling is so tricky. You never know what the audience is going to relate to because everybody’s different. Due to my negative experiences with people like Alma, I carry a higher emotional investment in what happens in this story because I’m hoping that Alma can change. That way I, retroactively, can change the people in my life who were similar to her.

But the point is, I think this was a big reason critics didn’t like the film. Alma put this giant wall up in front of the story and unless you were like me and were really determined to get to the other side, you decided not to scale it.

The next big screenwriting thing that hurt this movie was the back half of the second act. I would actually be surprised if anybody watched the first half of this movie and didn’t love it. It’s an incredibly compelling scenario! Someone accuses a beloved figure of sexual assault. The accuser is obsessed with a professor who just happens to be very close to the accused. That is a PERFECT dramatic triangle.

But 80% of that situation is resolved by the midpoint. Hank has already been fired. So we’re left to wonder: what is the story now? The makers of the film would probably argue that the story is the fallout – it’s about what happens to these relationships “after the hunt.” But the movie doesn’t do the greatest job of signaling that shift. So I think viewers felt a little lost. Like, “Why are we still here?”

There’s no doubt that 65-70% of the way through this movie, things have slowed down A LOT. It made me realize just how much writers struggle to nail the second act! It’s literally a problem in 9 out of 10 movies that I see. I don’t think anybody out there has truly cracked how the second half of the second act of a screenplay is supposed to work.

And it got me thinking: How *does* it work?

Most writers know that the third act is where the script “revs up” again. It’s where your heroes get together and execute that one last push to obtain the goal or take down the bad guy.

So, intrinsically, you would think that BEFORE THAT, things would need to SLOW DOWN. You can’t rev up if you’re already moving fast, right? Therefore, writers allow their second acts to drift off into this little nap as the act nears its completion. There’s no doubt that’s what happened here.

The solution? It’s tricky. Since Garrett is new to screenwriting, she may not understand story engines well yet. This movie is strongest when the story engine is: what’s going to happen between Hank and Maggie? Who’s going to win that battle? Well, Maggie wins it pretty quickly. Hank is out of a job by the midpoint.

So what’s the story engine now? The engine becomes: will Alma get tenure? And the drama comes from how nasty Maggie is going to get with Alma, since Alma didn’t give her full support.

But here’s why the engine sputters. The writer and director completely forgot to remind us how important tenure was for Alma. I don’t even think the average person understands what tenure means or why it would be so important for someone. It’s up to the writer to convey that and to also continuously hype up its importance. We need scenes where we see Alma freaking out or getting angry when her grasp on tenure starts slipping. But there was none of that and, as a result, the end of the second act began to wander.

Had they tightened that up and better established the engine, I think critics would’ve been more favorable.

And if you want to know how to handle second-halves-of-second-acts in general, here’s the trick: Go hard and crash hard. Yes, there needs to be that “lowest point” for your hero at the end of the second act. It is their “death.” And then the third act is their “rebirth.” But the second-half-of-the-second-act should not be a cancer death. It should not be slow and lingering. Instead, you need your hero pushing and pushing and pushing to obtain whatever it is they’re trying to obtain, and then you give them a heart attack. The death needs to be sudden (metaphorically speaking, of course). Even in these slower dramas. In fact, ESPECIALLY in these slower dramas.

Okay, I’ve told you why I think everybody else didn’t like After The Hunt. But why did I like it? Well, for starters, I’m personally drawn to a lot of things here. I love old college institutions and campuses. I find them very romantic and one of the few pieces of real history that America has.

I think the character-writing here was amazing. Just like in the script, every character had something deep going on. You just don’t see that in screenplays these days. They even improved the character of Maggie from the draft I read, giving her more depth. She’s a black woman whose parents essentially run the school, so she has some power. She’s gay. She’s dating someone who’s non-binary. And it all plays into the story. There’s this great late scene where Alma calls her out on all of this. She points out: “you don’t even like this person you’re dating! You just think it makes you look more interesting!”

But what made the movie even better than the script was the performances. The performances here are SOOOOO good. I mean, Julia Roberts isn’t playing as splashy a role as she did when she won the Oscar for Erin Brokovich. But in many ways, it’s a much harder role because it’s so internal. And she does an amazing job of playing this character who’s keeping all of this damage inside while smiling at the rest of the world.

I recently told a writer that the key to writing an Oscar-winning character is to create the biggest gap possible between who they are on the inside versus who they are on the outside. In other words, if they’re extremely damaged, don’t have them act extremely damaged. Have them act happy. And that’s what you get here.

Ayo (who played Maggie) won me over by the end because she really is a good actress. Michael Stuhlbarg almost steals the show playing the “cuck” husband of Alma. He’s so nice and such a good guy and just has no idea that that’s the exact reason why his wife has fallen out of love with him. The way that Stuhlbarg passive-aggressively expresses his anger by cooking with the music volume dialed up to a hundred—he’s just a really fun but tragic character.

But the actor who steals the show, without question, is Andrew Garfield. Andrew Garfield is AMAZING in this. He plays the PERFECT balance between charming professor and potentially creepy guy. He steals every scene he’s in. He should be up for an Oscar for this, but I just don’t know if the Academy has ever celebrated a role like it before. It’s not the kind of role that results in awards, which is exactly why it stands out. In many ways, it’s a throwaway role. He’s there to jump-start this movie that will ultimately be about Alma and Maggie. But he’s just so damn fun to watch any time he shows up.

For example, there’s a scene in the middle of the film where Hank gets Alma to come have Indian food with him so he can explain his side. And as he’s explaining the very thing that could ruin his life, he’s gleefully ordering everything on the menu, flirting with the waitress. And you’re just like, “What the hell is up with this guy!??” You don’t know what to make of him, which is exactly why you want to keep watching him.

There’s another scene later in the story where he goes to Alma’s secret apartment, where they, presumably, used to hook up. It’s a 15-minute scene of just them hashing it out. And he’s so incredibly good in it. I’ve always thought Andrew Garfield was a solid actor. But I came out of this thinking he was a great actor. And he’s a big reason why, even when that second act took its nap, I still enjoyed it. Because he kept showing up.

The final, and probably biggest, mistake they made was miscasting Maggie. Ayo was good. Of course she was good. She’s a good actress. But her image was completely wrong for this part. This girl needed to be stunning, and that would’ve changed EVERYTHING about how we saw the situation. Hands down. It’s a completely different film. And it sucks because this is one of the things that writers have no control over, how a director can undermine a role just by miscasting it. It was the only mistake Luca made, but it was a big one. I think that alone would’ve bolted this up AT LEAST another 30 percentage points on Rotten Tomatoes.

Will you like this movie? That depends. Does this setup sound intriguing to you? If it does, I find it difficult to believe you wouldn’t like it. But if this isn’t a movie or a concept you find any interest in, you’re probably not going to like it. It’s not something that converts people who wouldn’t normally like these types of movies.

But for me, I loved it.

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

What I learned – Here’s Nora Garrett on selling the script in her interview with Indiewire: [Before I sold the script], I didn’t have an agent, I didn’t have a manager. I asked a friend to introduce me to a manager. I thought, best case scenario, the script would become a spec that I would use as an example of my writing, and then I would hopefully get a manager, hopefully some jobs. Because it’s the exact opposite of what everyone tells you to write, it’s an adult psychological drama, it’s very heady. There are a lot of people talking. There aren’t a lot of action sequences. It can feel very play-like. And it’s about a subject that most people don’t want to talk about or touch. But then the woman who became my manager, Sydney Blanke, was very smart about who she sent the script out to. Allan Mandelbaum had just come out of doing “Fair Play,” and was then at Imagine. I had a meeting with a couple of interested producers, but Allan and the rest of the team at Imagine were always the ones who I felt like had just a real creative understanding, and also a really good idea of how to approach getting it made.