A rare submission script that lands an IMPRESSIVE rating!

Genre: Thriller
Premise: A serial killer has an entire city living in fear – until he is kidnapped by three petty crooks looking to make their big score. The ransom demand they make to City Hall is chillingly simple: “Give us a million dollars or we’ll let him go again”…
About: Today’s script finished in SECOND PLACE in last month’s Logline Showdown competition. I read it last week, was blown away, and immediately started hyping up this review. Now, you’re not going to get your perfect rags-to-riches story here. Mike Hurst, the writer, does have several credits. But he is currently rep-less so he’s been forced to hustle like everyone else here. Today’s script has made it sacrosanct that after every Logline Showdown, I review the first AND SECOND ranked scripts. Even more of a reason to ENTER LOGLINE SHOWDOWN THIS WEEK!
Writer: Mike Hurst
Details: 93 pages

Fresh off White Lotus, James for Danny?

March Logline Showdown is THIS FRIDAY!!! That means all logline entries need to be in by THIS THURSDAY, March 23rd, at 10:00pm Pacific Time. Here are the submission details.

Send me: Title, Genre, Logline
E-mail: carsonreeves3@gmail.com
Rules: Script must be written
Deadline: Thursday, March 23rd, at 10pm Pacific Time
Cost: Free

For those of you complaining that we shouldn’t have competitions based solely on loglines, today is your validation day. You have been proven right. Fear City finished second to another script and, yet, it was the best script in the bunch. By a wide margin!

But you could also make the argument that the contest worked. Because the logline got a ton of votes. It just ran up against another strong logline.

The more egregious error was made on my part. After I read the script and realized how awesome it was, I did a quick search into my e-mail and found that I’d read it already! Or, at least, tried to read it. It was a submission in The Last Great Screenwriting Contest. And it didn’t even make the second round!

How did that happen?

There’s actually a good lesson to learn here. I remember there was a period during that contest where I was reading like 10 entries a day (the first act of each script). And anything that was mildly annoying became a PASS. Well, this script has bolded underlined slugs. It’s ugly. It’s awkward. It’s invasive. And that may have been enough for me to move on.

This is why I encourage writers not to do anything too out-of-the-box with their presentation. You don’t want to give overworked undernice industry people any reason to say no. Only reasons to say yes! Still, I’m disappointed in myself for missing this one because it’s always been one of my biggest fears – that I have these amazing scripts on my hard drive that slide by me for some reason or another.

Okay, let’s jump into the script!

The city is under siege. There’s a shooter on the loose. Someone is waiting until nighttime and then, once the streetlights go on, blam! Some poor guy or gal gets shot in the head. There are 14 people who have fallen victim to The Midtown Maniac and the cops don’t have a clue where to start looking for him. It’s gotten so bad that as soon as it gets dark, the entire city hurries inside their homes.

Joe, 20 years old, sickly, lives in a crappy apartment with his older brother, Danny, and Danny’s unstable criminal pal who just got out of prison, Vin. Joe thinks he knows who the Midtown Maniac is. Every time there’s been a shooting, Joe sees a mysterious loner dude park his beater car down in the lot and mope his way to his apartment.

Meanwhile, Danny sleeps with a girl just to steal her sister’s medication, which is the same medication Joe needs but can’t afford. Vin, a volcano on the verge of eruption, is just looking for a reason to snuff out Joe, who he hates. You get the feeling if you look at this guy the wrong way, he’ll curb stomp you until your face is compost.

The lack of any financial prospects are taking a toll on the trio, who are getting on each other’s nerves. When Joe tells the others about his Midtown Maniac theory, they think he’s nuts. But the more they look into it, the more they realize he may be onto something.

That’s when Danny gets his big idea. The city is paying 1 million dollars a night for cop overtime to keep the city safe from this animal. Danny figures if they kidnap the Midtown Maniac and demand a million bucks (or they’ll let him go), it’s a no-brainer. The city won’t be able to pay fast enough.

They wait until the Midtown Maniac is coming home one night, put a gun to his head, and kidnap him. They then escort him, in the middle of the night, to an old crappy farmhouse Vin owns outside the city. Once there, Danny drives to a public phone, calls the police, and makes his demand: “We’ve got the Midtown Maniac. Give us a million dollars or we’ll let him go…”

Back at the farmhouse, John Sadowitz, aka the assumed Midtown Maniac, says he has no idea what these guys are talking about. He is not and cannot be the shooter. He keys in on Joe, who he realizes is the weakest of the three, and starts injecting doubt into his theory. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to anyone, the police find evidence that tracks the shooter back to the trio’s building. The only ex-con in that building is Vin. So they think he’s the Midtown Maniac!

As the team tracks the saga over the news, they soon realize they’re out of their league. Panicking, Danny makes a hurried deal with the cops to have them drop money off in a pre-chosen area of the forest. They head to the spot to pick up the bags and, of course, they’re surrounded. But somehow, some way, Danny finds a way out. The question is, for how long?

There was so much to like about this script.

First and foremost, what awesome character work! I learned a valuable lesson right off the bat: Specificity helps SO MUCH in making characters feel realistic. When we meet Danny, he has sex with some woman he clearly doesn’t like. The next morning, before she wakes up, he steals pills from her bathroom. We’re thinking he’s a drug addict or something.

But we learn he stole the pills cause his sick brother needs them. They’re too expensive otherwise. It’s a highly detailed way to set up a) that Joe is sick, and b) that Danny will do anything to take care of him.

In the 99% of scripts I read, writers will set up that Joe is sick by describing him as pale and saying he coughs a lot. They’ll set up that Danny is a good brother by having him literally say, “You know I’d do anything for you, right? You’re family. Family sticks together.”

The difference between the way these situations are set up (Mike’s way and the generic way) create a totally different effect. The effect Mike creates is that this situation is so specific, it’s hard not to see these as real people.  That’s the gold star achievement and it’s what you’re trying to do as a writer – make readers believe that the characters in your story are real people.  Extremely specific dramatic events achieve this.

Vin is a little more straight-forward. He’s just angry. But Hurst still gives him this plotline of fiery defiance regarding going back to prison. Something devastating happened when he was in prison. And he’s determined not to revisit it. That defines every single decision he makes. And it works.

John Sadowitz then throws a wrench into everything because Sadowitz insists he’s not the shooter. And the truth is, these guys don’t know for sure that he is the shooter. What if he isn’t? Then they’re all going to jail for kidnapping. And we know how Vin feels about that.

There’s one scene that always comes up in a great script. It’s the scene where you realize, “I’m reading something special here.” We get that scene midway through the script when Danny, determined to prove that Sadowitz is the shooter, goes to Sadowitz’s apartment to look for his gun. If he can find his rifle, he’ll know they have Sadowitz.

As he desperately tosses the apartment that evening, he sees something shoot past the window. He looks up. Then he sees it again. A SWAT TEAM MEMBER quietly runs by. Danny freezes. He’s toast. They’ve come for Sadowitz and now here he IN SADOWITZ’S APARTMENT! With a SWAT TEAM surrounding him. What is he going to do?? He quietly moves to the window and that’s when he realizes, they’re not breaking into Sadowtiz’s place! They’re surrounding Danny’s apartment!  Which is just across the way in the same building. They were going after Vin.

This scene is followed by a great dramatically ironic moment where the cops cluelessly come to everyone’s door, including Danny, and ask questions about if he knows the people in that (Danny’s) apartment. Danny must assume the identity of Sadowitz to escape the cop’s curiosity. All of this as Danny eventually finds the rifle and walks out with it in a bag, through 50 cops standing around! It’s a great scene.

But, truthfully, the whole script is fraught with this level of tension. I can’t remember the last time I read a script where every single word was needed and not a single extra word was included. Which is the thing they TELL you to do when you write a screenplay but it’s almost impossible to pull off. Unless you’re Mike Hurst I guess!

There were two things that I had issues with in the script. First was the plan itself. It wasn’t well thought-out enough. Making a demand with no further instructions and no way for the police to contact you seemed about as effective as trying to operate an elevator via mind control. At the very least, tell them when you’re going to call them next. There needed to be a lot more communication with them and the cops.

The second issue I had was that we knew, almost immediately, that our trio was screwed. They were so overmatched, we never once thought they had a shot at that million bucks. For a movie like this to cook, we need to think our protagonists have a shot. Cause you want the audience to hope that, somehow, some way, they’re going to pull this off.

And yet EVEN WITH these problems, I still think this is an IMPRESSIVE script. It’s shockingly believable. The characters were great. But where the script really stood out was in the plotting. This was probably the best plotted screenplay I’ve read all year. It moves with so much purpose and with such great rhythm. And it has all these surprises. Characters you’d never thing would die, die. This on top of a killer concept!  That’s a rare package.

If Mike fixed up those two issues I mentioned above, I’d put it in my Top 25.

Script link: Fear City

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

What I learned: Display how characters care for each other by SHOWING instead of TELLING. Having Danny steal medicine for Joe conveys how he cares for his brother A MILLION TIMES better than if Danny tells Joe how much he cares about him. Yet the large majority of writers will do the latter.

Yet another million dollar sale on a story that can best be pitched as A Quiet Place meets The Sixth Sense!!

Genre: Horror
Premise: After a devastating health diagnosis, a recently divorced woman moves back in with her estranged father and becomes the only person who can see oddly inactive creatures hanging around their small town.
About: They just keep coming, these short story sales. But this one has kind of an interesting backstory. The writer honed the story, which is a meagre 20 pages, over the course of THREE YEARS(!!). He wanted it to be absolutely airtight before he went out with it, leaving nothing to chance. And you thought you were a perfectionist. 5 bidders over 72 hours fought for the project, with Netflix winning via a million dollar bid. The film will star Jessica Chastain. Misha Green will adapt the script as well as direct.
Writer: Chris Hicks
Details: 20 pages long

Something I constantly think about in how it relates to screenwriting is the elusive “bar.” I am referring to the bar your writing must rise above in order to be purchase-worthy. The quirky thing about the “bar” is that there’s the objective bar – the level at which your writing actually has to be at. And then there’s the subjective bar, which is where each individual writer *thinks* the bar is. That’s where everyone gets screwed up. Because their subjective bar may not be anywhere near the objective bar.

So how do you rectify that gap between where you assume the bar to be and where the bar actually is? Getting a lot of feedback helps. The more you’re told what’s wrong with your writing, the better you’re able to gauge where the bar is. But I’ve found the best way to locate the bar is to read a ton of scripts. The more you read, both professional and amateur, the better you’re able to see the key differences between the two and, in the process, find the bar.

In the absence of knowing how high or low the bar is, lean into the Chris Hicks strategy. Which is to rewrite the heck out of your script (or short story) until you honestly believe you have nothing left to give. Because even if you don’t meet the bar, you can say that you tried with all of your might to get there. And, in the end, that’s all you can do!

“I began seeing the creatures about a week before Zoe’s visit.” That’s how this story starts. We then cut back in time to find out that our heroine, Julie, is having a bad year. She’s a recent divorcee and, oh yeah, she gets brain cancer! Glioblastoma. One of the bad ones.

While she’s in treatment, Matt, her ex-husband, gets custody over their 4 year old daughter, Zoe. To make matters worse, after the treatment is over, the hospital refuses to release Julie without adult care supervision. The only person who can care for her is her father, who she has no relationship with.

So she moves to the small Kentucky town she grew up in and helps her older dad with simple tasks around the hardware story he owns. In the meantime, she desperately attempts to set up visitation with Zoe, something she finally gets after a lot of hassle.

But right before Zoe comes to town, Julie starts seeing things. Creatures. Big ugly things that sit around downtown. Just sitting there, doing nothing, occasionally looking Julie’s way, locking eyes with her. Nobody else can see these things. Just her. And when Julie’s dad sees her staring out at nothing, he gets concerned. He tells her it’s time to go back to the hospital.

As these spottings increase, Julie knows she needs treatment but wants to spend one last day with her daughter during the annual town fair. The dysfunctional trio head downtown and watch the locals prepare. Again, Julie sees the creatures, just sitting around in the middle of the street, doing nothing. But she also notices something odd. The people walk AROUND them. Which means maybe they are real.

As the fair reaches a crescendo, the creatures multiply. There are now 20 of them. Julie gets a sixth sense that something bad is about to happen and starts screaming at the police to get ready. They have no idea what she’s talking about. Until a creature walks over and pops the cop’s head like a walnut. Then all hell breaks loose.

The town is a barrel and the people are fish. They try and run but the creatures have the exits blocked. They pick off everyone easily. Nobody has any idea what’s happening though because they can’t see these creatures. Only Julie can. So Julie locates her dad and daughter and they make a run for it. But as they drive out of town, they are led to an even more terrifying realization: This isn’t the only town this is happening in.

So, why do you think Hollywood is going gaga over short story purchases? Treating them like spec scripts in the 90s? My theory is that everyone’s looking for that shorter time commitment to make a decision. This short story is 5000 words long. A screenplay is 20,000 words long. It allows them to do their jobs faster.

I’m also starting to realize that these short stories are like extended synopsis pitches. They’re definitely not formed yet. This is not a 100 minute movie that we get in this short story. All told, you’ve probably got 10 scenes here. So what you’re doing is you’re giving executives “the best of both worlds.” You’re allowing them to see the concept, which is the most important thing. And you’re allowing them to see it in some sort of fleshed out form, as opposed to a logline.

In addition to this, the writer is DRAMATIZING the events. This isn’t just a straight synopsis, which would be cold and lifeless. In the I Am Not Alone short story, we’re building tension. We’re building suspense. We’re building mystery. We’re exploring relationships. That’s a lot more fun to read then a synopsis.

It worked for me. I was invested in this story. One thing I’m finding that these good short story writers do is they wrap things around an emotional center so that the story explores the human condition on some level. It’s not just creepy imagery and jump scares.

We’ve got a triple-threat here on the emotional front. We’ve got the devastation of this brain cancer diagnosis. We’ve got the broken relationship between Julie and her father. And we’ve got the desperation of this other emotional relationship, whereby Julie is trying to retain a relationship with her daughter, despite everyone else trying to strip it away.

These are real-life issues that you could legitimately build a movie around. My question is, is it too much? Cause, usually, it would be for me. But Chris Hicks seems to know when to put his foot on the dramatic gas and when to ease up. Just when things start to get too depressing, we get a scene where she sees one of these creatures and it’s fun again. Maybe that’s what he spent three years on – trying to find that perfect balance.

The next question is, can you flesh this short out into a full movie? I think you can. But it comes with its own set of challenges. Here, we get four separate set-ups of Julie seeing the creatures, each one building in intensity. That’s fine for 20 pages. But what about 100 pages? You can’t have four scenes of “seeing creatures.” It’s not enough.

So Green will need to make a decision. Do you keep the slow-build “seeing creatures” format the short has, in which case this becomes more of a drama than a horror film? Or do you introduce juicer scenes that utilize these creatures in more dramatic ways leading up to their big attack?

I’m sure some of you are curious about my thoughts on the concept. Is it original? Good question. It’s sort like A Quiet Place meets The Sixth Sense. You’ve got the “I see dead people” aspect and then you have these terrifying “Quiet-Place”-looking creatures lingering about. So, it’s not entirely original. But, at the same time, I don’t know that I’ve come across anything exactly like it.  Which factored into my final grade…

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

What I learned: The latest round of these short stories selling to Hollywood are, basically, high concepts extended into synopses that have been dramatized so that they’re more entertaining to read than the average synopsis.

We’re going old school here – an article that could’ve appeared on Scriptshadow 1.0. All you advanced word-slingers, take the weekend off. Cause I’m speaking to my newbie homies, those of you who just joined the craft and don’t know where to start or how to put pen to paper. You imagine a screenplay – those 120 pages – and think, “That’s insane, bruh. I could barely write a 5 page essay in college.” Do college grads still say, “Bruh?” God, I hope so.

This article is for those of you who have either never written a screenplay, have started one only to abandon it midway through, written a script and are so scarred by the experience, you never wanted to go back again, or who have written a couple of scripts which were so bad, you wouldn’t let your cat read them. I’m going to hollllld youuuuurrr hannnnd (Hootie and the Blowfish, playing ten times a day at your local supermarket). Because, when you break it down, it’s not that hard. You just need a plan, bruh.

The first thing you’re going to do is come up with a concept that’s easy to manage. One of the reasons screenplays become hard to write is that the writer is writing about the Kakstiblox Galaxy Civil War which covers destabilization in seven different star systems and has 186 characters and, oh yeah, an entire novel of backstory.

If you want screenwriting to be easy, pick a manageable concept, something easy to write. You want to pick Aged Keanu (John Wick) over Keanu Prime (The Matrix). Why? Because The Matrix has a very complex mythology that takes way too long to work out. John Wick is a guy who gets revenge because they killed his dog! You couldn’t come up with a simpler concept if you were eating vanilla ice cream on a slice of white bread. Ladybird over Titanic. Nightcrawler over X-Men. Palm Trees and Power Lines over Everything Everywhere All at Once.

Next, you’re not going to stress too much about your concept. I know, I know. This site mentally murders you every time you don’t repeat the mantra: “Concept is king!” That’s still true. Concept IS king. But “great” is the enemy of startyourfuckingscreenplay and one of the reasons we don’t write is because we keep waiting – endlessly waiting – for that perfect idea to come to us.

In lieu of a great idea, just make sure you have an idea you’re passionate about. You can write something great if you’re passionate about it. Take Alan Ball. He wrote about one of the most boring things in the world – suburbs. But it was a great movie because he was passionate about it. Passion can help make up for weak ideas. I see it all the time.

Give us a hero we love (preferably an underdog) and a villain we despise. This may sound like the most obvious advice ever but you’d be surprised at how many scripts I read that don’t have this. Again, we’re trying to keep things simple here so there are less barriers to entry on you writing your script. So go with the simplest hero/villain combo. Give us Star Lord and Thanos. Give us Daniel LaRusso and Johnny. Give us Frodo and Sauron.

Have your main character going through what you’re personally going through right now in life. Whatever that big hurdle you’re trying to get over in life is at this moment (fear of failure, perfectionism, selfishness, lack of self-awareness), have your character going through something similar. Not only is this going to make the character feel more authentic, but it’s going to make the character a lot easier to write. You won’t have to make up anything because you’re writing yourself! Yay, easy mode unlocked!

Okay, now let’s talk about the hardest part of writing the script: THE ACTUAL WRITING OF THE SCRIPT. Unfortunately, you can’t have ChatGPT write your whole script for you yet. So there will be some work on your end. But I’m going to make this as easy as possible by giving you a schedule and a plan.

Here’s how it’s going to work. You are going to write your script using The Sequence Approach. That means that instead of writing one big 120 page script (intimidating) you’re going to write eight 12 page scripts, also known as “sequences” (fun). The idea here is that once you start writing to never think of the whole script. If you start thinking of the whole script, you’re going to get intimidated and give up. Just focus on the current sequence you’re working on. Here are the eight sequences you’re going to write…

Sequence 1 – Setup: Set up your character’s life.

Sequence 2 – Resistance: Something shocking comes along throwing your hero astray. They must go off on a journey (either internal or external, but preferably external) but they don’t want to go. They want to keep their old life. That life you set up in sequence 1!

Sequence 3 – Leave for the journey: Off they go. Not ready to tackle this quest but they’re going to try anyway, darnit. This is also known as the fun-and-games section because the serious stuff hasn’t started yet which means your hero gets to have fun.

Sequence 4 – Encounter the first big obstacle: Something gnarly this way comes. The second act is basically about throwing a bunch of big obstacles at your hero and seeing how he deals with them. This is the first formidable one of those.

MIDPOINT

Sequence 5 – I’m still standing: The midpoint may have provided a dip in your hero’s confidence. But your hero is still determined to get the job done. So he’s got a little pep in his step, a little swagger going into the second half. A screenplay should look like roller-coaster ride. The hero starts off up (Seq 1), falls down (Seq 2), back up again (Seq 3), and down (Seq 4), back up again (Seq 5). You get the picture.

Sequence 6 – Things only seem to be getting worse: The reality of just how impossible this goal is is hitting our hero hard. The bad guys have the upper hand. The girlfriend leaves him. Nobody trusts him. This leads him to his lowest point. Either he’s almost dead or a good friend dies or maybe even HE dies (The Princess Bride). It will feel at the end of this sequence like the movie is over and the hero has LOST.

Sequence 7 – Rebirth and a plan!: Your hero has an awakening. He’s not going to give up. He’s going to take down the bad guy. But he needs a plan! So it’s time for him, along with the rest of the characters, to plan up!

Sequence 8 – Climax: It’s time to take the bad guy down!

You are going to write 3 pages a day for the first four days of each week. You then get to spend the last three days of the week catching up and rewriting. So if you only wrote 2 pages on Monday, this is where you make up that 1 page.

If you’ve written all 12 pages like a good screenwriter, use these three final days in the week to rewrite and make adjustments (maybe you realized a scene should come earlier so you have to move it). We do this so that everything REMAINS EASY. You don’t have excuses like, “I didn’t have enough time. I fell behind.” If you fall behind, you have 3 days each week to catch up. How easy is that!?

For those who forgot to go to math class, this means you will be writing one sequence a week. Since there are eight sequences, you will be writing for eight weeks. And at the end of those eight weeks, you will have a finished first draft of a screenplay. I have constructed this schedule so that you never feel rushed. This should keep things light and easy for you.  Also, DO NOT JUDGE YOUR WRITING.  If you judge, you will freak out and stop writing.  Never judge yourself on a first draft.  Judging is for later. :)

And there you have it.

Hey, what are you waiting for?? Come up with a concept so you can start writing your script THIS MONDAY!

Everything Everywhere All at Once meets Time Crimes meets Mulholland Drive

Genre: Drama/Supernatural/Trippy
Premise: Burdened by the loss of his wife to a suicide cult, an embittered investigative journalist infiltrates an elite secret society, only to find something far more sinister.
About: This script finished with 14 votes on last year’s Black list. The writer, Jonathan Easley, is on the cusp of having his first produced credit with the film, Red Right Hand, coming out soon and starring Orlando Bloom.
Writer: Jonathan Easley
Details: 112 pages

Garfield for Johnny?

Just yesterday I said I hated cult backstories. But for some reason, I like cult present stories. Don’t ask me why. Actually, I know why. Because the past is the past. And movies work best in the present. So, I can pretty much get on board with anything as long as it’s happening RIGHT NOW.

And right now, we’re going to jump into the midnight pool!

Johnny is the best writer at his Los Angeles magazine, Corrosion. But Johnny’s been distracted lately. His wife, Mary, ran off to join a cult called the Golgotha Saints. Like a lot of cults, it’s just an excuse for the leader, Dhanna Purandara, to do ayahuasca, have sex with people, and spout a lot of new age nonsense.

Because of this, Johnny wants to do a profile on the cult, but that profile gets upended when his wife leaves a voicemail saying she’s going to the other side. Johnny tries to get to the compound to stop her but it’s too late. Everyone in the cult commits suicide.

Cut to three years later and Johnny wrote a book about it that’s gotten him a lot of attention. One day, he receives some photos of a man standing on a beach in cult clothing. The man is him. Confused, Johnny has his tech guy analyze the photos to see if he can find anything, and the tech discovers metadata that they were taken in a small town north of San Francisco.

So off Johnny goes, and when he gets to the town, he starts meeting all these weird characters. Some burly twins. A MAGA type dude. A prostitute who loves to take off her clothes in front of Johnny within 30 seconds of meeting him. Through these new contacts, he learns about Bethel Horizon, a secret yearly party with billionaires that involves black magic, which he gets invited to.

Once inside, he starts hobnobbing with billionaires and is told by the party’s handlers that he can write about this 2023 Wicker Man party afterwards. Cool.  Another story!  Almost immediately, strange things start happening. The leader of the party, Beatrix Belladonna, paralyzes him with black magic then communicates with him without speaking. It’s trippy city here.

(Spoiler) Eventually, Johnny finds his way down to a secret pool in the basement of the central castle and hops in. Inside, he “finds God,” and when he emerges, he’s told that it’s actually 15 days in the past. Beatrix doesn’t even know who he is. After he finds his bearings, he agrees to team up with Beatrix to lure the other version of him here, the version of him that’s still back in Los Angeles. From there, they’ll figure out how to make these two Johnnies coexist together.

Noooooo!

This one started out sooooooo good. For 20 pages, my eyes were shaped like the word “impressive.”

But then I had to remind myself of a lesson I learned when I was a wee little boy. It occurred when I saw the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, “The Sixth Day.” That moment where Arnold comes home only to find ANOTHER Arnold with his family was one of the all time great movie moments for me. I was so pumped to find out what would happen next!

I then spent the next 100 minutes bored out of my mind.

This script reminded me of that. When Johnny sees those pictures of himself in a cult robe despite never having participated in a cult, I was deeply intrigued by how that was going to play out.

The reason I had more faith in this situation than that one was that today’s writer is exceptionally good at adding detail and specificity to his writing. That usually indicates a lot more effort has been put into the plot as well.

But as soon as we get to this manor, the story becomes a cornucopia of randomness. We got drugged out girls walking into rooms and tossing off their dresses, white horses that hang out in hallways, lumberjack twins, black magic paralysis, people who are dead one second but alive the next, time travel, multiple universes.

Even if you treat the randomness like you would a David Lynch film, I still felt that the writer missed some opportunities. What originally drew me in was the devastation this man went through losing his wife to this cult psychopath. Easily could’ve started the script with the wife already dead. But he created so much more impact by having us witness her death, especially with how pointless it was. After that, I was so connected to Johnny that I was willing to go anywhere with him.

So I thought Johnny was going to investigate and expose a similar type of cult. That way, even if he didn’t save his wife, he at least would find some peace in stopping another, similar, cult. But that’s not what this movie does at all. The Bethel Horizon is a totally different monster. They’re much grander in scope. They recruit billionaires. They seem to only meet once a year. They’re not even a cult, really.

Once we established that that was the movie, I grew less and less invested in the story. Cause I wanted to connect what happened to his wife to the experiences he was going through now.

To the writer’s credit, once we get into the midnight pool, which happened around page 80, the script finds its structure again. Post-Pool Johnny is determined to recruit his past self to come up to the manor. It’s here where we learn that all of the photos Original Johnny was sent and the mysterious messages he got came from himself in the future. This Johnny is sending him these messages.

Still, I didn’t really understand the stakes of this. Why do we need to bring this other Johnny here? And then we get a double trippy plot development where we find out we’re not in our past but we’re in another universe’s past. In this separate universe, the other Johnny got married and moved on.

Which is cool, I guess. You’re capitalizing on the Everything Everywhere All At Once train. But to what end? Now I’m just confused. I don’t know why we need the other Johnny to come up here. And it doesn’t feel like the writer knows either.

Usually, when you’re writing a script like this, you’re trying to find the character arc that ends the story on the highest emotional note. Like in Everything Everywhere All At Once, Evelyn must finally accept her family. That’s the whole point of the movie, is that character arc. I don’t know what Johnny is trying to accomplish here. He gets mad at the other Johnny for moving on from Mary. But what does that mean? Where’s the emotional catharsis in that?

Look, screenwriting is hard. Not only writing a great story but writing an arc for your character that works on its own and also effortlessly weaves in the plot, is tough stuff. But you have to keep rewriting until you get there or else you get scripts like this. Scripts that have good moments but that, ultimately, don’t come together in a satisfying way.

With that said, if you like absurdist stuff – David Lynch and those types of movies – you might dig this. It certainly has its charms. It just gets too messy in places.

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

What I learned: This script reminded me of the power of seeing a death and the way it affects our hero as opposed to the death happening before the movie started. I think sometimes you don’t have a choice other than to place the death in the backstory, especially if you want to start your script with the plot already moving. But as an extended “cold open,” a family related death really makes us sympathetic to our hero. Easley nails that here in The Midnight Pool.

Yesterday, we took a look at a screenplay covering the famous Betty and Barney Hill UFO sighting. This, naturally, led to some discussion in the comments about the greatest UFO movie ever made, Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

I don’t need a reason to get me to watch Close Encounters again. Just a passing mention of it and my TV is already firing up because who doesn’t want to watch an iconic film about UFOs? While watching Spielberg’s near-perfect movie, I discovered something that shocked me. It’s something you don’t see anymore.

That something is: THE HEIGHTENED MOVIE MOMENT.

These are the moments in his movies that Spielberg basically writes himself.  Or, if he doesn’t write them, he conceives of the sequence and tells the writer exactly what he wants.  His screenwriters may write the scenes whole cloth where the government explains to Indiana Jones where the Ark of the Covenant might be.  But the scene where Indiana is dragged by a truck before eventually overcoming the truck and beating up everyone on it?  That’s all Spielberg.

Basically, what the heightened movie moment is, is a big moment that is meant to be captivating all on its own. Some people might call these “set pieces,” which they can be. But they’re more than that. They’re clever imaginative dramatized scenarios that pack a punch and are highly memorable.

Close Encounters is PACKED with these moments. And the more of these moments I saw, the more I wondered why this art has been abandoned.

I would argue that Spielberg himself doesn’t even do it anymore.

So what are these moments specifically?

The first occurs with some scientists showing up in a blustery dust storm in the middle of Mexico. They’re being frantically led somewhere, the suspense building as to where and what’s going on. Then they finally come around a bend and see that there are two dozen World War 2 planes just parked out in the desert, which we quickly learn all went missing during a mission over 30 years ago.

This is followed by a really smart scene where a plane nearly hits a UFO at night. But we’re never in the plane. We see this happen back in the air traffic control tower. Our featured controller helplessly watches as an object is hurtling towards one of the planes on his screen. Again, the suspense is high. Is it going to hit this plane and kill 200 people? Then, at the last second, it disappears.

In the very next scene, we get what is, probably, the most famous image from the movie, which is when the little child is woken up by all the flashing moving electronic toys, and then follows the noises out of the house.

That’s three scenes in a row that all work individually. In other words, you don’t need to know anything about what’s going on in the movie to enjoy the scenes. Because they’re creative, imaginative, heightened, suspenseful, and are constructed as if they are their own little story with a beginning, middle, and end.

Just a few scenes later, we get another famous heightened movie moment. This is the one where Roy, our protagonist, stops his car at night, another car pulls up behind him, but then that “car” rises up and hovers above him because it’s not a car, it’s a UFO. And this UFO then proceeds to magnetically lift up everything in his car.

What’s amazing is that all four of these great scenes happen BEFORE THE 20 MINUTE MARK.

Think about that for a second. Most writers can write 5-6 movies before writing one truly memorable heightened movie moment. Spielberg had four of them within twenty minutes!! That’s INSANE!!

After the movie cools down a little bit, we then get another classic heightened movie moment where hundreds of Indians chant a strange little hymn while praying in a remote city. We get Roy going nuts, collecting items around the neighborhood in a deranged state so he can build his rendition of the mountain he keeps seeing in his dreams. And then you get that amazing final set piece where the military makes official contact with the aliens.

When do we ever get sequences like this anymore? Truly creative thoughtful suspenseful moments that are so impactful that you talk about them with people immediately afterwards? You don’t. Most of today’s “heightened movie moments” are just superheroes fighting each other.

I suspect the problem is that the special effects technology has gotten so good that people don’t have to think creatively anymore. If you can do anything, you end up doing the obvious thing. Captain America vs. Captain America. Sure, it’s a fun scene. But does it require the thoughtful energy and creativity it takes to come up with any of the Close Encounters moments? Not even close. It’s the kind of scene that Chat GPT would come up with. There’s no heart, no soul.

As I started to think about Spielberg, I realized that he built his entire career on this. He built his career on a guy running from a boulder in a cave. He built his career on people wrestling back an angry caged velociraptor. He built his career on kids flying on bikes with an alien and a full moon in the background.

Every movie he used to make, he would think of those individual powerful movie moments that work all on their own. And we just don’t see that anymore. And, again, NOT EVEN SPIELBERG does it anymore. It’s like he’s forgotten what made him great.

I think you know where this is going.

I want you to start incorporating this secret old Spielbergian philosophy into your own scripts. Think about five magical moments that take advantage of your specific premise and then incorporate them into your script, even if it means building your narrative around them. Because if there’s anything today’s taught me, it’s that a script is worthless if it doesn’t have any memorable moments.

How do you achieve this?

I know that Spielberg did a ton of research in Close Encounters. He hired J. Allen Hynek, the number one UFO authority in the world at the time. And Hynek just bombarded Spielberg with all these crazy UFO stories he’d investigated.

Spielberg then took the ones he liked the best and he built little mini-movie scenes around them. Just like any artist should do, he took the root of the real-life experience and he looked for ways to make it more dramatic and impactful.

For example, when it comes to the famous scene of a UFO appearing above a car and turning everything in the car off, I suspect that Spielberg may have added the idea of the UFO first coming up behind them and looking like headlights. And then I’m guessing he added the magnetism pulling everything in the car upwards.

So look to real-life events in the subject matter you’re writing about to find the foundation of your heightened movie moments. For example, if you’re writing a plane crash movie, research 10 famous plane crashes. I’m sure you’ll find one you can use as the foundation for an amazing movie moment (which actually happened, by the way – John Gatins, who wrote “Flight,” heard about a plane that got inverted once in flight and used that as the basis for his movie’s crash).

You should also be drawing from experiences in your own life and looking for ways to dramatize them. I think of all those toys going berserk at once. I’m guessing that wasn’t something Allen Hynek offered. Spielberg probably had a memory from his childhood of a few of his electronic toys moving around and realized it would make for a highly dramatic moment if he could exaggerate it and have a bunch of toys moving around at the same time.

So use those moments from your life that really affected you and build scenes around them. Oh, and DON’T USE MOMENTS FROM MOVIES YOU’VE SEEN. Then you’re just copying.

Also, use suspense! Notice how Spielberg doesn’t just come into these scenes and give you the information. He draws it out for as long as he can in order to get the most entertainment value out of the scene. So, when they get to Mexico, in the opening, we don’t plop down in front of all the missing planes right away. We meet people beforehand. We see their excitement and confusion. We want to know what they’re excited and confused about. The planes aren’t clear at first. They are hiding amongst swirling dust (more suspense! What are we looking at??).

Even when the planes do become clear, we’re not even sure why we should we be freaking out about planes. We have to go a few more beats into the scene before we find out that these are lost planes from World War 2. It’s a clinic in writing an entertaining scene.

Since writers aren’t doing this anymore, everyone reading this article has just been given a golden ticket to writing awesome screenplays. Because if you can bring this practice back effectively, your scripts are going to be so much more entertaining than the stuff everybody else is writing. Personally, I can’t wait to see what you come up with.