I don’t know what ElDave and I are. Are we enemies? Frenemies? Are we brothers who fight in the car the whole time we’re driving on vacation, our parents screaming at us from the front seat that if we don’t stop, they’re turning this car around!  Are we sisters who scream at each other all day who then get mani-peddies and ice cream afterwards??

I’m not sure. But I thought it would be educational to make this post regardless.

For those of you who don’t follow Scriptshadow every day, this one requires some backstory. So, let me lay it out for you. Hundreds of writers pitched their horror ideas to make it into a Scriptshadow Horror Screenplay Contest. Only 97 writers made it in.

I then held a First Scene contest where any of the 97 writers could enter their first scene. I picked the best six scenes to feature on the site. One of the contestants, ElDave, didn’t make the cut. So, he posted his scene in the comments section.

A lot of writers liked it. In fact, quite a few of them said they would’ve voted for ElDave to win. It only seemed fair to ElDave, then, that I feature and analyze his scene on the site, which I did two weeks ago.

To summarize, I thought the scene was okay. But I didn’t think it was as good as the six other scenes that had made the First Scene Showdown.

Keep in mind, the main way to successfully get into my contest was to pitch me an idea that I really liked. But I also offered other ways to make it into the contest, one of those being, if your pitch got 15 upvotes from your fellow writers, you were automatically in.

ElDave did not get into the contest via my endorsement. He got in because the writers here upvoted his concept in. I mention that because ElDave repeatedly points out that I never liked his concept to begin with. Which I don’t think is true. I just had a very high bar for making the cut.

Moving on, ElDave responded to my critique of his scene in the comments section, which is something I’m totally fine with. If I’m going to analyze your script, you have every right to analyze my critique of it.

This provides a rare opportunity to respond to the concerns a writer had with my critique. I feel like this is going to help all of us get better. You know those Youtube videos where you have someone responding to a view of someone responding to a video? This is the Scriptshadow equivalent of that.

ELD: For all the complimentary stuff – sincere thanks. I’m mainly going to deal with the perceived issues.
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So when I read this opening page, my first thought was, “It’s the old suicidal person on the other line scene and our heroine is going to save them.” It’s a scene pattern I’ve come across a lot.
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ELD: I’m ESTABLISHING a 9-1-1 center. As it turns out, they handle a lot of suicides. And again, we’re establishing a routine call here to get our new world bearings because the next call is going to be the weird. So, as a writer, you know that, and you do not want your establishing 9-1-1 call to out-weird your weird that gets the premise rolling. You could make an argument to nuke the opening call and just get to it. But the argument that it must somehow be special belies the purpose of ESTABLISHING SCENES.

I have mulled that over but right now I feel it is more advantageous for the reader to see normal Zoey for at least 60 secs.

SS: This is an interesting point. Because, in principle, I agree with what ElDave is saying. You have to introduce the normal everyday life of your protagonist before you introduce the inciting incident, which is going to turn that normal world upside-down.

My problem is more with the choice of calls. Yeah, you want to introduce “normal.” But normal does not mean boring. Normal does not mean clichéd or uninspired. It’s a bit of a mindfuck but you want to introduce the “exciting version of normal” if that makes sense.

Give me an emergency situation that I can tell you put some thought into. I can’t even begin to convey how many of these “suicidal calls” I’ve read in scripts. It’s the first choice many writers use, which is why you should know it shouldn’t be the choice for you.

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When I read this second page, the big word that popped into my head was “competent.” The writing is very competent. It’s very professional. It’s doing the job.

But a screenplay needs something beyond competence. It needs a special quality, wherever that quality is going to come from. And when I read this page, this fear started to creep in that this scene was going to be adequate and nothing more. Because I feel like I’ve read hundreds of scenes just like it.
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ELD: I don’t buy this at all. This is an opening for a horror movie with a 9-1-1 dispatch operation at its center. What is more – I’ve read it or seen it a 100 times – This premise or — A zombie bite scene? A couple in therapy? A person dying in a car crash? Etc.

See – those make the cut even though they have actually been done and you have actually seen them written 100 times. The irony here is that this premise is relatively unique. You don’t like the premise. You didn’t when it was first presented and seeing it on the page won’t change that. I can respect that. Tastes are tastes. Even though Bite by Bite was really well written, it would not have made my cut because I just don’t care for Zombie movies and would have no interest in the 100th iteration of one. Now, what you might have loved is what goes on in a 9-1-1 center during a Zombie outbreak. All I know is that the solution is not to make the first call unique, fascinating, one in a million. The objective of the first call must be to make you feel like what it is in a 9-1-1 center.

and – There are two macro outcomes in play on a suicide call. 1) She saves him. 2) He dies. I thought I’d go with # 2 – She saves him with a twist – he is mad and ungrateful for her efforts.

SS: So here, ElDave is pitting the originality of his scene’s execution against the originality of some of the other entries. Let me be clear. I don’t think any entry knocked their first scene out of the park. Which is actually supporting what I’m saying. Every writer needs to work hard on making their first scene stand out.

The first scene needs some special quality that makes a reader perk up and go, “ooh, this is cool.” It can be dialogue, it can be an original scenario, it can be that the writer has a very unique voice, it can be we fall in love with the main character right away, it can be the writer is a master of suspense and he has you in the palm of his hand within half a page because he set up a great suspenseful scene.

The point is, there has to be SOMETHING for the big-time Hollywood producer to latch onto. I think that one of the errors writers make is they compare their openings to the openings of other movies they’ve seen. Let’s compare this to the opening of Weapons, which is a basic expositional montage scene. Your average aspiring screenwriter says, “Well, that wasn’t all that amazing. So why am I being asked to be amazing?”

You’re being asked to be amazing because you are a nobody. You are not Zach Cregger who 7 different studios were desperately bidding to work with after Barbarian. Zach Cregger has buzz, he has a hit movie, he’s demonstrated the ability to direct a strong feature film. The only thing you have is your script. So your script has to do a lot more than these other movies. It sucks. It’s unfair. But it’s the reality of this business. It’s why Christopher McQuarrie says, “It’s pointless to write spec scripts.” Because he knows how difficult it is to get Hollywood’s attention with a script all by itself.

He’s right. It is difficult. But it’s not impossible if you listen to people like me, who are telling you, the bar isn’t 5 feet high. It’s 20 feet high. So you just have to aim higher.

If I told any of you, you have to come up with a more original and entertaining first scene than the one you’ve written or else you die, do you think you’d be able to? I bet every single one of you would be able to. Not because you were all of a sudden more creative. But because with your life on the line, you’d realize that you didn’t put 100% of yourself into that scene.

There is DEFINITELY a more original emergency call you can create here. I once had this crazy woman living below me who would always file noise complaints for the most random of things, like that I was running my dryer too loudly. She got so crazy once that she called 911 on me because I was walking around too much. To me, a situation like that is not only more original, but more representative of what a 911 operator might experience — getting a bunch of bullshit calls that aren’t really emergencies.

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This was probably the page where I decided this wasn’t going to make the cut. Because this is the page where our main character solves the problem. And my question is: what special or unique or clever thing did she do to solve the problem? As far as I can tell, nothing.

She just got the guy to stay there long enough so the cops could pick him up. Remember, when you’re introducing a character, you’re trying to create something the reader will either fall in love with or become fascinated by. Anything less, and the reader isn’t going to be interested in them.

I’ll give you an example. The famous Lethal Weapon Mel Gibson suicidal jumper scene. In that scene, a guy is about to jump off a building and Detective Martin Riggs (Mel Gibson) is tasked with stopping him. What does Riggs do? Instead of trying to stop him, he says, “Let’s do it!” The jumper is so confused he’s not sure how to react. Riggs keeps pushing him. Let’s do it. Let’s do it! And eventually, they jump!

It’s a scene that both goes against what we’re expecting and creates a fascinating character in the process.

Those are the kinds of things I’m looking for when I get introduced to characters.
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ELD:Arrrrgh….

She is NOT a clever character. This is not Sherlock Holmes or Martin Riggs in 9-1-1 center (although both would also be good movies). This is Zoey. A gal raised by the Foster Care system in New Orleans. She has no family, no real life outside of work. That is why she works the night shifts and every holiday possible. Things we will learn when they organically make sense for us to learn them. Like the fact that she became a 9-1-1 operator because when she was 17, a 9-1-1 Operator saved her from being raped and murdered by her Foster Dad.

She is an average person who will be faced with extraordinary new circumstances. i.e. why in the world would you require or expect a clever way to solve the problem from an unclever person. That is a biased filter at work. i.e., you like movies with clever folks, so you need the clever solution. Again, this is a taste issue – not a writing one.

This is going to be a Sixth Sense-type story with a Sixth Sense-type lead character. This is not going to be Indiana Jones. Let’s look at the lead character in The Sixth Sense – here is his description:

Dr. Malcolm Crowe is characterized as a devoted, quiet, and thoughtful child psychologist who is highly intelligent and at the top of his profession. His professional manner is described as subdued and academic, yet he is committed to his cases and hesitant to immediately “slap a ‘label’ of a diagnosis on a child.”
Think Maclom Crowe in a 9-1-1 Center – how “clever” would he be?

Carson – just my humble opinion – but you need to open your script review mind to include these types of characters and situations because, at least in the case of the Sixth Sense, they can lead to one of the best horror movies either way.

SS: This one you’re not just wrong on, ElDave. You’re dead wrong.

Every character has to have something they’re good at or what’s the point of writing a character at all. If we’re all the same, all devoid of any special skills, then there is no originality in us. There is nothing for others to root for.

Every person in the world has something they’re better at than most people. And the thing about highlighting this skill, especially early on, is that it does an AMAZING JOB at making us like the protagonist.

You said that Zoey grew up in the foster care system. Jesus Christ, that’s a goldmine of opportunities to get really good at certain things. You have to be a survivor to go through that system. You have to be resilient. You have to be tough. You’d probably have to learn all sorts of tricks to survive, basic things like how to navigate other girls bullying you.

How well do you remember The Sixth Sense? Malcom has an early scene, when he first meets Cole, where he does the most clever thing in the script. When Cole won’t talk, Malcom comes up with a game to get Cole to open up (If I guess something right about you, you have to take a step forward, if I guess wrong, you have to take a step back).

That’s EXACTLY what I’m talking about. That game is something only a psychiatrist would learn working in their line of business.

It sounds to me like Zoey’s life experience has subjected her to a lot of unique experiences that have made her a fighter and, likely, a problem-solver. So let’s see her use those problem-solving skills in that first call.
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The explanation of using the word “darling” didn’t make this feel any more clever. If the idea is that she goes against the handbook to save people, I’m down with that. But if sometimes using an unapproved word is breaking the rules, it’s the tamest rule-breaking I’ve ever seen. So much more could’ve been done here.


For example, if this would’ve been some incel lamenting the fact that no girls like him and Zoey exploited that to save his life by pretending to be romantically interested in him. Maybe even agreeing to go on a date with him if he stepped back, only to go cold the second the cops snatched him up, that’s a character I would’ve been interested in. But just calling someone ‘darling’ doesn’t move the needle for me.

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ELD: I like this suggestion.

SS: Phew, an easy one.

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In every script, I’m always looking for honesty. For truth. In other words, are the people in the story acting out truthful moments, saying truthful things? Or are they just puppets for the writer to say what he wants or do what he wants? The more I see of the latter, the more tuned out I become. The more I see of the former, the more invested I get.

I have a hard time believing this call center goes cuckoo over “the q word.” That feels made up to me. It feels like a lie a writer concocted. I want the truth. And I want the details of that truth.

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ELD: This was the first comment that actually irritated me.

So, I spent a solid week researching 9-1-1 call centers down to every detail and one of the more common rituals/jinxes I came across was the Q word jinx – and not surprisingly, most often caused by rookie operators. So, a writer does all this work to try and make something authentic, and then you judge its authenticity based on whether you are personally knowledgeable in the matter ( It would have taken a 2 second google search on your part). What that paradigm means is if Carson is not aware of it than it is not authentic.

That is a poor reviewing technique. Sorry… It just is.

SS: I actually went back and forth on whether I should include my thoughts on this “Q-word” moment because, like you said, what do I know about call centers?
But it’s important to remember that authenticity doesn’t just mean you literally point to the detail you added and confirm it’s a real thing. It’s that the situation as a whole must FEEEEEL AUTHENTIC. So I think this had more to do with the presentation of how the q-word was introduced. That’s the part that didn’t feel right.

I once did notes on this screenplay about a doctor who was trying to cover up his malpractice on a high-profile patient. And my number one note to the writer was that it was the most inauthentic depiction of a hospital I’d ever read. I told him he needed to do a ton of research on hospitals and doctors before writing the next draft.

He then proceeded to tell me that he was a doctor. Yeah, that got awkward fast. I felt strange about it so I called him and we talked about it. We ended up going through a few of the bigger sequences so I could highlight why I thought they were inauthentic. As I was explaining myself, he would say things like, “Well no, you’re wrong because the hemodynamic parameters would’ve been reconciled with the attending physician so that the telemetry system could accurately track the cardiac output and mean arterial pressure.”

And I said to him, “Wait, why the f$&@ isn’t *that* in your script?” And as we went through every section, he would explain in detail what was going on, but he hadn’t included any of that detail in the script. And if he had, it would’ve felt VERY authentic.

But the point is, it’s not just the technical component of it (that people don’t like the q-word). It’s how it’s depicted. It’s got to feel natural and effortless. And I remember reading that part and feeling like the whole world stopped to highlight this one moment about the ‘q-word’ and it just didn’t feel genuine. It felt manufactured.

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Essentially what’s happening here is that the scene is rebooting. It’s starting over. We’ve got a brand new call. And the good news is, there’s something different going on with this call. There’s something glitchy, both in the connection and the way that connection is interfering with the nearby electronics.
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ELD: First call – ESTABLISHING

Second call – CATALYST

All before page 9. 
I’m fine with that pace.

SS: Yeah, the pace of this scene is fine. But the funny thing about pacing is, it’s not “the” thing. It’s “the supporting” thing. As I’ve established, the creative choices behind that first call could be better. Now, is it nice that the pacing allows us to get through that not-as-good-as-it-could-be first call faster? Sure. But that doesn’t absolve you from not coming up with a better first call. The pacing would work even better if that first call was more entertaining.

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For some reason, I’m only casually interested in this boy’s plight. I don’t know if it’s because the rest of the pages haven’t fully pulled me in or if it’s something with the boy himself. If I had to guess, I’d say it’s because the scenario feels too obvious. First we have the drug addict tweaking out. Now we have the little child. None of these things feel different enough.

I can’t emphasize enough how much I read and, because of that, I read stuff like this all the time. Something that might help you guys is to put yourself in my head and ask, “Is this something Carson has probably seen a lot?” If the answer is yes, go back to the drawing board and write a scene that’s more original.
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ELD: To get a script approved by you – Yes. To write a good script – No. Again, see above, your core problem is the premise. It wouldn’t really matter how this was written. I’ll offer you the same test. How many times have you read a Zombie scene, a car crash scene, a therapy scene? You coat this as an originality problem when it clearly is not – it is a taste difference. Otherwise, I would have to believe there are just hundreds of scripts out there with 9-1-1 call scenes where the cops show up and all are fine and all deny that they ever called.

SS: Okay, let’s address this cause you’ve brought it up a couple times now. I liked the movie Eddington. There is no movie that is designed more for me to dislike than Eddington. But Eddington won me over. Any single concept can win me over if the writing’s good.

As for this specific concept, I don’t know why you think I wouldn’t like a call center movie. I was pumped when they announced that The Guilty movie with Jake Gyllenhaal. It sounded cool. I also think phone calls with people in trouble are naturally dramatic. There’s plenty to worth with here.

My problem is that, of the two calls at the beginning of the script, neither of them stand out. Neither is nearly as good as they could be. Since that’s the whole focus of the movie, that worries me.

And you’re wrong when you say: “to get a script approved by you.” The people who actually have to put up money are SO MUCH MORE JUDGMENTAL than I am. I don’t have anything on the line. I just want to be entertained. These people risk their careers when they buy a script.

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There’s a beat on this page that is the key to this entire scene living up to its promise. It’s when the boy says, “I got a bike. Santa already came.” And Zoey says, “Why would Santa have already—?”
This is supposed to be our introduction to the hook—the strange situation our operator finds herself in. Receiving calls from the future. But it’s such a blink-and-you-miss-it moment that it doesn’t register. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone reading this completely missed it.
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ELD: I’ll take a fresh look at this – I thought when the boy said Santa already came and we know the real time scene is before XMAS was clear enough.
I’ll run this by some folks to see if they pick it up or miss it.

SS: Sounds good.

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I get that Eldave doesn’t want to show his cards too soon, but you need to hook us here and this scene BARELY mines its hook. Even the scene at the house afterwards is rushed. You want to SLOW DOWN as we get to the house. Show that the cops believe someone is in danger. Have them carefully go up to the house, maybe even knock the door in when nobody answers. And they just see this family casually dining. That would’ve hit a lot harder.
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ELD: I don’t know – I have a feeling if I would have done that I would have got the start the scene as late as you can mantra. But I’ll look at it.

Thanks for the read and notes – I do appreciate it. I just did not find most of the suggestions compelling.

SS: My feeling is always, when you have a strong suspenseful moment, milk it as much as you can. That’s when a story like this is going to be at its strongest. I see no value in rushing through this moment. You want to tease it, make us beg. Make us wonder. Have us in the palm of your hand. This moment would’ve been great for that.

ELD: PS – for some reason I did not see the DID TODAY’S SCENE GET SCREWED?? banner until just now.
Screwed is an odd word… If I answer yes, it means I was treated unfairly.
I don’t think I was treated unfairly. I think instead you have blinders for certain topics and a certain type of storytelling and those contaminate your script review process. That is of course true for all human beings. What we know is:
You were a NO on the logline – Yet, it got 23 upvotes.
You were NO on the scene, making it in the top 6 – Yet, the scene got 24 upvotes and tons of comments stating it should have been in and several I would have voted for it ones. And I did not solicit these. I merely said – here is my scene.
Point being, I think there was sufficient evidence there for you to conclude you got it wrong.
The objections/criticisms/reasoning above are for the most part not compelling as a separator from the entries that moved forward. e.g., Your issue that – you have seen this a hundred times before (which you have not) is not a disqualifier knowing that you have seen a car death, zombie bite, couples therapy, etc, exponentially more times. You have an authenticity hiccup on 9-1-1 operators discussing a Q word jinx because you’re not familiar with it, but are quite willing to accept really weird and unknown elements in the other scripts.
This was DOA because you did not like the premise. BUT – I don’t feel cheated because you didn’t. It is your site, ergo your tastes.

SS: I think you’re looking at this the wrong way, ElDave. By making this my fault, you are relieving yourself from having to look in the mirror and ask if you could’ve done better.

I don’t dislike this idea or the subject matter. I’m not sure where you’re getting that. I just didn’t like them as much as some other ideas. But there have been two fairly high profile 911 call center movies recently, those being The Guilty and The Call. So there are movies out there that this feels similar to.

Also, there’s a show called 911 and I’ve seen at least a couple of hundred (probably more) scenes from movies or TV shows that have included a 911 dispatch operator. So, actually, I’ve seen these scenarios more than 100 times. Which is why the bar is high. And I don’t understand why you want to keep it low. That logic doesn’t make sense to me.

As a writer, you should stay out of comfort. You should be pushing yourself for the best versions of these scenes you’re capable of writing. I just don’t believe that this opening scene you’ve offered is the top of what you’re capable of. If you insist that it is, I apologize. But I think you can do better.

Script Notes Deal! – For all writers, if you want me to push your writing to another level, I’m offering a 40% deal for script notes on your screenplay or pilot script. If you want the deal, you have to e-mail me with the subject line “forty,” but with a Chicago accent (where I’m from). So e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com and put in the subject line, “FOURDEE”

The most ambitious movie of Paul Thomas Anderson’s career

Genre: Drama/Thriller
Premise: A former revolutionary who gets high all day must spring back into action when his teenage daughter is taken by the very group he used to fight for.
About: Paul Thomas Anderson burst onto the scene as a directing superstar with his one-two punch of Boogie Nights and Magnolia. The auteur continues to try and push the boundaries of cinema in an industry that seems determined to push the auteur aside. One Battle After Another, which stars Leonardo DiCaprio, brought in 22 million dollars on its opening weekend, and attempts to have staying power for the rest of the year in hopes of becoming Warner Brothers’ big flashy Oscar hopeful.
Writer: Paul Thomas Anderson
Details: Almost 3 hours long!!!

A month and a half ago, I started seeing a lot of publicity for this movie, which was confusing because Paul Thomas Anderson movies don’t usually get marketing campaigns this big. Sure, it had Leonardo DiCaprio in it. But it’s not like he was playing Jack Dawson again.

Paul Thomas Anderson hasn’t exactly been hitting the ball out of the park lately. The worldwide box office for his last film, Licorice Pizza, was 33 million. For The Phantom Thread, 48 million. Inherent Vice, 15 million. And The Master, 28 million.

So why is his latest movie getting the same marketing push as a Marvel movie?

Finally, the answer revealed itself.

Warner Brothers paid 150 million dollars to make this movie.

150 million dollars!!!

That’s four times the budget of any previous Paul Thomas Anderson film.

So of course WB was promoting the heck out of the movie. They had to after sinking 150 million dollars into it.

Did the movie deliver on that huge investment? Not exactly. It squeaked out 22 million bucks, officially killing the overtly political movie going forward. I mean, if audiences won’t show up for a film that mirrors the biggest political story in the country, when will they?

Everybody knows that if you want to make a political movie, you do it through sci-fi or horror. How do I know this? Because James Cameron made a movie about the environment in 2008 and it made 3 billion bucks. It was called Avatar.

Look, I’m not here to sugarcoat it — I’ve always had mixed feelings about Paul Thomas Anderson, who invented his own lane, aka, “the sloppy auteur.” He’ll present his movie as if it’s set in 1983, like he does here, yet have cops taking selfies at the end of the sequence. Maybe in his late-night drug-addled writing sessions, choices like that felt inspired. To me, they just feel careless. Have a plan. Build a consistent world that makes sense so we can believe in it. It’s not 1992 anymore — you can’t cram 72 storylines into a two-and-a-half-hour movie and expect critics to call it genius. The internet changed that. It raised the bar. But Anderson still seems to be playing by the old rules.

If you haven’t seen the film, and I hope you never have to, it follows a terrorist group called the French 75 (yet the movie looks like it’s set in 1983, though we later find out it starts in 2009, only to eventually to be set in 2025). Leading the group is a black woman named Perfidia. She and Bob (Leonardo DiCaprio), the French 75’s resident bomb expert, are in a relationship.

Colonel Steven Lockjaw (Sean Penn) has been tasked with stopping the French 75, but quickly falls for the sexy Perfidia. He tells her she can do all the terrorist things she wants if she just has sex with him. That’s an easy decision for her and she does so without telling Bob.

Perfidia later stupidly kills a cop, gets arrested, and the only way to lighten her sentence is to name names. She gives up everyone but Bob.

16 years later, a severely lazy Bob is raising his daughter, Willa, he had with Perfidia (or so he thinks). Willa just wants a normal life but gets taken by a reestablished wing of the French 75.

They’re saving her because word is Colonel Lockjaw is looking for her, as he believes she’s his daughter. Lockjaw’s pursuit is complicated by the fact that he’s a part of a secret white nationalist group that doesn’t allow interracial relationships. So Lockjaw wants to erase the evidence by killing his half-black daughter.

Meanwhile, Bob, who’s been laying on a couch for 16 years getting high, is pulled back into service. The lazy forgetful bumbling druggie teams up with Willa’s karate sensei to go and save her. Turns out it’s hard to do stuff, though, when you’ve become the physical embodiment of Jeffrey Lebowski.

Hmmmmmm…

I’m trying to think of anything I liked about this movie. The closest I’ve got to a positive would be Sean Penn’s character, Colonel Lockjaw. I wouldn’t say I liked the character. But the combination of the character and Sean Penn’s weird interpretation of it was, at least, interesting.

I don’t know what Leonardo DiCaprio is doing these days. This is the second major role in a row where he plays a half-witted dolt. At this point, if your script has a moronic main character, just send it to Leo’s people — he clearly loves these guys.

The frustrating part is that there was a version of this character — Bob — that could’ve made the whole movie work. Here’s what I mean. The film revolves around a group of ultra-progressive revolutionaries determined to change the world, and Bob is one of them.

Then comes the fallout (Perifia names names), sixteen years pass, and Bob gets pulled back into that world. Now, from a dramatic point of view, the most interesting version of this setup writes itself: Bob’s grown up. He’s changed. He’s become a middle-aged, 9-to-5, moderately conservative guy. The polar opposite of who he used to be.

That’s where the tension (and the humor) would’ve come from. A man re-entering a culture he no longer understands. A rebel turned square who suddenly has to face the ideals he abandoned. That’s conflict. That’s irony.

And you can tell Anderson wanted that contrast. Like when Willa’s friends come over and one of them is transgender. Bob awkwardly asks what pronouns he should use. It’s a great setup for a generational or ideological clash… except it doesn’t track, because Bob’s still progressive. He’s still this aging hippy whose identity was built in the same world that would obviously be comfortable around a transgender person.

The same issue pops up later, when Bob’s trying to call the French 75 number and forgets the old code words that will allow him access to his daughter’s whereabouts. He starts yelling at the operator, who chirps back, “You’re invading my safe space!” Bob snaps, “Invading your space? We’re not even in the same room!”

Again — Anderson wants that contrast, that sense that Bob has drifted so far from his roots he no longer speaks the language. But it never lands, because Bob isn’t fundamentally different. He’s only slightly less progressive than before. And “slightly” doesn’t create drama. It just creates noise.

All of this ties back to the larger point: Paul Thomas Anderson is a screenwriting cautionary tale. He came up in an era that celebrated anti-storytelling — where craft was considered “square” and traditional structure was seen as a prison. As a result, he never fully grasped that to make this premise work, Bob needed to be a true fish out of water. Instead, Anderson seems to think that simply moving Bob from one pond to another is enough.

By the way, one of the easiest tells of a weak screenwriter is an inflated page count. Long scripts are what happen when a writer can’t make decisions. Instead of committing to a clear direction, they throw everything in — every tangent, every side character, every half-idea that should’ve been cut. The result? A screenplay equivalent of the director’s cut. The one that no one asked for.

Look, I don’t love cutting scenes I like either. But that’s literally the job. You have to serve the spine of the story. This whole subplot about Colonel Lockjaw’s wannabe–white nationalist group that forbids interracial relationships? It’s so ludicrous it drags the film into parody. You didn’t need it. His motivation was already clean and compelling: he wants his daughter. That’s enough.

Unless you are heavily into leftist politics, a self-proclaimed cinephile, an uptight critic for one of the major newspapers, or a die-hard Paul Thomas Anderson fan, I would not watch this. I wouldn’t even bother when it shows up on streaming. It’s long. It’s aimless. It’s self-serving. And it’s ten drafts and a much better screenwriter short of anything watchable.

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

What I learned: “The Level Above The Level” – In both this movie and Eddington (a movie I liked), both writers create this level of people above the central antagonists. Here, it’s this group of white nationalists who supposedly rule the world. And in Eddington, it’s this black ops military unit that protects ultra-progressive ideology. I don’t believe “the level above the level” works. Without enough time to let the plotline blossom, it always feels forced. I thought the wild gun shootout at the end of Eddington was fun. But I had no idea why this black ops unit was interested in killing a random small-town sheriff. And here in One Battle after Another, the white nationalist storyline had such a weak payoff that you clearly didn’t need it. Which meant you could’ve chopped off 10-15 minutes of your movie just by dropping it. So, the next time you’re thinking of adding a level ABOVE the level, don’t do it. It’s probably not going to work.

These scene showdowns always end up being a little more controversial than I expect. Some people have said that by creating this challenge, it forces writers to write bigger scenes than they otherwise would have. I don’t think that’s true. As unknown screenwriters, you have to hook a reader right away. So starting with a great scene is, dare I say, essential.

And how do I respond to these criticisms? By announcing another scene showdown!

So you know I’m not trolling, the main reason I’m holding this new showdown is TO KEEP YOU GUYS WRITING. I’ve already heard several of you complain that writing your scripts has been difficult. So, anything I can do to push you forward and continue to write, I’m going to do.

What’s this latest showdown?

It’s called the “THAT SCENE” SHOWDOWN.

Every good movie has THAT SCENE, that amazing awesome scene that everyone remembers. Technically speaking, your climax should be your best scene. But, for whatever reason, it never ends up that way. The best scene is usually somewhere in the second act. So that’s the scene I want you to write. I want your best scene that occurs in your second act (it’s fine if it isn’t in your second act but that’s what I want you to aim for).

If you want examples, the Deli scene in The Wrestler comes to mind. Will confronting the Harvard Douchebag in the bar in Good Will Hunting. Anton Chigurh’s coin toss in the gas station in No Country for Old Men. The cars waiting at the border crossing scene in Sicario. The blood test scene in The Thing. Clarice’s first meeting with Hannibal Lecter. Georgie talking to the clown in the storm drain scene in It. When the marines inspect the colony for the first time in Aliens. The clown doll attacking the boy in Poltergeist.

It’s that scene that people talk about for years. It’s that movie that you put on JUST SO YOU CAN GET TO THAT SCENE AND WATCH IT. It’s your movie’s best scene. And I want to see what that’s going to be for all the Blood & Ink participants.

Even if you haven’t gotten that far in your screenplay yet, you should already know what that scene is going to be.  So, don’t wait to get to that scene. Jump ahead and write it. That should actually help those of you who aren’t writing fast enough. It’ll give you a checkpoint to write towards.

Don’t worry about context. I’ll give you 100 words to set up your scene for the readers if need be. And we’re going to post this showdown on Halloween – this October 31st. Which gives you about a month to write it. I would think that’d be plenty of time! And, you can start sending in your entries RIGHT NOW.

By the way, a few Blood & Ink participants seemed to think that, by not making the First Scene Showdown, they were no longer in the contest. Let me be clear: ALL 97 BLOOD & INK ENTRIES ARE STILL IN THE CONTEST. You don’t have to enter these Blood & Ink showdowns if you don’t want to. But you should still be writing your script so that it’s ready in February.

Okay, here are the details for ‘THAT SCENE’ SHOWDOWN

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

Should today’s scene have been included in the First Page Showdown? A lot of you thought so!

This week, I’ve been breaking down the top scenes in my Blood & Ink Screenwriting Contest. This is a contest writers had to pitch for—you had to come up with a good enough idea just to get in. Of 2500+ pitches, only 97 got through. Last weekend, I did a “showdown” for those 97 writers where they could compete to see who had the best first scene.

The six best scenes were featured on the site. However, Eldave, who’s in the contest, posted his scene in the comments section and got a ton of positive feedback, with many readers proclaiming he  should’ve won!

Should he have?

Let’s find out!

I love the first three paragraphs of this page. They’re simple. They’re effective. They’re descriptive. They imply a strong sense of craft. I know, after reading these first three paragraphs, that I’m dealing with someone who’s written a lot of scripts. However, that’s not always an advantage.  More on that in a sec.

When you read a lot, you come across patterns. Writers tend to make similar choices since we’re all drawing from the same pot of ideas. And it can be said that what a reader is looking for is a writer who disrupts the pattern. Not haphazardly. But with a plan.

So when I read this opening page, my first thought was, “It’s the old suicidal person on the other line scene and our heroine is going to save them.” It’s a scene pattern I’ve come across a lot.

Now, that doesn’t mean I’m tuned out. If the writer can give the main character a clever way to solve the problem, I’ll call the scene a success. Or if the scene goes in a different direction than I expected, that’s also appealing to me. So let’s see what happens.

When I read this second page, the big word that popped into my head was “competent.” The writing is very competent. It’s very professional. It’s doing the job.

But a screenplay needs something beyond competence. It needs a special quality, wherever that quality is going to come from. And when I read this page, this fear started to creep in that this scene was going to be adequate and nothing more. Because I feel like I’ve read hundreds of scenes just like it.

All of this is going through my head as I’m trying to decide if this scene is going to make the cut for the weekend.

This was probably the page where I decided this wasn’t going to make the cut. Because this is the page where our main character solves the problem. And my question is: what special or unique or clever thing did she do to solve the problem? As far as I can tell, nothing.

She just got the guy to stay there long enough so the cops could pick him up. Remember, when you’re introducing a character, you’re trying to create something the reader will either fall in love with or become fascinated by. Anything less, and the reader isn’t going to be interested in them.

I’ll give you an example. The famous Lethal Weapon Mel Gibson suicidal jumper scene. In that scene, a guy is about to jump off a building and Detective Martin Riggs (Mel Gibson) is tasked with stopping him. What does Riggs do? Instead of trying to stop him, he says, “Let’s do it!” The jumper is so confused he’s not sure how to react. Riggs keeps pushing him. Let’s do it. Let’s do it! And eventually, they jump!

It’s a scene that both goes against what we’re expecting and creates a fascinating character in the process.

Those are the kinds of things I’m looking for when I get introduced to characters.

The explanation of using the word “darling” didn’t make this feel any more clever. If the idea is that she goes against the handbook to save people, I’m down with that. But if sometimes using an unapproved word is breaking the rules, it’s the tamest rule-breaking I’ve ever seen. So much more could’ve been done here.

For example, if this would’ve been some incel lamenting the fact that no girls like him and Zoey exploited that to save his life by pretending to be romantically interested in him. Maybe even agreeing to go on a date with him if he stepped back, only to go cold the second the cops snatched him up, that’s a character I would’ve been interested in. But just calling someone ‘darling’ doesn’t move the needle for me.

In every script, I’m always looking for honesty. For truth. In other words, are the people in the story acting out truthful moments, saying truthful things? Or are they just puppets for the writer to say what he wants or do what he wants? The more I see of the latter, the more tuned out I become. The more I see of the former, the more invested I get.

I have a hard time believing this call center goes cuckoo over “the q word.” That feels made up to me. It feels like a lie a writer concocted. I want the truth. And I want the details of that truth.

Whenever I hand myself over to a writer, I want to be pulled into their world, to the specificity of that unique place. I just read this interview with James Cameron where he talks about how obsessive he is with every single little detail on Pandora. Which is a huge reason the movies work. The details feel like they could only exist in that specific reality.

I would’ve liked to see more of that specificity highlighted in this call center. It should almost feel like an alien planet. Because it is to someone who’s never been inside one before. And it’s up to the writer to convey that.

Essentially what’s happening here is that the scene is rebooting. It’s starting over. We’ve got a brand new call. And the good news is, there’s something different going on with this call. There’s something glitchy, both in the connection and the way that connection is interfering with the nearby electronics.

Yesterday we talked about dangling carrots. This is the first true carrot being dangled in this scene. And it’s taken me six pages to get here. I’m not saying that’s too long. I think if some of the issues I brought up earlier were improved, this moment would hit harder. But as you can tell, I’m on the fence with these pages. So this moment feels more like a Hail Mary to bring me back into the fold than a continuation of an organically building sequence.

The good news is, it’s a pretty big carrot, which is the right move. We’ve waited through a handful of pages of what was, essentially, exposition. We deserve a reward. So you have to make that reward plump and juicy.

For some reason, I’m only casually interested in this boy’s plight. I don’t know if it’s because the rest of the pages haven’t fully pulled me in or if it’s something with the boy himself. If I had to guess, I’d say it’s because the scenario feels too obvious. First we have the drug addict tweaking out. Now we have the little child. None of these things feel different enough.

I can’t emphasize enough how much I read and, because of that, I read stuff like this all the time. Something that might help you guys is to put yourself in my head and ask, “Is this something Carson has probably seen a lot?” If the answer is yes, go back to the drawing board and write a scene that’s more original.

There’s a beat on this page that is the key to this entire scene living up to its promise. It’s when the boy says, “I got a bike. Santa already came.” And Zoey says, “Why would Santa have already—?”

This is supposed to be our introduction to the hook—the strange situation our operator finds herself in. Receiving calls from the future. But it’s such a blink-and-you-miss-it moment that it doesn’t register. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone reading this completely missed it.

Again, you’re trying to HOOK A READER. It’s one of the hardest things to do in the world. Reading takes work. So you need to give people a reason to do it. I would’ve built an entire page around the confusion surrounding what the boy is saying as opposed to just one half-line. Have him talking about several things that don’t make sense.

There’s this great sequence in Back to the Future where Marty is at his mother’s parents’ house in the past (1955), trying to find Doc. There are so many great lines in this scene, but my favorite is when Marty asks where Riverside Drive is. The dad says it’s on the other end of town, “a block past Maple.” Marty says, “A block past Maple? That’s John F. Kennedy Drive.” The dad looks at him like he’s crazy. “Who the hell is John F. Kennedy?” That dinner scene really mined the deliciousness of its concept – a kid getting stuck 30 years in the past with his young parents.

I get that Eldave doesn’t want to show his cards too soon, but you need to hook us here and this scene BARELY mines its hook. Even the scene at the house afterwards is rushed. You want to SLOW DOWN as we get to the house. Show that the cops believe someone is in danger. Have them carefully go up to the house, maybe even knock the door in when nobody answers. And they just see this family casually dining. That would’ve hit a lot harder.

To summarize, this scene was very competently written, but I think there were a lot of much stronger choices left on the table, which is the main reason it didn’t make the cut.

But as I said earlier this week, THIS IS FINE! Nobody writes a great first scene right off the bat. What often happens is, as you continue to write the rest of your screenplay and you understand your characters and world better, you go back to this scene with new information and improve upon it. I think this scene could be great. But it’s definitely at a 6 right now and it needs to be at a 9 by the time the script is finished.

Yesterday, I proclaimed that I expected Bite After Bite to rule the weekend and win the Blood & Ink First Scene Showdown. And now I’m going to explain why. The Bite After Bite pages were the only pages out of the 62 submissions where I felt that the writer had captured the exact promise of their pitch. These pages are giving me the movie that I imagined.

If you missed yesterday, I’m doing a deep dive into the first scenes of the Blood & Ink Contest. Yesterday was winner, Karoshi: The Drive. Today, we’re getting our zombie on with Bite After Bite.

Let’s take a look.

You’ll notice that this page starts quite differently from yesterday’s first page. We don’t start in the middle of an action that’s already taking place. This scene is more of a slow build.

I point this out so that writers understand that there’s no universal “correct” way to start a script. You can start fast. You can start slow. Up to you. I will say that the slower you start, the better the writer you have to be. Because it takes a more skilled writer to keep the reader invested while things are moving along slowly.

I consider the opening page a great example of my newsletter article about pages 0 and -1. Bite After Bite is a first scene that is helped tremendously by what the logline promises. Here’s that initial logline: “From Bite to Bite, we follow the zombie infection as it spreads – each victim’s story unfolding from the moment they’re bitten to when they pass it on.”

That logline helps the reader power through a page where seemingly nothing is happening. And some of you might be saying, “Carson, do you really need extra fuel to get the reader through the very first page?” I’ll answer that question this way. Have you ever stopped reading on the first page? My guess is that you have. Well, Hollywood people have less patience than you. So, there’s your answer.

It turns out we didn’t have to wait that long for something to happen. This is, essentially, the inciting incident of the screenplay. Elliot has been bitten. Presumably, he’s now infected. This is going to propel the narrative for the rest of the screenplay.

So, even though the script starts “slow,” we’re still introducing a major plot point just two pages into the script.

Something I also noticed here was that Andrew is using even shorter paragraphs than Mike was yesterday. Most of the paragraphs are one line. And, if they’re two, they’re finishing very quickly on the second line. This moves the eyes down the page even faster than yesterday.

I strongly recommend doing this if there’s a lot of description in your story. Description can feel like a chore once those paragraphs get up to 4 lines or more. However, if you have a ton of dialogue, which is the fastest part of the script to read, then it’s okay to have longer paragraphs, as the reader is okay with reading them every once in a while.

To be honest, this page is a teensy bit clunky. The interaction between the family feels off. Amber seems to be working against her husband rather than with him.

I also think more clarity surrounding the bite could’ve been conveyed. I always go back to this directive: “If this conversation were happening in real life, how would it go down?” That’s not to say you have to use that conversation in your script. But it should be the foundation of the conversation you use because it is the most truthful. And, in writing, we writers can sometimes lose the thread and focus more on what we want to put in the script rather than what would actually happen.

Here, I feel like there’d be more discussion regarding what happened. “Wait, did you see anything?” “No, I was swimming and then I felt it and I shrugged it off.” The kid would probably ask, “Was it a shark?” “No.” The wife might say, “Hold on, take me through what happened.” I then think there would be a longer conversation about whether to go to the hospital or not. Instead, we’re taking pictures of the thing and moving on.

This is a good example of the difference between being a wordsmith and being a good storyteller. The most important thing you must do as a writer is get the reader to turn the page. To do this, you must be a good storyteller.  There are lots of ways to be a good storyteller and the use of suspense is one of the big ones. If you can learn how to build suspense, you can consistently hook a reader.  And if you can do that, you don’t need to be a wordsmith.

Even though there’s not a lot going on this page, there’s one line in particular that stands out. “My leg is on fire.” It establishes a ticking time bomb that we know, because of page -1, is going to kill him. And it’s going to be responsible for killing millions of others as well.

That one sentence compels us to keep reading. Because even though we know that he turns into a zombie, we can still hope we’re wrong. We can still hope (even if it’s impossible) that he figures it out before it’s too late. We’re also wondering if he’s going to turn and infect his family or if he’s going to be separated from them before things get bad. So there are still questions to be had.

We now have escalation. We talked about this yesterday. You want your scenes to evolve. You don’t want them to stagnate. One page ago, his leg was burning. Now he’s vomiting. Things are escalating which means we have to act fast.

Just two pages ago, we were watching a family enjoy their day at the beach. Now, things have gotten very bad very quickly. Real danger is rushing in. At this point, I would say it’s impossible to stop reading until the scene is over. Which is where you want to be with that first scene. You want to make it so that they HAVE TO finish the scene. Not even WANT TO. They HAVE TO.

The scene continues to evolve with a new character – the lifeguard. Things are getting bigger. Which is what you want. You want to BUILD with a scene. You don’t want it to stay the same. Writing a screenplay is about building pressure then releasing it. You can build within a scene. You can build within a sequence of scenes. You don’t want to go too long in your screenplay where you’re not building towards something.

I noticed some readers complain that we don’t care about this family because we don’t know anything about them.

That’s a choice we all have to make as writers. Do you want to go the traditional route, where you use your first 15 pages to introduce your hero (or heroes) in their everyday environment so that we get to know them and sympathize with them, and only THEN hit them with the inciting incident?

Or do you jump into the story right away and teach the reader about your characters while all the action is happening? With Bite After Bite, we’re going to be following 8 different stories which is why I’m guessing we don’t have time to set this family up. By the time this sequence is over, we’ll be moving on to another character. So, in this case, Andrew has no other choice but to do it this way.

And even if he didn’t, I still think jumping into things is a perfectly viable option. I will say, however, that you should look for quick ways to set up characters to create the “mini” effect of a larger character setup.

For example, maybe when Elliot is about to swim out, he sees a little girl who’s by herself in water that’s almost up to her chest.  She’s perilously close to losing her footing and being swept out.  He moves her out of the water, spots a family down the way, and says, “Hey! Is this your daughter!?” And they look over. The mother realizes, ‘Oh,’ and comes and grabs the girl. In other words, it’s a quick way to make us like Elliot a bit more. So you should be doing that in these scenarios to help make up for the fact that you weren’t able to set the characters up traditionally.

And by the way, I should point out, the writers who get paid the big bucks are the ones who can do what other writers can do in 1/4 the time, or 1/8 the time. They can make you like a character in one page as opposed to eight pages. So, you should definitely know how to set up a family like this quickly if you want to work in this industry.

I will say that there could be more specificity in this scene. I don’t know much about this beach other than it’s your garden variety generic beach. As someone who used to ride his bike down the beach from Santa Monica to Torrance, I can tell you that each beach has its own personality.

Santa Monica is all tourists. Venice is the pothead beach. Dockweiler has the planes taking off from LAX. Manhattan Beach was the glitzy beach. Hermosa Beach was beach volleyball central. Redondo has the giant pier that’s still stuck in the year 1993. Each beach had its own demographic.

It adds something extra when you bring those details into your story. Not just for the beach. But for the characters. For the community. For the types of people who are around. That’s how you make things feel real on the page.

The good news is, this is not something you have to worry about in the first draft. So I’m fine giving Andrew some leeway here. For your first draft, it’s okay to be a bit generic cause you got to get the pages down. That’s what’s most important. But once you get to draft two, you have to start populating these scenes with more detail.

I’m not entirely on board with “I’m going to do bad things.” That sounds like something Bruce Banner would say. I think it’s a lot scarier for everyone if he doesn’t know what’s coming.

Then again, these are STORY CHOICES. When I give notes, I’m usually using dramaturgy to inform the writer about what he should or shouldn’t do in his story. But sometimes, I’ll give an opinion.

When it comes to opinion notes, that’s up to the writer. I can convey my concern but if he doesn’t like my suggestion, he’s the writer. He’s the one who, ultimately, has to face the fire. Which is why, as a writer, you should go with choices that you believe in.

George Lucas famously got flak for “The Force” and Obi-Wan becoming a ghost in Star Wars. His director friends (DePalma especially) told him it was a dumb idea. But Lucas believed in the choice, kept it, and created one of the most iconic mythologies ever. So I won’t get mad at Andrew if he believes in this choice.

Yesterday I said to think of your first scene as a pilot episode. At the end of every pilot episode, you want to include a cliffhanger so that the reader wants to see episode 2. Likewise, at the end of your opening scene, create a cliffhanger that makes the reader want to read scene number 2.

The reason you want to do it this way is because of the way a reader thinks. A reader will start reading that first page. If there’s enough there that they like, they’ll mentally say, “I’ll read the rest of the scene.” But, if they don’t like that scene, they’ll stop reading. Which is why you use this little cliffhanger trick to FORCE them to read the second scene. Once someone starts reading a scene, they’ll usually finish it. So keep giving them reasons to start the next scene.