Rumors swirled online all week that this would be the episode to end Star Wars. Yoda doing weird dances? The Force designed by women? A witch’s brew?

Genre: Science-Fiction Adventure
Premise: We head back in time 16 years when twins Osha and Mae were being raised by a coven of witches. But when the Jedi find out about this illegal activity, they come to retrieve the girls.
About: The writers of today’s episode are fairly inexperienced. Jasmyne Flournoy has never written a television episode or feature film in her life. Eileen Shim did write one episode for House of the Dragon (the show debuts this Sunday by the way!).
Writers Jasmyne Flournoy and Eileen Shim
Details: 42 minutes

I’ve tried my darndest to stay away from the online chatter of The Acolyte because I know it’s all about divisiveness and how there can’t be fire in space or something. None of that has any effect on anything AS LONG AS THE STORY IS GOOD. And, so far, the story is good.

However, despite my best efforts, I could not avoid hearing that today’s episode was going to create a firestorm. I mentally prepared myself. But I’m committed to judging this series on the story and the story alone.

And look, just to be clear – for the people who are saying this series is stupid and it’s making all these dumb choices. Dudes. Star Wars has always been a bit silly. Little teddy bears are responsible for defeating the Empire. You can’t slam Star Wars for being a little silly.

The only time I get mad in Star Wars is when things get sloppy and, as a result, the storytelling suffers. If you’re putting 100% in and you have some modicum of talent, which Leslye Headland does, you’re going to write some good Star Wars episodes.

Famous last words, right?

Here we go!

**Carson watches Episode 3 of The Acoylate.**

Osha and Mae are 9 years old in today’s episode. It’s 16 years in the past and they’ve both been found by a coven of witches. The two head witches, who are also married, argue extensively about how to raise the children.

There is a big ceremony in a couple of days called “The Ascension” which will officially make these two witches. There are going to be a few challenges that are force-related so they do their force exercises whenever they can fit them in.

But just as the ceremony gets started, four Jedi show up (including a Wookie Jedi!) saying what the witches are doing is illegal. They know the two girls are force-sensitive and want to give them the Jedi test. If they pass, they will come to Coruscant.

For this reason, their two mothers tell them to deliberately fail the tests. But while taking the test, Osha can’t help but be truthful. So she passes. Mae is so infuriated by this that she locks her sister in her room and starts a fire! Osha is barely able to escape, but all the other Jedi, including Mae, die in the fire. Osha then hops on the Jedi ship and heads back to the Jedi temple.

Today’s episode had a surprise treat in the credits. One of my favorite up-and-coming directors, Kogonada, directed the episode!

That was cool to see.

I did think the episode was well-directed, although Kogonada seems to have been restrained from adding too much of his own style.

But let’s talk about the writing.

As I always say, the third episode of a TV series is where the rubber meets the road. If it’s bad, your series is bad. If it’s good, you could have a show on your hands.

Unfortunately, the series decided to gamble and use episode 3 as a flashback episode.

Flashbacks are more evil than Sith themselves. Not because they don’t work. But because only a tiny percentage of screenwriters understand how to make them work.

CATEGORY 1
Most screenwriters believe that the audience will blindly want to see what happens in the past because of how it will add more context to the characters.

CATEGORY 2
Better screenwriters understand that audiences don’t like going backwards. Therefore, they have to add more than just character context. They have to add a story to the flashback.

CATEGORY 3
The best screenwriters understand that going backwards is a gigantic gamble. It is taking the story away from the present, where the audience wants to be. Therefore, if you’re going to do it – especially a flashback that’ll last an entire episode – it has to be a great story in and of itself. And if they can’t come up with that great story for their flashback, they don’t write the flashback.

Because they know how quickly viewers can tune out of a series. Which, by the way, is 10 times faster than it used to be, when there were only 50 shows on TV. Flashbacks are a “f*ck around and find out” gamble.

So, where do today’s writers fall?

To their credit, they knew enough to get to Category 2.

There IS a legit storyline to this flashback episode. We’ve got the goal – the ceremony, the stakes – they become official members of the coven if they pass, and the urgency – the ceremony takes place in a couple of days.

We then have the complication that throws everything into disarray – the Jedi show up and say they want the children for themselves.

That IS a story. The problem is, it’s only a mildly entertaining one. And this is what keeps decent writers from becoming great writers. Just creating an okay storyline so that you can give us more context about your characters isn’t going to move the needle.

Let me be clear about this. If you fumble in a present-day storyline, the audience will forgive you more than they will if you fumble in a flashback episode. Because when a flashback episode is weak, not only were we not entertained, but the story didn’t move forward at all.

Remember what we talked about last week. Headland had made the smart decision to use what TV does well to create her series: The Acolyte was an investigative mystery. You didn’t do that this week. You went back to the mistakes that all these other Star Wars shows have made which is to force movie-like storytelling onto the TV format.

Movie-like storytelling is built upon the concept that the viewer gets to experience the entire story NOW. If you take away the NOW part, we get movie-like storytelling without all the payoffs.

So does that mean all flashbacks suck? No. I actually did a feature consult recently where the script was about a famous director. And he used flashbacks throughout. The difference was, his flashback story was even better than the main story! So whenever we flashed back, I was excited. Cause I wanted to see what happened next in that story.

That’s the way you got to think of it. You can’t think of it as a second-banana storyline. Try to make it as good or even better than the main storyline and that way we’ll WANT to flash back.

On a personal level, I didn’t like today’s subject matter. I know some outlier Star Wars comic books have witches in them. But witches aren’t Star Wars. So when you put them on screen, you’re losing a LOT of your audience. Probably almost your entire male audience. So I don’t know why they would do that.

Read the room.

It can’t be all about you. “I want witches cause I like witches!” No. Ask yourself if the audience for the subject matter likes witches. If they don’t, you probably want to go in another direction.

I will say that Headland seems to understand the Jedi better than a lot of the previous Star Wars showrunners. I say that because this Jedi group is a cool group. They all feel like Jedi. They act like Jedi. They talk like Jedi. They basically saved this episode.

This episode isn’t nearly as bad as everyone is saying it is. Someone was telling me that they were going to announce that the force was “female” in this episode or something. None of that nonsense happened.

But they need to get their act together for Episode 4 next week.

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

What I learned: If you’ve got backstory you need the viewer to know, do the hard work and slip it into conversations. Show it through character actions. When Han Solo chirps at Luke in their first meeting at the cantina, saying, “And who’s going to fly it kid, you??” Luke says, “You bet I could, I’m not such a bad pilot myself.” That’s how you slip in backstory (that Luke is a pilot). You don’t have to do an entire episode on a coven for us to know Osha and Mae were once part of a coven.

Has Hollywood just birthed the next movie star?

Genre: ???????
Premise: A part time cop pretends to be a hit man to trap people hiring contract killers but changes tactics when one of his clients ends up being hot and sexy.
About: This movie was born out of an online article that I reviewed last year. It should be noted that this is one of the best ways to sell a movie idea these days. You find an interesting story out there in the real world and you write about it. The movie paired longtime collaborators Rinchard Linklater and Glen Powell, whose finished product ended up being one of the big purchases at the Venice Film Festival, going for 20 million dollars to Netflix.
Writers: Richard Linklater, Glen Powell, and Skip Hollandworth
Details: 2 hours long

So let me explain to you how these things work.

This movie sold for a giant amount of movie to Netflix after its debut at the Venice Film Festival. The non-initiated would assume that that must mean the movie was amazing. But that’s not how the movie business operates.

The reason this movie sold for so much money is because for the first time in a long time, Hollywood believes they have a movie star in the making in Glen Powell. Top Gun Maverick made SO MUCH MONEY that they figured SOMEONE had to come out of that as a rising star. And with Miles Teller already getting his shot, they went with Glen Powell.

Anything But You’s runaway hit status only bolstered this belief. Glen Powell HAD to be the next big thing. Or did he? It was easy to make the argument that the only reason Top Gun Maverick made so much money was because of superstar, Tom Cruise. But a good case could also be made that the only reason Anything But You made a ton of money was because of Sydney Sweeney. Which would mean that Glen Powell just got lucky.

It’s notoriously difficult to identify movie stars. You don’t know until they happen. From Alex Pettyfer to Eric Bana to Sam Worthington to Clive Owen to Colin Farrell to Josh Hartnett, Hollywood has a long list of “swing and a miss” movie star hopefuls.

And it goes both ways. I’ll never forget watching Bradley Cooper in Jim Carrey’s “Yes Man” and thinking how sorry I was for him. I thought, “That’s the kind of guy always meant to get second billing. He’ll never be the top dog.” I turned out to be a little wrong on that one.

The only legitimate movie star we’ve found in the last decade was Chris Pratt, which may have been the hardest to predict in history. The guy was known as the overweight 10th billing crappy boyfriend on Parks and Recreation.

In other words, who knows what’s going to become of Glen Powell? He’s certainly getting his shot. We’ll see just how much star power he has later this year when Twisters comes out. But, for right now, let’s look at his splashy new streaming flick, Hit Man.

Gary Johnson is a nerdy philosophy teacher, cat owner, and part-time desk cop. One day, he’s thrown into action as a fake hit man. The cops need him to entrap someone who’s trying to kill a business partner. All Gary has to do is convince this guy he’s a hit man, get him to give him the money, and admit that it’s for murder. And, what do you know, Gary is AWESOME at it.

He’s so awesome that he becomes their go-to “hit man.” The great thing about Gary is that he caters his hit man persona to whoever he’s talking to. If there’s a lonely housewife, he’s more sexy. If it’s a crabby old gun owner, he’ll throw on tattoos and swear like a sailor. At one point he even plays a heartless German dressed in black, complete with accent.

Gary’s hit rate is close to 100%.

But that all changes when he meets Madison. Since it’s a younger woman, Gary goes with his rugged edgy sexy persona, “Ron.” Ron is a smooth operator, a ladies’ man, and we can feel the crackle of electricity between them. But when Madison is about to give him the money to kill her abusive husband, Gary improvs and tells her to keep it and use it to escape him. He doesn’t want this woman going to prison.

Weeks later, Madison calls Gary and wants to see him. Of course, he’s not Gary to Madison. He’s Ron. So he must see her as Ron. When they meet, she thanks him. She ran away from the guy. She’s single now. And… maybe it wouldn’t be too bad to go back to her place. We can figure out what happens next. A whole lot of sexy time.

Before Ron, I mean Gary, knows it, he’s in a quasi-relationship with Madison. Which is tricky because, well, he’s not himself. He’s this persona. And the more time he spends with her, the more lines between his real self and persona get crossed. But that turns out to be just one part of the problem. The other is that Madison may not be as innocent as she first implied. Maybe Gary should’ve been able to figure that out since, you know, what kind of woman goes out with a hit man?

Hit Man is a Hollywood engine trapped in an indie chassis. It’s a weird movie with a weird script. Linklater can’t shake his indie roots. He’s never understood the “dumb fun” nature of Hollywood movies – stuff like Bad Boys – and therefore can’t help but add 5 minute scenes of characters arguing about the existential conflict inherent in marriage. Which is what keeps this movie from ever finding its groove.

It’s a comedy! No, wait. It’s serious! Oh wait, it’s a comedy again! Wait, it’s a romance. No, now it’s a sexy thriller! Actually, hold on… it’s a crime movie. The tone is shiftier than a drug addict on the corner of Hollywood and Vine.

Linklater’s confusion is evident when we watch Gary and Madison’s first scene together. The movie had been rolling along as a comedy for a while. Yet this scene is both serious and sexy. There were numerous opportunities to cut back to the cops listening in and making fun of how Gary’s clearly gone gaga over this girl, yet for this scene, comedy was abandoned. It was strange. You never had a feel for what the tone was.

From a screenwriting perspective, the script should work, as we’re using one of the more reliable tools in the screenwriting toolbox – dramatic irony. Dramatic irony is when we know something that one, or more, of the characters do not. It’s an important tool that I dedicate an entire section to in my DIALOGUE BOOK.

We know that Gary is not who he says he is. He’s a cop. But Madison DOES NOT know this. Whenever you build a romance around a lie, there’s going to be interest from the viewer about how that ends. Because we know it can only end badly. And we want to stick around to see what ‘badly’ looks like.

But the use of dramatic irony is pretty basic stuff. You’ll see it almost every TV show going, in some form or another. The good writers can twist and turn dramatic irony in ways that the average writer never would’ve thought of.

(Spoiler) In Hit Man, the central line of dramatic irony is between Gary and Madison. We know Gary isn’t really a hit man. She does not. That’s where the viewer’s intrigue lies. But about 70 minutes into the movie, the gig is up and Gary has to admit to Madison who he is. She confides to *Ron* that she killed her husband and he loses it. He admits that he’s not Ron. He’s Gary. He’s a cop. Hence, the dramatic irony *between them* is over.

But then Gary heads back to the station for an emergency meeting. The captain believes that Madison is the primary suspect for the husband’s murder. And hence, A BRAND NEW LINE of dramatic irony begins. Almost all of the cops don’t know that Gary has been secretly seeing Madison. Nor do they know that he now knows that she killed him. BUT WE DO. And that’s how to cleverly utilize dramatic irony. The second you cut it off in one plot, you add it to another.

It’s actually a more sophisticated scene than even that since one of the cops in the room spotted Gary on a date with Madison once. So he knows Gary isn’t telling the whole truth. This is an advanced form of dramatic irony that has to do with inferior and superior perspectives which I go into in my dialogue book. If you want to become a master at one of the most valuable screenwriting tools there is, make sure you buy that book.

Despite its wonky tone and inconsistency, it all comes together in the end with an unpredictable final turn. Now, does this movie prove that Glen Powell is a movie star? That I don’t know. The only reliable metric I’ve come up with for what makes a movie star is, “Can you not look away whenever they’re on screen?” Doesn’t matter if you like them or hate them. Can you not look away? And, for the most part, I think I wanted to watch Glen Powell. *I think.* Maybe I need more evidence. What do you guys think?

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

What I learned: You may have wondered, why did this article – out of millions of articles published online – become the one that was purchased to be made into a movie. Nobody but the people involved know for sure. But always factor in movies that have roles which allow the actor to play multiple parts (in this case, multiple personas) – those are highly coveted by actors. So there’s a good chance some very good actors are going to want to be in the movie. No doubt that helped Linklater snag one of the fastest rising stars in Hollywood.

Genre: Suspense
Premise: (winning logline) A recently demoted executive finds himself being harassed by a dangerous thug sitting next to him on the last bus back home to the suburbs.
About: The Short Story Showdown was one of the tightest races we’ve ever had. The top three vote-getters were separated by less than 3 votes. The story that won ended up being the only one of the writers who vetted their logline in the comments section. Could lead to similar strategies in the future.
Writer: Jason Diggy
Details: 8 pages (4800 words)

William H. Macy for Daniel?

Short stories.

They’re ELUSIVE!

What makes a good one?

I don’t know. I think it’s one of those deals where you know it when you see it.

If you’re anything like me, you want to find out if The Empty Seat is one of those ‘know it’ stories. Let’s find out!

Daniel Lowry is an aging office worker with a lousy boss and mostly lousy co-workers. He’s upset because he was told by his boss that he had to work late. This screwed up his transportation so now he has to take the late-night bus home.

A lot of this story focuses on Daniel’s wait for the bus. During that time, we learn more details about how much of an a-hole his boss is. Daniel spots a half-drunk woman from his work who he suspects is trying to get ahead through physical means with her own superior and he hates her for it.

As Daniel laments the late bus, he thinks about how he’s only got a couple more years before his kids are out of the house. Then he’ll have a lot more power at work. He won’t have to kiss the ring every single day and do whatever he’s asked. But right now, the bills are large and they’re frequent which means he has to suck it up and do whatever his stupid boss says.

Finally, the bus comes and it’s almost full. Daniel finds two seats together and semi-straddles the adjacent one to make sure nobody sits by him. We hit another stop, some more people get on, Daniel is antsy about whether his precious adjacent seat is going to be used. But luckily no one takes it.

That changes at the next stop. Some 25 year old punk with long hair gets on the bus and, this time, the seat gods do not bless him. The guy goes straight to Daniel’s seat and sits next to him. As the bus starts up again, the guy starts smoking. The smoke is going right into Daniel’s face. Daniel can also feel a potential weapon (a gun? A knife) in the guy’s pocket as it keeps bumping up against him.

Daniel starts to freak out. But he finally gets to his stop, he leaps up, and slides past this seat demon, then hurries down the block without looking back, convinced that this punk is going to chase him down. Daniel clears a corner, stops, catches his breath, and waits. Was all that just in his mind? Or is Daniel actually in danger?

In the comments section of the Short Story Showdown, ChinaSplash posted their logline which began a discussion about why I didn’t choose their story for the showdown. It came down to that the logline promised a big sci-fi concept, which was what hooked me, yet the story started with a woman who really wanted to eat a donut. My feeling was, “What’s the point of including that? It’s a short story. You don’t have time to waste. Start deeper in when the story is already moving.”

I feel the exact same way about this story.

If you read this logline, you assume you’re getting a story about a guy who deals with a scary, potentially dangerous, individual who sits next to him on a bus.

But that’s not what we get. Our malcontent bus villain doesn’t sit down next to our hero until halfway through the story.

To me, that’s unforgivable. I was even getting antsy that we weren’t in the bus conflict by the end of the first page. Yet I had to read three more pages to get there.

But let’s look at this from Jason’s point of view. I’m guessing he wanted to do some character development first. He wanted to get you in Daniel’s head so we could learn what makes him tick. Because what good is an antagonist if we don’t understand the person he’s antagonizing?

That’s a fair argument.

However, there are ways you can achieve this that are a lot more likely to keep the reader’s interest. For example, when we’re waiting at that first stop with Daniel, introduce the scary rider then. He’s standing over by the side but you can just tell there’s something off about him.

Now, when we go into Daniel’s head and learn about his day and what makes him tick, we’re doing so underneath a line of suspense. Because we see the antagonist. We know the situation with him is only going to get worse. So we’re more compelled to turn the pages, even though “nothing” is happening yet.

The Empty Seat was struggling in another area as well, which was that Daniel wasn’t a very likable guy.

When I originally heard this pitch in the comments section, I endorsed it! I said, “This sounds good.” But the way it was pitched, I was imagining a weak, potentially cowardly guy, who was being unjustly bullied. In other words, an easy person to root for.

But that’s not Daniel. Daniel is King Complainer. Give this guy a topic and he can give ten hours on things he dislikes about it. He’s complaining about his boss, his co-workers, the women there, the transportation, his bills, the other riders.

But the action he took that killed it for me was when he sat down on the bus and took over two seats to make sure nobody sat next to him. How am I rooting for that guy?

I honestly thought, at that point in the story, that Jason was flipping the script on us. He was making us think Daniel was our hero when, in actuality, he would be our villain. And the guy who sat next to him would end up being the “character who was intimidated by another passenger” – Daniel himself.

But no, Daniel was just a really upset guy who hated his life and wanted to get it all out of his system. It compromised the character to such a degree that it was impossible to root for him.

I actually see this issue occur frequently once writers enter the short story (or long-form storytelling) format. Unlike screenplays, you can now take us directly into the character’s mind. And often, since our characters represent us, we use that character to get out all of our own frustrations.

I’m not saying that there isn’t value in observation and frustration. But you have to be careful with this stuff because when the reader is introduced to your main character, one of the first things that goes on in their head is, “Do I want to go on a journey with this person?” If the answer is no, you’re screwed.

I don’t think Daniel is someone you want to go on a journey with.

One of the most successful character types you can write is not the guy who gets kicked to the ground and complains. It’s the guy who gets kicked to the ground, but gets back up and keeps trying. Audiences LOVE those characters.

The Empty Seat’s potential to redemption was the antagonist. If that interaction was strong, I think we could’ve turned things around. But there’s not much to it. I understand what Jason was doing. He was exploring how we can get lost in our heads and build things up that aren’t there. I do think that’s an interesting topic to explore.

But, in this case, the logline kind of promises conflict and we don’t get much of it. It was too much of a tease.

Story link: The Empty Seat

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

What I learned: One of the hardest characters to make likable is a complainer. It’s not impossible! But the only times I see it work are in comedies. In one of my favorite movies ever, Office Space, Peter is a serial complainer. But he’s also funny. So be wary of going the complainer route. If you do, make it a bug, not a virus.

Of the many discussion points that have come out of this movie, the one I care most about is that Tom Burke (Praetorian Jack) now needs to be in every single movie going forward for the next 50 years

Genre: Action/Sci-fi/Epic
Premise: A young girl is taken from her people, grows up in a desolate desert city, and learns to become a great road warrior, an essential job in a post-apocalyptic world where everything of value that is transferred between towns will be attacked by outsiders.
About: Director George Miller loved the character of Furiosa so much that he immediately went about creating another movie for her after Fury Road. Ten years later, a new Mad Max movie is born. The plan was to do a Mad Max prequel for Tom Hardy’s character as well. But with Furiosa coming in at just 35 million over the 4-day holiday weekend, it looks like that movie, sadly, will never happen. Miller wrote Furiosa with longtime collaborator, and mainly actor, Nick Lathouris.
Writers: George Miller and Nick Lathouris
Details: 150 minutes!

Furiosa is going to go down in history as a symbol of change in the public’s consumption of theatrical movies. On Hollywood’s biggest movie weekend, it scored the lowest opening of that weekend in 30 years.

I find that unfortunate because Furiosa shouldn’t be the movie that represents theatrical box office’s fall. It should’ve been a movie like Transformers 9 or Fast & Furious 11. Cause those are the movies that have gotten us into this muck.

Furiosa is the kind of movie Hollywood SHOULD be making, which is bigger budget movies that actually have ideas and take risks. It’s not a perfect movie but it’s a very good one. And it could’ve been iconic if not for a couple of factors working against it.

The main factor is expectation. You can’t put this movie after Fury Road. Fury Road was pure adrenaline. To follow that with a years-long character-driven epic is confusing. Whereas, if they put this movie FIRST and Fury Road SECOND, it would’ve been one of the best one-two combos ever. EVER.

For those who haven’t seen it, and apparently there are a lot of you, Furiosa is a complex movie that follows a little girl, Furiosa, who’s taken from a hidden “Eden” if you will, to become the de facto daughter of a rising menace in a post-apocalyptic desert world, Dementus (Chris Hemsworth).

Dementus wants to conquer the big swinging d**k in the region, Immortan Joe, so he can have his cool rock water town. When his initial efforts are thwarted, he goes about a years long plan of taking over Gas Town, where all the region’s gas is kept, and Bullet Town, where all the weaponry is made.

During this time, Young Furiosa gets transferred over to the care of Immortan Joe (in one of the few sloppy plot beats) and is able to escape the high society slavery there to live secretly amongst the townspeople, where she gets a reputation as a fearless go-getter.

This gets her a position as a truck-protector for whenever Immortan Joe needs to get gas or weapons from the two other towns. Through this process, she becomes close with Joe’s star driver, Praetorian Jack, and soon the two are riding together (and kissing together! – well, offscreen at least). Everything’s going fine until Furiosa’s nemesis, Dementus, makes an aggressive bid to take over everything, forcing Furiosa to square off against him in one final battle.

Furiosa is a script you could never write as a spec.

Which is both a strength and a weakness.

It’s a strength because the script is unlike anything you’ve seen from a studio in two decades. It’s basically a period piece masquerading as a sci-fi action movie. Years upon years pass in several different places within the script. It’s not just one time jump and we’re done. We move through time gradually, and Hollywood movies just don’t do that. Hollywood movies, and spec scripts for that matter, like urgency. They like their time to be contained because it makes everything feel like it needs to happen right now. Which adds a ton of energy to the story.

So that choice alone makes this script feel unique.

It’s a weakness because we’re never quite sure where we are in the story. A couple of times in this movie I kind of sat up and asked myself, “Where are we going here?” It wasn’t clear.

The reason it wasn’t clear was because George Miller would focus on one particular time period within this multi-time-period epic and not give us any goals, stakes, or urgency to work with. One section was just about building Furiosa’s relationship with Praetorian Jack. There wasn’t really a goal within the sequence, which was frustrating.

But once you figured out that this was an epic, you sat back and let it happen, instead of trying to control it. Which is when the movie really started showing its mettle. Cause I can’t remember an epic sci-fi movie that has done it better than this one. I remember certain writers trying. Christopher Nolan tried with Interstellar. But that movie comes nowhere close to this one in both quality and vision.

One of the more interesting choices Miller made was to stay away from dialogue in regards to his main character. This is something I get into in my amazing dialogue book – this concept of showing as opposed to telling. And Furiosa is definitely a show-don’t-tell character. She rarely speaks.

There are two reasons to take this approach. Number one is that you don’t feel confident in your dialogue-writing ability. Which is fair. If you don’t feel great about your dialogue-writing, then write stories where your characters don’t talk much. It’s a legitimate strategy.

The other point is that delivering believable dialogue is notably challenging. I’ll give you a quick assignment to see what I mean. Go to Youtube and search for short movies. Not the best ones. Ones with 50,000 views or less. What you’ll find is that a lot of these short films actually look quite professional. However, the second one of the characters starts speaking, the suspension of disbelief is lifted and we’re aware of how fake everything feels.  It’s because the dialogue is lousy.  Which you can hide if characters don’t speak much. Even at the professional level.

Cause let’s be real: No writer has ever lived in a post-apocalyptic world before where guys ride around on giant stages in full hair-band makeup playing guitar. Any dialogue you try to create for that world risks sounding ridiculous.

This is why almost all of the dialogue in Furiosa is centered around big speeches (Dementus screaming up to Immortan Joe how he plans to take over his town). Big speeches are theatrical in nature, which hides the potential ridiculousness of what’s being said.   Big speeches also often contain logic, which is less susceptible to sounding stupid.  “You will adhere to our demands or we will attack you!”  That’s a much less tricky line to pull off than something that contains emotion, such as, “You complete me.”

Which is why when we’re outside of these speeches, the characters rarely say much. And I think that’s by design due to what I just said.

But the thing that really surprised me about Furiosa was the character work. Ironically, not with Furoisa herself. Furiosa was solid. But the stand-out characters were Dementus and Praetorian Jack.

The thing you always have to worry about when you’re doing prequels is finding villains that are worthy of the villain precedent you set in the original movie. Literally nobody has figured that out yet. Which makes sense. If the villains in these prequels were so awesome, *they* would’ve been the big villain in the next movie.

As a result, a lot of these prequel villains are middle-management types. Orson Krennic in Rogue One, for example. Who was scared of that guy? Nobody.

Miller was actually in a tricky spot because, while he had a cool villain already in Immortan Joe, there was no way to make him the villain of the movie. Why? Because Immortan Joe had to live. He has to survive to make it to Fury Road. That means Furiosa can’t defeat him. She would have to lose to him. Which would’ve led to a weak ending.

So Miller created this other character named Dementus, giving Furiosa somebody she could defeat, making her victorious at the end. And because of the “period piece” format, Miller was really able to explore this character on a deep level.

He wasn’t your average villain. He’s kind of dumb. He’s a terrible organizer. Everything falls to sh*t that he tries to manage. But he’s aggressive and he’s determined. So he’s always moving forward. He’s always trying to get to the next level, which is what you want out of your villain AND your hero. Because that means, inevitably, the two are going to run into each other, which is exactly what happens.

The other standout here was Praetorian Jack and it’s SOOOOO depressing that this movie bombed because, if it didn’t, this guy would’ve had his own movie. He’s so cool! He’s basically the original Mad Max (Mel Gibson) but more in control. He’s like the guy who walks into the bar and every single guy inside wants to be friends with him. He’s just cool! There’s no other way to put it.

It’s hard to write one really good character. This movie had three of them: Furiosa, Dementus, Praetorian Jack.

And those characters were bolstered by that unique George Miller flair. Like George Lucas, he never just puts characters in front of the frame. He’s always got all this other stuff going on in the background. Like Dementus’s “mimicer.” There’s this guy who hangs around Dementus and mimics everything he says and does. It’s hilarious! It’s just like Rock Star Guy. You wonder how he comes up with these things.

This movie proved to me what I thought was impossible. That a prequel can be good and not just backstory.

I’m fine if you didn’t go out to the theater to see this. But for all that is good and holy, watch this when it comes out on digital. For people who love sci-fi? It’s one of the best movies in the genre ever made.

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

What I learned: It’s amazing how easily you can make a character likable by showing how kind they are to your hero. The main reason we like Praetorian Jack is because he’s so kind to Furiosa. It’s simple but so very effective.

Genre: Horror
Premise: A young couple who perform rituals to raise people from the dead get more than they bargained for when they attempt to re-animate a young girl who doesn’t remember how she died.
About: This script finished with 8 votes on last year’s Black List. The writer is brand new!
Writer: Mike George
Details: 98 pages

Rising star Dominic Sessa for Ryan?

As I’ve pointed out before, you can really up your chances of breaking into the business if you come up with either a HIGH or MARKETABLE concept that can be shot in a single location.

Here’s the difference between the two. A high concept is something that has that all-important ‘strange attractor.’ The upcoming The Watchers is an example of this. A group of people get stuck in a looped forest that’s impossible to get out of, forcing them to live together in an isolated cabin in the woods.

Absent a high concept, you can still break through with a MARKETABLE concept. That just means you’re writing an idea in a genre that’s marketable and the idea itself lives in the same marketable space as other movies studios have released.

And yes, you can achieve both of these with the same idea. I’m just saying that if you don’t achieve the high concept, you can still write a script that people want to buy as long as it’s marketable.

Today’s script lands in that high concept space, albeit right at entry level: A couple attempts to raise the dead at an isolated AirBnB to disastrous consequences.

27 year old Shay and 25 year old Ryan are trucking it out to a remote house. We’re not sure why yet. We just know that Ryan is a little more smitten with Shay than Shay is with him. In fact, early on, Ryan attempts to propose to Shay, who steadfastly refuses. She’s not where he is yet.

The two get to a remote AirBnB farmhouse and start unloading their stuff. And that’s when we see a body bag. With a body in it! The couple lugs the dead body into the home. From there, we start to get hints about what’s going to happen. They’re going to perform a seance to bring this dead girl back to life.

The reason we’re bringing her back to life is explained soon after. They’re working for a client. This is his daughter. What they do is bring people back to life for clients so that they can have one last conversation with their loved ones before they move on.

However, the process for bringing people back to life is complicated. It requires writing out detailed pentagrams on the ground, writing in ancient languages on the walls in blood. Oh, and there’s a lot of sacrificing. One of them always has to sit within the pentagram and give a lot of blood in order to bring the dead person back to life.

Once they prep everything, the client, 40-something Mark, shows up. But the second he walks through the door (spoiler) Shay looks at him in shock. Shay knows this man. And he knows her. If this is the client, she knows, then chances are their dead girl is not his daughter. And that begs the question: Who the hell is she?

The first half of this script was awesome.

I was on the edge of my seat.

Two things I absolutely love in a screenplay are 1) Show me something I haven’t seen before. And 2) Give me a deep compelling mythology that I know you know intimately.

This script nailed both.

I’ve read ideas sort of like this before. But nothing quite like this. A couple who work as spiritual necromancers rent a home to perform a resurrection.

And then you have the mythology… this writer went all in on this mythology! I got the sense that he must’ve dabbled in witchcraft at some point in his life. He knows way too many details about the practice not to have been a part of it somehow.

Those two things powered the first act of the screenplay.

I’ll tell you something else that powered it. The word “No.” In my dialogue book, one of my big dialogue tips is utilizing the power of “no” in conversation. “Yes” rarely leads you anywhere interesting in a conversation. But the word “no” almost always leads you there.

Early in the script, Ryan, who clearly likes Shay more than she likes him, proposes to her. And what does she say? She says, “No.” The reason that answer is so important is because it lays a thick claptrap of conflict over the rest of the story. Every conversation they now have is affected by this new jilted dynamic.

Think about what their conversations would be like if she had said yes. I’ll give you a hint. They rhyme with ‘boring.’ With Ryan now wondering what he’s done wrong, why she doesn’t like him as much as he likes her, there’s subtext in every conversation that’s had.

So we’ve got an [x] impressive here, right?

Well, let me say this. I admire whenever a writer takes a big creative swing. Whenever they make a daring choice, there’s value in that. Unfortunately, I think George made the wrong choice and it kind of destroyed the rest of the screenplay. Spoilers ahead.

This Mark guy comes in and he’s supposed to be the dead girl’s father. He wants to reunite with her one last time. But then we see him and Shay giving each other eyes. We’re wondering what’s going on. What we find out is that he and Shay used to work together as “con men” bilking people out of money, pretending to raise the dead.

Mark then heard that Shay was doing her business with someone new. And she still owed him money or something. So he pretended to be a client in order to find her and get that money back.

The reason the choice doesn’t work is because it took a small intimate story with a really fun idea and made it both too silly and too complex. Once you introduce con men into other genres, it never feels right. It’s the kind of thing that only works when you establish it at the outset: This is going to be a con man movie.

But the bigger issue is that if George would’ve stuck with what got him here, he was on the verge of writing a great script. Because you’ve got this really cool mystery. When they’re slowly bringing this girl back to life, they’re realizing that she’s different. There’s some sort of mystery to her. That had me turning the pages.

But, also, you destroy your most emotionally impactful storyline before it ever had a chance to breathe, no pun intended. A father getting an opportunity to say goodbye to his daughter one last time… I wanted to see that. Especially after all the effort Ryan and Shay put into bringing her back alive. I felt that George really robbed the story of a great moment there.

Also, we should’ve left Mark in the ‘former or current lover’ category. We’ve already established that Shay doesn’t want to marry Ryan. You’ve built a compelling conflict between them via that storyline. Her sleeping with Mark would’ve been a natural extension of that storyline and now you’ve got this other layer of b.s. the three of them have to deal with as they bring this daughter back to life.

This happens sometimes. We get overzealous as writers. We get bored with our stories. We feel like we have to do more than we actually do. So we come up with big wild plotlines when a smarter smaller more emotional plotline would’ve been better.

I’m going to give this script a [x] worth the read because its first half is so good. But it’s one of those ‘hanging on for dear life’ worth the reads. Cause the second half was way too messy.

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

What I learned: Build your relationship backstories from elements organic to your concept. In other words, sure, you could’ve had Ryan and Shay begin their relationship at a coffee shop. But a coffee shop is generic. Instead, use the organic elements of your story to explain how they met. Which is what George does. Ryan and Shay met because Shay was originally working alone, Ryan hired her after his mom died, and they started dating after that. Not only does it make more sense but it feels genuine because it’s original. It stems from the core of your idea as opposed to some generic place that anybody in any movie could’ve met.