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Genre: Family
Premise: When a bully’s antics land a nerdy boy in the bottom of a well, his self-proclaimed psychic friend and unaware crush team up to find him.
About: This script is based on a book that won the Newbery Medal, which is awarded to the author of the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children. It also finished on last year’s Black List with eight votes. They got a pretty big writer to adapt the book. Michael Golamco wrote the surprise Netflix hit, “Always Be My Maybe.” He has also written a draft of the perpetually-in-development, “Akira.”  Forrest Whitaker will produce.  Netflix will make the film.
Writer: Michael Golamco (based on the novel by Erin Entrada Kelly)
Details: 93 pages

Since all of you are CRAZY for not loving White Lotus as much as I do, it was important, heading into Thanksgiving, that I review a feel-good screenplay that all of us could celebrate together – something so warm and invigorating, we wouldn’t even need alcohol to deal with our families.

Speaking of Thanksgiving, I think a food revolution needs to take place over the holiday. Who’s with me!?

The whole full-turkey-on-the-table thing is played out! I, for one, want to begin a new tradition of turkey pizza. The dish’s execution is simple. You make a pizza, you cut out a lot of little bite-sized pieces of turkey, and then you don’t allow that turkey anywhere near the pizza. Feed it to your pets. Then find some sausage and add that to the pizza. As well as some pepperoni. In fact, just call your local pizza joint and they can speed this whole operation up for you.  That’s MY Thanksgiving food suggestion.

Okay, let’s check out this uplifting story about a kid who gets pushed into a well!

11 year old Filipino middle-schooler, Virgil, is a level 17 dork. His dorkiness is embedded so deeply within him, that even his family has given up hope that he can be anything less than a level 9 dork.

But Virgil can’t worry about his dorkiness because it’s the end of school and the last chance – THE FINAL CHANCE – before summer for him to talk to Valencia Sommerset, the girl of his dreams. Valencia is a bit of an outcast herself due to being deaf.

When Virgil fails to speak to Valencia, he trudges home and shares the news with his best friend, Kaori Tanaka, a 12 year old self-proclaimed psychic who lives next door. Kaori and her plucky 7 year old sister, Gen, try to cheer Virgil up but nothing works.

Kaori tries to get Virgil’s mind off Valencia by having him head into the woods to look for some special rocks she needs for her new psychic business.  But, along the way, he runs into the school bully, who throws his backpack in a well. Virgil’s guinea pig, Gulliver, was inside, so he climbs down to save him, but ends up getting trapped at the bottom.

Ironically, Kaori’s first psychic customer is Valencia, something she’s unaware of since Valencia uses an alias. Valencia needs help interpreting a recurring nightmare. Around this time, Kaori realizes Virgil is missing and recruits Valencia to help her find him. So the three girls head out into the woods in search of the friend, who ponders the possibility that he may meet his demise down here.

Thanksgiving at the Carson household.

Hello Universe gets the first part of its central character construction correct. Virgil is in love with a girl who will never love him back. He lacks courage. His family thinks he’s lame. He’s a nerd. He’s picked on by the bully.

In other words, the writer uses a “Life treats our hero cruelly” technique to elicit sympathy from the reader.

However, the writer doesn’t get the second part of the “likable” equation right for these types of characters. Virgil is a downer. He’s negative. Audiences like characters who are dealt a bad hand AS LONG AS THEY STAY POSITIVE ABOUT IT. We just talked about this in “The Maid,” the character that’s going to win Florence Pugh an Oscar.

That character was autistic. She recently lost her best friend. People took advantage of her all the time. But amongst all of it, she stays tirelessly optimistic. And that’s when we love a character. The person who keeps getting up after being knocked down is one of the most powerful likability tools there is in character construction.

That’s not to say Virgil is a bust. We still root for the guy.  But Virgil ends up being the fourth most impactful character in the story, behind the three girls looking for him.

As for the story itself, I always get a little nervous about stories that could’ve been written 75 years ago without changing a word. True, some stories are timeless. But this is usually an indication that the writer isn’t bringing anything new to the table.

With that said, if you can get the emotion and the relationships right, you can write a story that works in any time period. And I would probably include “Hello Universe” in that category.

The thing that ultimately pulled me in was the dramatic irony created with Valencia’s inclusion on the rescue team. We know that Valencia is Virgil’s crush but the girls think she’s someone else because she lied about her name. I found that to be kinda fun, that they’ve known about Virgil’s love for this girl for years yet have no idea that she’s helping them find him.

There’s also a sweetness to the journey and to the friendships that make you all warm and fuzzy inside, like a glass of warm apple cider. When you write these younger-skewing stories, you want to explore universal themes and the things that would seem high-stakes to a 12 year old, which are totally different from those of a 32 year old. There doesn’t have to be the threat of the world ending in these stories. Just things that 12 year olds think of as the world ending.  Like being trapped in the middle of a forest with the school bully.  Or the fear of never fitting in, which is what both Valencia and Virgil are going through.

I just wish there was a little more creativity in the script. One thing I’m always looking for in screenplays – especially ones that play in familiar sandboxes – is unique moments – moments that could only happen in your particular script. Cause if you don’t have those, what’s the point?  Why write something that only retreads other films?

Look at every single variable of your screenplay – your plot, your characters, your setting – and figure out combinations of those variables that can you an original moment here, or an original moment there.

I’ll give you the one example I saw in Hello Universe. Soon after Virgil gets stuck in the well, Valencia is, coincidentally, walking by. Virgil doesn’t know it’s her. But he hears somebody. So he starts screaming for help. But… guess what? She can’t hear him because she’s deaf.

It’s this ironic moment that could’ve only happened under these particular set of variables that makes the scene pop.

Hello Universe needed more moments like that to separate itself. With that said, it’s a heartwarming tale that seems perfectly suited for a Thanksgiving weekend read. Of course, that read should be happening while snarfing down several pieces of my new Thanksgiving Turkey Pizza Without Turkey. Feel free to e-mail me and I will send you the recipe.

Script Link: Hello Universe

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

What I learned: A common thing I’ve been seeing in scripts lately is hitting the emotional beat so hard that it actually creates the opposite effect. Writers do it cause they can’t help themselves. They NEEEEEEED you to feel that emotion.  Here’s an example. It’s the moment after (spoiler) the girls save Virgil.

By underlining “vulnerable,” and hitting it so hard, it actually draws attention to the fact that you want the reader to feel emotion. Don’t do this! Trust the emotion. Trust the moment. It will do the job for you. All you need to do in this instance is eliminate the underlining of “vulnerable” and it will work swimmingly. No need to go over the top.

The show remains a screenwriting character masterclass

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Ethan & Harper, and Daphne & Cameron 

Today, I thought, instead of taking another Black List script through the demanding wringer of a Scriptshadow review, I’d share my thoughts on White Lotus halfway through the second season. I’m on record as saying Mike White couldn’t possibly live up to the genius of the first season. But four episodes into this newest iteration and I’m wondering if this season is even better than the last.

While the Italian version certainly feels more loosey-goosey, the characters all seem to have more depth to them. They have more going on. So any perceived structural loss has been buttressed by character gain.

For the longest time – and this is dating back to Season 1 – I couldn’t figure out why this show worked. There was zero plot other than a vague allusion to a mysterious death that had occurred. But the death was by no means the sole engine for the plot. It was something White sort of threw in there to hook all of us.

But after that hook fades, why are we continuing to watch? Typically, when you bring an ensemble together like this, you do it in a Knives Out fashion, whereby there’s a murder and everyone’s a suspect and the “game is afoot.” If you take that setup out, all you’re left with is characters talking. And how in the heck do you make 8 hours of that entertaining?

Well, you do it by mastering this singular word…

UNRESOLVED

Every character must have something unresolved within them. You also want some of those characters to have unresolved relationships as well. If you can master these two aspects of character development, you can do the impossible, which is to keep audiences engaged despite not having a plot.

So what does this “unresolved” stuff mean, Carson? Well, here are each of the White Lotus Season 2 characters and their unresolved issues.

Harper

Harper is extremely judgmental and unable to let go and enjoy herself.
Ethan, Harper’s husband, is so concerned about others that he is also unable to let go and enjoy himself.
Cameron is entitled and selfish and lives 100 miles an hour in the moment.
Daphne, Cameron’s wife, is unable to stick up for herself in her marriage and therefore blissfully pretends that everything is okay.
Dominic has a sex addiction that is about to cost him his marriage.
Albie, Dominic’s son, is so desperate to be the opposite of his father that he’s become the poster child for beta males.
Tanya’s happiness is so attached to her husband’s mood that she’s unable to have fun anymore.
Portia, Tanya’s assistant, hates that she hasn’t pushed harder for a more fulfilling career and life.
Lucia, our primary prostitute, lives an out of control existence with zero structure, making every decision on impulse.
Mia knows only how to follow Lucia’s lead and has no agency of her own.

This is the real secret sauce of screenwriting. Once you identify your character’s internal unresolved issue, they, in and of themselves, become a plot. Because the plot is their journey to resolve that which is currently unresolved. It works no different from a real plot.

Just like we want to see if Maverick can bomb the nuclear weapon before it can be launched, we want to see if Harper is ever going to be able to let go and enjoy herself. Just like we want to see if Iron Man can defeat Thanos, we want to see if Albie is going to “man up” and demonstrate some masculinity. Just like we want to see if Channing Tatum and that dog can get to their destination on time, we want to see if Portia can stand up to Tanya and start making more positive decisions in life.

Portia

And then, to turbo-boost this, you have the unresolved relationship issues as well. For example, Albie and Portia start hanging out together. Albie is trying to be the perfect gentleman and sweet and nice, whereas Portia wants him to be a little less nice — a little more “take charge.” So we stick around to see what’s going to happen between them. Will they end up together or not?

Of course, the second part (the unresolved relationship) does not work unless the first part (the personal unresolved issue) works. Because it’s the first part that makes the second part so interesting. Albie resisting his masculinity is the very reason why his unresolved relationship with Portia is so captivating. Because in order to get Portia, he has to resolve that issue.

Mike White is a master at this. He’s so good with character it hurts. Character construction is, arguably, the hardest thing to do in screenwriting. So to have someone who can effortlessly create TWO FULL SEASONS of characters who are all compelling is quite the feat.

Even when you go beyond the technical screenwriting stuff, White still finds creative ways to shine in his show. I love that he’s adapted C-3PO and R2-D2 into his White Lotus universe. Because that is who Lucia and Mia are (the prostitutes).

Lucia and Mia (these color choices are not by coincidence)

George Lucas’s original inspiration for Star Wars was to have this giant intergalactic war and to move in and around all the different sides of the war through these two goofy droids. We would follow them as they kept ending up in the hands of different people throughout the war.

This is how Lucia and Mia operate. They’re local prostitutes. They start out getting hired by Dominic. But then Dominic, determined to save his marriage and make better choices, cancels their week together, which leaves the girls with nowhere to go. So they start weaving in and out of the other characters’ lives. They sleep with Cameron. They date Albie. I’m sure, at some point, they’re going to sleep with Bert, the grandfather.

It’s just really fun the way that Mike White plays with his world.

Another major ingredient that has led to this show’s success is that it’s contained by two important storytelling variables – time and space. We are contained to the White Lotus hotel. And the White Lotus experience is one week long.

As any screenwriter knows, the more you can use containment variables, the more structure your story will have. This becomes even more important if you don’t have an overarching plot. Your plot is what gives you structure. So, without it, you need the structure to come from somewhere else. Hence, the containment of time and space in White Lotus.

Try to imagine this series but each set of characters is somewhere else in the world. Or, instead of the story taking place over 1 week, it takes place over 8 months. Do you see how the story becomes less structured? Less interesting? This is the power of using containment variables in storytelling. And the irony is, of course, that the reason Mike White did this was because it was the one mandate HBO game him. They wanted a show that would take place in one finite area so they could control Covid protocols more easily. If Mike White didn’t have that mandate, maybe he doesn’t come up with this idea.

In a TV landscape that seems to be bulking up into a never-ending series of giant mega-budget shows, White Lotus is a thing unto itself. It’s just people talking. And it’s captivating.

How cool would it have been to come up with this franchise (White Lotus just received a third season renewal over the weekend)? You get to travel to these beautiful hotels around the world, cast these great actors, and just play around. If Mike White keeps up the amazing writing on this show, he could give us another eight of these. I can’t wait to see what the second half of the season brings us.

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It’s looking like the loss of Chadwick Boseman is affecting Wakanda’s homeland more than Disney was prepared for. Black Panther 2 finished with just 67 million dollars in its second weekend. For reference, the first film took in 111 million on weekend number two.

It’s an indication that word-of-mouth is, much like the film’s central villain, below sea level. In all fairness, it probably should be. The picture’s bite is more minnow than shark, even if its running time is more bloated than a blue whale.

They should’ve made the movie lean like a dolphin and mean like a piranna so that people didn’t have so much time to sit in the theater and think, “Why is this girl pretending to be Iron Man?” Or, “When did the world population become 97% women and 3% men?”

Hollywood is trying its best to ignore the negative outlook, flexing on the film’s half-a-billion dollar global box office. And I don’t blame them. As dysfunctional as the Marvel-audience relationship has become, Marvel is the only theatrical game left in town. If it sputters, what’s left? A Fast and Furious franchise led by a 60 year old? We don’t even have Star Wars movies anymore!

I’ll tell you the movie that’s going to temporarily take care of this issue. A little flick called, Avatar: The Way of Water! I honestly believe this film is going to make Hollywood rethink how they approach the theatrical movie business. James Cameron actually took the time necessary to make sure EVERY frame of his film looks perfect.

Marvel, meanwhile, employs the opposite approach. They film their movies on conveyer belts. Their action scenes are shot with second unit directors. Their special effects are farmed out to Thailand.

Cameron is there every day making sure he controls each aspect of his vision, even if that takes a lot more time. You can see the results in the trailer. It looks beautiful. The film is going to clean up. I wouldn’t be surprised if it challenged The Force Awakens for that 2 billion dollar global take.

Once that happens, Hollywood is going to have to really think about what it takes to bring audiences to the theater. Because the one adjustment that they haven’t made in this new “Giant Movies Only” theatrical era, is taking your time in order to create the best product possible. They’ve been pumping these things out like Big Macs. And audiences are starting to say, “We want sirloin.  Not frozen beef.”

Another movie that isn’t doing so hot is She Said, the film about the two reporters who wrote a Harvey Weinstein expose that helped start the #MeToo movement. The film was released wide and took in only 2.3 million dollars.

I’m just going to say it. Nobody wants to watch movies like this. We have our real life in real life. We don’t need it in our movies. We don’t go to movies to be depressed, to be reminded of depressing things. I can’t, for the life of me, understand why anyone would’ve thought this movie was going to sell more than five tickets.

Universal is out there saying they “had” to make this movie cause it was the right thing to do, or some such nonsense. This new guilt-greenlighting that I see in Hollywood is one of the stranger developments in the market. I never thought I’d see the day when studios purposefully made movies they knew were going to bomb.

I suppose someone could’ve talked themselves into She Said making money via an Oscar run. But I don’t see it. It’s depressing subject matter. It’s stuff we’ve been bombarded with every day in the news for four years. Why would we then want to pay for it? “Oh man, 15 website articles touting #metoo wasn’t enough for me today. I need to pay 20 bucks to see more!”

It’s also confusing. When the Weinstein scandal broke, it was Ronan Farrow getting all the publicity. For the few people in middle America who might’ve been potential audience members here, they’re probably saying, “Who are these chicks?” They want to see the movie about the guy who *actually* broke the case.

If you’re going to shoot for an Oscar run, I suggest doing what The Menu did. The Menu is stylishly directed. It’s got great actors in it. It’s a sophisticated enough story to get Oscar voters intrigued. And, oh yeah, IT’S ALSO ENTERTAINING. The one ingredient Hollywood forgot when coming up with, “She Said.”

As you guys know, The Menu was a favorite script of mine. I’m happy to see it do fairly well this weekend. True, it only made 9 million bucks. But, honestly, I think that’s what you’re topping out at these days if you don’t have either a 200 million dollar budget or an easy-to-market horror film. Everything else seems to finish in the 8-12 million dollar opening range.

I’m not going to pretend that these types of movies aren’t 3 years away from debuting on streaming. But if you’re looking for a really fun story and a really well-written script, don’t go see Black Panther 2. Don’t go see She Said. See The Menu.

If you have no interest in going to the theater and just want to watch something good, I suggest firing up HBO Max and watching No Country For Old Men. I watched the film for dialogue tips (Yes, I’m STILL WORKING on the dialogue book – It’s coming! I promise!) and became so into the story, I ended up completely forgetting about dialogue.

The movie is the epitome of what I preach on the site – KEEP IT SIMPLE! It’s the simplest of simple stories, told with a likable protagonist, a super-compelling antagonist, and a bag of money. Sure, a couple of other people enter the story later on, but, at its heart, it’s two strong characters and a dramatic situation.

Something that struck me about the film was that, traditionally, the problem with this type of setup is that the villain has the primary goal (to catch the protagonist) leaving the protagonist with the weaker, more reactive, motivation (their job is to, essentially, wait and react to the antagonist). But Llewelyn’s character is written in a surprisingly active fashion. He knows he’s being chased by a de facto Terminator, so he’s always constructing plans to trick Anton (the bad guy) whenever Anton catches up to him.

For example, Llewelyn knows Anton will probably figure out what motel room he’s in and, therefore, buys the room next to his and sleeps there instead. He then waits for Anton to inevitably show up to his original room so he can figure out who’s chasing him and escape before this psycho can hurt him.

That’s a big part of what’s so fun about the script. It’s a chess match. But it’s an ACTUAL CHESS MATCH. So many writers don’t have the capability (or the discipline) to come up with genuinely clever moves from each character. This script is full of them.

One of my favorite moments is Llewelyn sitting in a dark hotel room in the middle of the night, terrified that Anton is coming. And then, finally, Llewelyn sees two dark shadows in the thin streak of light at the bottom of the door. But before he can do anything about it, the feet shadows disappear, and then, ten seconds later, the hall light goes dark. Anton went and turned it off specifically so that Llewelyn would not be able to see anything in that slit of light underneath his door.  What other writer thinks of details like that??

But it really is amazing how captivating the movie is considering that it boils down to such a simple premise. I would love to have the Coen Brothers who made this movie return.  They’re always at their best when there’s a bag of money involved. Although half the Coen team is coming out with a pretty good script himself, in Drive Away Dykes.

Did anybody see Black Panther, The Menu, or She Said this weekend? What did you think?

EDIT: QUICK THOUGHTS ON IGER RETURNING TO DISNEY – Since this just happened as I was about to go to bed. I never understood why Iger left in the first place. He was doing the best job leading the company since Disney himself. He was still young. Yet for some reason all Disney could talk about was replacing him. It didn’t make a lick of sense. So, in that sense, I’m not surprised he’s back.

The question is, what caused this dramatic change in leadership? No matter how many things you can knock Disney for, they have still done better than every other studio. They are still miles ahead of everyone else. And while Netflix is stagnant with their service, Disney Plus is still adding people. Didn’t they just add another 12 million subscribers last quarter?

I’m wondering if this is strictly a Marvel problem. Is it because all the Phase 4 movies were bad except for the one not made by them (Spider-Man)? Is it because Chapek allowed a group of people who hadn’t written anything to steer a 150 million dollar show in She-Hulk? Are those the reasons Chapek is out? I’m sure we’ll learn more in the coming days. But wowzers, this is huge news.

Genre: Drama (sort of a romantic comedy too)
Premise: After her son dies, a grieving mother decides to look for a mate who will get pregnant with the son’s frozen sperm.
About: This script finished with 7 votes on last year’s Black List. If you want to see my re-ranking of all the scripts from last year’s Black List, you can check it out here.
Writer: Geoffrey Roth
Details: 122 pages

Juno Temple for Audrey?

I love a good underdog story.

So there’s no one rooting for today’s 72nd ranked Black List script more than me. There’s already been one Black List “worth the read” that got 7 votes (“False Truth”). Can we make it two??

We meet Ben, who’s in his early 30s. Ben informs us, much like Lester Burnham at the beginning of American Beauty, that he’s dead. Ben lived a really full life, though. He was a fun guy with a lot of friends who traveled a lot. The only thing he didn’t achieve before he died was starting a family.

Ben introduces us to his mother, Laurie, who helps out with a foundation of Ben’s, which has capitalized on Ben’s obsessive travel experience by taking all of his videos and turning them into a virtual reality experience with “VR Ben” as the guide. The hope is to sell the company and use the profits to save our dying planet.

When Laurie learns that Ben froze some sperm, she becomes convinced that her new goal in life is to impregnate a young consenting woman with this sperm so that Ben can have a child. So Laurie does the only logical thing one does in these situations – she joins Raya as her dead son.

She starts getting matches left and right, to which she then goes on the dates and tells the women that she’s “Ben,” and that the actual Ben is dead, and, oh yeah, could you please get pregnant with his sperm? Naturally, young hot in-heat females don’t respond well to being told that their date is dead and can you get pregnant.

Coincidentally, a swimming friend of Laurie’s, Aubrey, matches with Ben on Raya, and Laurie uses the opportunity to sell Aubrey on the idea. At first, Aubrey is freaked out, just like everyone else. But after she “meets” Ben in his VR traveling simulation, she actually starts to like him. Against all that one would consider good judgement, Aubrey considers the unthinkable – getting pregnant with Dead Ben’s sperm.

For the record, a specific song cue on page 1, accompanied by a 122 page run-time, is not the best way to endear yourself to a reader.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s discuss the script, which is a bit of an odd duck.

On the surface, we’ve got a semi high concept idea here. A grieving mother starts “dating” young women in the hopes of finding one who will have her dead son’s baby via his previously frozen sperm. Like a much sadder version of Juno.

That’s definitely an inventive concept and I give the writer props for that. Especially because one of the hardest genres to infiltrate with any sort of originality is the romantic comedy. This concept allows for a new spin on that formula.

And it gives us some fun scenes in the process, such as young women matching with Ben on dating apps only for Laurie to show up, tell them the guy they matched with is dead, and that she’s hoping they’ll agree to get impregnated by him posthumously. I mean I’m laughing out loud as I type that. Those will make for a hilarious montage.

But something wasn’t working with the script. Let me see if I can come up with an analogy for why that was. The Way You Remember Me is a brand new house where none of the screws have been tightened yet. It feels too loosey-goosey, and in the process, is hard to buy into.

The loosest of the screws is Ben’s VR subplot. This team of people who loved Ben used all of his travel videos to turn them into a VR experience with Ben being the VR guide.

I understand why the writer did this. It allowed for Aubrey to step into that VR world and sort of be around Ben, almost like she’s dating him. But it’s just not believable on any level.

It’s one of those things we writers notoriously do. We see a problem and we’re so determined to solve it that we don’t hold it up to real-world standards. We use our own internal ‘movie-logic’ instead.

The problem-to-be-solved in “Remember Me” was: “Well, if Aubrey never knew Ben, why would she agree to have his child?” So the writer said, “Well, what if there was this posthumous foundation for Ben that was… ummmm, working on a… VR experience!…. And… ummmmm…. Like, Ben used to be a travel nut and taped all his travel exploits and they were working on turning those into a VR experience and THAT WAY we can have Aubrey “meet” Ben almost like they’re meeting in real life!”

Come on already. It’s such a clearly writer-generated fake situation that it doesn’t pass the suspension of disbelief test.

One of your jobs as a screenwriter is not just to solve problems. It’s to solve them elegantly. It’s to solve them in such a way that they are invisible and the audience is so immersed in them that they never consider the idea that a writer is writing it.

You know who I learned this from? “House of the Dragon’s” Ryan Condal. He used to talk about this all the time back on the Done Deal message boards. Your solutions can’t be so big and outrageous and “movie-logicy” that they break the suspension of disbelief.

Newbie writers are the biggest violators of this because they don’t respect the reader yet. They think the burden is on the audience to go along with whatever they come up with, as opposed to truth, which is that the burden is always on the writer.

Another issue with this script is that it was clearly written by someone who doesn’t read a lot. I know this because if they’d a read a lot of scripts, they would know some of the basic things that readers dislike. Like dual-side dialogue. Giant paragraphs. Big page counts. Unnecessarily over-written openings that go on for too long and, therefore, delay when we get to the actual plot.

One of the reasons I think yesterday’s book was so excellent – and, mind you, it’s a book with 70,000 more words and yet read much faster than today’s script – is that the author was an editor for 20 years. So they’d read so many books.

That’s why The Maid reads so effortlessly, and why I remind aspiring writers at every turn to READ AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE. Because I guarantee you, you will accumulate a list of things writers do that annoy you, and, in doing so, ensure that you never make those mistakes yourself.

The Way You Remember Me is like a lot of Black List scripts these days. It’s imperfect. It has some good things. But it doesn’t feel ready in the way that you pour over your work and make it the best it can possibly be before showing it to anyone ready. Which is why I’d retitle it, The Way You Won’t Remember Me.

Script Link: The Way You Remember Me

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

What I learned: Controversial take! This script was super heavy on the music cues. But I’m telling you, music as writing inspiration is HIGHLY DANGEROUS. The beauty of the songs you listen to, and the way they reverberate within you, fools you into thinking that the stuff you’re writing is amazing, when, in reality, it’s just the songs you’re listening to that are amazing. A great scene or a great sequence should be great without a single note of music behind it. This script read like the writer was lost in the power of his music. As a result, the music was doing all the heavy-lifting.

Say hello to the movie that’s going to win Florence Pugh her first Oscar.

Genre: Drama/Thriller
Premise: A maid on the autism spectrum unexpectedly finds herself wrapped up in a high profile murder at the fancy hotel she works at.
About: This book was sent out last year, before publication, to Hollywood, where Florence Pugh got hold of it and quickly signed on. The book was officially published this year and quickly rose to the New York Times best seller list. This is author Nita Prose’s first novel. Just to show you how important it is for writers to read, Nita was a long time editor before she finally broke out with this book. She is from Canada. I will try not to hold that against her.
Writer: Nita Prose
Details: 290 pages

It is becoming harder and harder to make non-gigantic IP properties theatrical releases. Anything that has even a hint of drama and genuine acting in it is dismissed as a streaming movie.

The only way these movies can now become studio releases is if they go TO-THE-NINES on the production. They get a big actor or actress. They give the film 3x as much money as a movie like this would normally cost. They build the most amazing sets and costumes imaginable. And they get a high-level director who directs the s**t out of the movie.

I’m talking every shot is a piece of art.

That’s the only way something can stand up to a Wakanda Forever or a Fast and Furious. You’ve got to see the trailer and it’s got to physically look amazing.

They should do that for The Maid because it deserves it. It’s a really fun story with a great star-making role.

Molly Gray works at an upscale hotel in New York. She’s a maid. And not just any maid. She’s the most dedicated maid you’ve ever watched clean. All she cares about is cleaning. All she cares about is leaving every room in perfect condition.

A big reason for this is that Molly is on the spectrum. She is autistic and while she doesn’t understand the complexities of human interaction, she understands how to make any room look and smell brand new. This is in large part because of her grandmother, who was also a maid. Unfortunately, her grandma, who was her only friend in the world, died recently.

What begins as a normal day at the hotel turns very un-normal. While cleaning the room of the hotel’s highest profile guests, the Blacks, Molly finds Mr. Black dead on the floor. She immediately alerts the hotel manager and that’s when the craziness begins.

Long story short, Molly has been friendly with Giselle Black, the wife of the dead man, who becomes suspect numero uno. Terrified for her friend, Molly tells the cops that she doesn’t know Giselle well, which they quickly find out is a lie. Molly then goes to her crush, the guy she considers her best friend at the hotel, bartender Rodney, for help. But what she doesn’t know is that Rodney may be involved in this somehow. And he’s not afraid to throw Molly under the bus if it means saving himself.

When Molly then becomes the number one suspect, she will have to team up with a local lawyer and get several of the hotel workers to covertly admit that they had a hand in this. But with her unique condition, will she be able to pull it off? Or will she, for one final time, be taken advantage of?

The way actors used to hunt for that big Oscar gold was to take on the role of a mentally challenged person. From Forrest Gump to Sling Blade to I Am Sam to Radio to Me Time. Some had success getting that Oscar, others didn’t.

These days, Hollywood’s become so terrified of Twitter attacks that they don’t want to get anywhere near the “R” word. So they’ve come up with a replacement – autism. Autism allows for characters battling difficult mental conditions. However the characters are still fully functional and, therefore, okay to portray.

We saw this in Silver Linings Playbook. We saw it in The Accountant. We saw it in The Imitation Game. This is one of the best character strategies screenwriters can use because actors will fight each other in gladiatorial arenas to land one of these parts. And it’s rising star, Florence Pugh’s, turn, to put on the armor.

Now, not every autistic role is created equal.

Where most writers go wrong is they only have the barest understanding of autism. They build their character around other autistic characters they’ve seen on TV and in film. Sometimes this can work if you’re writing a comedy (Sheldon in The Big Bang Theory). But if you’re writing a drama, you better understand autism as well as the greatest doctors in the world. Because in order for these characters to work, they must feel authentic.

That’s why The Maid works. And that’s why it rose to the top of Hollywood’s priority list – so much so that they went to their number 1 “It” girl to see if she’d do it. And she loved the character so she was in.

The great thing about autism (I may be the only person who’s ever written that) is that it enacts what I call “The Protection Principle.” The Protection Principle is when the reader feels protective over the main character. They want to make sure they’re okay. They get angry when others take advantage of them.

It can easily be said that the reason Forrest Gump is so popular is because of the Protection Principle. We love him so much that we want to protect him from the big bad world and all the people trying to take advantage of him in it.

The Maid may be the only story that leans more heavily into the Protection Principle than Forrest Gump. I can’t remember the last time I wanted to shield someone from pain more than Molly. She’s such a sweet girl. She’s so naive. Everyone’s taking advantage of her. And it very well might send her to prison for the rest of her life.

What’s so great about this book, though, is that the desire to protect our heroine grows with every chapter. By the time the cops have angrily arrested and accused her of all these things, we’re so charged up we want to drive down to our closest governmental establishment and demand justice. That is until we remember that, oh yeah, this is a fictional story.

The book is a great reminder that writing any story is about getting the BIG THINGS RIGHT. Concept. Character. Plot. We get so wrapped in the minutiae and, while I’m not saying the details aren’t important, they’re not nearly as important as the big three.

I might even take that a step further and say, even if the only thing you get right is the main character, as long as you get it REALLY REALLY RIGHT, you will write something of value that people will want. Especially in this business because it’s all about getting that big actor to sign on and bring buzz to your project so it can get made and, if you nail your main character, that’s exactly what will happen.

What works so well about Molly’s autism and the Protection Principle is that it introduces a level of dramatic irony. It’s established early on that Molly is obsessed with Rodney, the bartender. She loves everything about him, from the way he smells to the way his forearm muscles ripple when he places his hand down on the bar table.

But as Molly describes Rodney and how much she would love to make him her boyfriend, we see things that she doesn’t. We notice that he calls her “special” to others (“He called me special,” Molly beams. “I knew there was something between us.”). We notice that he’s being nice to her, but in a slightly patronizing way that she’s misinterpreting as romantic interest.

In other words, we know early on this guy is probably bad news. So we want to protect Molly from him. But poor Molly can’t read any social cues so she doesn’t see what we see. And it makes us frantic to keep reading and hope that she figures it out before it’s too late.

There’s a chapter late in the book where Molly needs help with this gun that she’s helped sneak out of Giselle’s hotel room, and she decides to ask Rodney for his assistance. And we’re sitting there screaming, “NOOOOOOOO!!! That’s the last person you want to tell!” And, of course, Rodney then uses that information to frame Molly.

Honestly, the plot itself isn’t anything special. It’s a got a few twists and turns. But the reason we’re so invested is because the character is so great. And the character is so great because of the autism choice, the authenticity through which that condition is explored, and the byproduct of that autism, which is the ignition of the Protection Principle.

Those three things kept me turning the pages and, when I finished, I had no doubt that Pugh was winning an Oscar. It’s a done deal already. Just give it to her now. I know that’s never been done before – that an actor is given an Oscar before she starts shooting the movie – but I promise you this is the one time we can break that rule.

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

What I learned: This is an AMAZING book to read to learn how to make a character likable. Not just because of the autism thing. But Molly’s best friend in the world, her grandma, died recently. The head maid at the hotel, Cheryl (who Molly’s nicknamed “Cherylnoble”), goes into Molly’s rooms ahead of her to always steal her tips. A former boyfriend took all of her and her grandmother’s money.  When others take advantage of our hero, we love our hero more than anything.  And because Prose is a such a good writer (how could she not be with that last name?), it all feels very authentic. None of it is desperate over-the-top “please like my hero” writing. I honestly can’t remember the last time I loved a character this much.

What I learned 2: All of the above only works if the protagonist still has a positive attitude towards life.  It doesn’t work if your hero feels sorry for themselves and gives up.  We love this character so much because in spite of all these things that happen to her, in spite of a job that might depress others, she still gets up every day and has the most positive optimistic attitude in the world.

What I learned 3: A dead body and a really unique main character is one of the most reliable setups for a story out there.

What I learned 4: NO EXCUSES!  Nita’s job took up her entire day so she got up at 5am every morning and wrote for 4 hours before her day job.  It took her 5 months to finish a first draft.