Genre: Horror
Premise: A drug addict returning from rehab kidnaps her daughter from her father then tries to skip town, only to end up at an old BnB chased by an evil tooth fairy determined to take her daughter from her.
About: This script finished in the bottom 25% of last year’s Black List. Chris Grillot had one other script on the Black List several years ago called “Bella.” Grillot is using his former job as a crime journalist in New Orleans as inspiration for much of what happens in today’s script. Except for the tooth fairy demon stuff, I’m assuming.
Writer: Chris Grillot
Details: 100 pages on the dot!

It’s been a while since we’ve reviewed a horror script on Scriptshadow so I thought, let’s bring the site back into equilibrium.

There have actually been some cool horror films that have come out lately. We had M3gan. We had Barbarian. We had Smile.

What I like about horror is that it’s very flexible tone-wise. You can take the exact same premise and construct three very different experiences depending on the tone you choose.  While older viewers dismiss the genre as a jump-scare fest, you can write some pretty dramatic horror movies. Which is definitely what we get today.

29 year old drug addict, Celia, has just finished her latest court-ordered rehab. Celia lives in the heart of New Orleans and on this particular night, the night she goes to get her daughter back, it’s raining like hell.

Celia picks up her 10 year old daughter, Imani, from the girl’s father. Imani has a cast on her arm. Celia knows what that means so she storms back in the house and all we hear is a gunshot. She races back out and tells Imani that they’re going to California. TONIGHT.

They don’t get very far, though. The rains are so intense that Celia’s Corolla gets stuck in 3 feet of water. The two have to practically swim over to the nearby gas station, where Celia asks the checker for a ride. He laughs at her but a couple minutes later, a local Louisiana swamp lord zooms up to the station on his boat!

The man, David, says he’s got a B&B down the street and Celia can stay there the night then get their car fixed tomorrow. Without any other options, Celia is forced to accept and, oh yeah, the home also happens to be an Antebellum plantation! As if they didn’t have enough to worry about.

Once there, Imani’s tooth pops out, and one of the maids at the B&B, Jeanine, tells her to *make sure* she puts that tooth under her pillow tonight. Celia shakes her head. Now they’re dealing with crazy weirdos obsessed with the tooth fairy? Can this night get any worse!

But after the two fall asleep, the night does get worse. The tooth fairy creature, nicknamed “Le Feu Follet,” nearly snatches Imani. Celia storms up to Jeanine and asks her what’s up. Jeanine tells her the whole backstory of this thing, that amounts to if you don’t offer your tooth, it takes your kid.

So what do they do now?? Jeanine says they’re lucky in that all of the candles here at the home are blessed by Jesus or something. And since the tooth fairy won’t go near them, they just have to stay in the light. Except that these weak candles won’t last the whole night. Which means they have to escape.

The team gears up to make a run for it, but then the crafty tooth fairy snatches Imani away! Now, the plan changes. They have to go find the only person left in town who knows where this tooth fairy creature lives. Then Celia is going to save her daughter!

Here’s the way I look at horror scripts these days.

You’ve got your horror monsters.

And you’ve got your horror scripts.

If you’ve got a horror monster, you have to create a short film proof-of-concept.

If you’ve got a great horror premise that doesn’t rely on how your horror monster looks, then you can still get away with trying to sell the script by itself.

In other words, if you’re writing “Mama,” which is entirely dependent on how the “Mama” creature looks, you need to do a proof-of-concept short. You even need to do that for simple monsters, like the shadow monster in Lights Out.

But if you’re writing something like The Sixth Sense, that’s not a horror script where you need to put a monster on the poster. So that’s one that can get by on the script alone.

What’s interesting about Chatter is that it’s somewhere in between these two options and I don’t know if it’s good enough to get traction as a script alone. You probably need to do a proof-of-concept short on the tooth fairy creature.

With that said, the character work here is intense. And dark. This isn’t some light-hearted funzo horror movie, like M3gan.

We feel Celia’s addiction. We feel the physical abuse in her relationship, as well as the abuse from the father towards the daughter. We feel this “all hope is lost” vibe as they’re trying to start a new life. It’s intense, man!

That’s probably the script’s best quality. Its darkness. These people felt like they were genuinely at the end of their rope.

The script probably would’ve been a lot better, though, if the writer had patched up his mythology. We’re told that this creature used to steal children all the way back in the Civil War. But once word got out that it was doing so, everybody made sure to always put their teeth under the pillow.

Apparently, only one person didn’t do this in the last 50 years, and that was Jeanine, who didn’t do it for her son, which is why the tooth fairy took him. I’m trying to do the math here.  How many teeth fall out of a child as they grow up? 15? Okay, now how many children have grown up in New Orleans in the past 50 years. 10 million? So we’re looking at 150 million teeth, and only once did someone not put a tooth under their pillow? I’m not sure I’m buying that.

I think a good question is, does stuff like this matter?

Does it really matter to a reader if that aspect of the story doesn’t pass muster?

It’s a good question. And the answer is, “It depends.” If I’m super invested in the characters and the storytelling and the script is really good, then I probably don’t care about it. But If I’m where most readers are when they’re reading a script, which is they think it’s pretty good and are hoping for a big exciting ending that’s going to put the script over the top. If that’s where a script is, then anything that’s shaky in the script could be the deciding factor that makes the reader give up.

That’s why details, in and of themselves, don’t matter. But taken in totality, with all the other details of the story, one lazy detail could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.

For example, you have these candles. These candles are special god-approved candles that scare away the tooth fairy. Well, hold on here a second. These candles won’t last the night? Then what good are they? And does that mean you have to go to the church every morning to relight the candles? That seems like extremely specific mythology. Or are you saying they last for a long time but Celia and Imani just happened to show up on the night where they were running out of wax? If that’s the case, then that’s a bit coincidental, don’t you think?

Again, by themselves, these things don’t matter much. But when added up, they definitely matter. Because the reader is asking these very same questions in their mind as they’re reading your script INSTEAD OF doing what they’re supposed to be doing, which is enjoying your story.

With that said, there’s a teensy bit more good to Chatter than bad. Like I always say, get the main characters right and that will act as deodorant for many of your script’s weaknesses. I felt that Grillot got the characters of Ceilia and Imani right. And then I always love when writers take a goofy idea and treat it really seriously. It always creates an unexpected tone.

So, much like Monday’s movie review (You People), this one squeaks by with a ‘worth the read.’

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

What I learned: Early in the script, Celia walks into the dad’s house. We stay outside so we can’t see anything. We hear a gunshot, we see her hurry out of the house, and then her and Imani make a run for it. However, later in the story, we learn that she didn’t shoot him. She merely fired a warning shot. I believe that the audience would rather you imply something bad DIDN’T HAPPEN only to later reveal IT DID, than imply that something bad DID HAPPEN only to later reveal THAT IT DIDN’T. Because it’s a letdown. Celia is bada$$ if she killed him. The stakes are much higher, since now they must completely disappear in order to survive the rest of their lives. Whenever something cool happens in your script and you later say, “Psyche!” the reader doesn’t like you.

Hey, Jordan didn’t make the cut of his high school team either.  So if you’re on this list, it may be a good thing!

This is a reminder that on the second to last Friday of every month, we’ll have a logline showdown here on the site. Send your title, genre, and logline to me at carsonreeves3@gmail.com. I’ll vet the best five, put them up on the site for competition. Winner gets a review the following Friday (so your script has to be written!). The next deadline is Thursday, February 16th, 10pm Pacific Time.

Unfortunately, not every logline can be a winner. So in the spirit of both teaching and making sure that everyone doesn’t keep sending me loglines that have no chance, I’m featuring 7 loglines that will not make the Amateur Showdown cut. If you entered with one of these, learn from your mistakes, and enter another showdown with a fresh concept. We’re doing these all year long so you have time!

Title: HAVE YOU SEEN ME?
Genre: Thriller
Logline: Disturbed by the disappearance of a pretty blond white girl overshadowing that of her black best friend, an 11-year-old white girl fakes her own disappearance in hopes of it leading authorities to her friend.

Analysis: I sort of understand what’s going on here but it’s one of those ideas that’s not quite formulated when you lay it out. And this is a challenge that a lot of writers run up against. These ideas that *kind of* sound like movie ideas. But if you actually break down the logline, they don’t make sense. In this case, we’re exploring the well-documented phenomena that the news only reports on pretty young white girls that go missing, never black girls. So our hero fakes her disappearance… to make people look for her black friend. Wait, hold on, what?? How does her going missing get people to look for her friend? Aren’t they only going to look for her? And doesn’t that only solidify the ‘missing young white girl’ phenomena? Maybe she leaves messages for the cops like, “Don’t forget my friend who’s also missing!” I don’t know. It doesn’t make sense to me. And a logline MUST MAKE SENSE. Let me say that again. A logline MUST MAKE SENSE. You don’t get to explain your logline to someone. They just read the logline. So IT MUST MAKE SENSE.

Title: Office Murder Mystery
Genre: Mystery
Logline: Waking up in a locked office next to the dead body of his boss, a man suffering from a schizophrenic disorder must find the real murderer by the end of the business day with the help of his five favorite dead mystery writers that only he can see, hear or speak to.

Analysis: This one comes from a longtime reader of the site, Alex, who I really like. But this logline doesn’t work for me. It definitely has a high-concept feel to it. But two things are keeping me away. One, whenever you start talking about schizophrenics, the writing level needs to be 10 times that of a normal writer. It’s a very specific disease and in order for it to come off as authentic, the writer really has to understand it, and in my experience, 999 writers out of 1000 don’t. So it always ends up being lame. Also, the “dead mystery writers” thing comes out of nowhere. One second we have a dead body of a boss and the next we have mystery writers??? Where did these mystery writers come from exactly? I know. They’re in his head. But they’re not set up well. We weren’t told that our hero was a vociferous reader or an aspiring novelist. Just a “man.”  So there’s zero connection to the mystery writers component.  For these reasons, the logline doesn’t work.

Title: Eagle Heart
Genre: Period drama – WWII
Logline: When his father comes home from war without legs and without hope, a nine year old boy believes that by saving a dying bird he can stop his family from falling apart.

Analysis: These are always hard for me to turn down because I can tell the writer has written a very heartfelt story that he cares deeply about. But the logline still has to work. A big problem I’ll see in a lot of loglines is that the writer makes a HUGE leap from one dot to the next. A ton of necessary information in between is skipped over, making the logline seem awkward and disconnected. We start out with a dad coming home from war, injured and hopeless. Okay, so far so good. Then we’re saving a bird. Wait, what??? What about saving dad?? Then we find out he’s saving the bird so that his family doesn’t fall apart. What about saving the bird to save his dad!!?? All three sections of the logline do not operate in harmony, which is why I passed this one over.

Title: SINNERMAN
Genre: Horror
Logline: When a home invasion ends in murder a mother of two young children is ‘haunted’ by the intruder’s malevolent spirit but she soon discovers that she’s the undead and is being held in purgatory…

Analysis: First of all, when a writer hits me up with 4 or 5 submissions, I pretty much don’t trust those entries. As writers, we typically have 1 or 2 screenplays that are RIGHT NOW our best work. We do not have five equally good scripts. Three of those are older work and not nearly representative of what we’re capable of now. So if you’re just spamming people with your five most recent screenplays, chances are you’re not really trying to show someone your best work. Hence, I wouldn’t use this strategy (on my site or anywhere else). As for the logline, it has a bunch of those buzzwords that make it sound like a movie (home invasion, haunted, undead, purgatory) but nothing unique to help it stand out from the pack. A script idea usually needs a unique attractor of some sort. This one doesn’t have one.

Title: WEIRD WAR
Genre: Epic Vietnam War Era Supernatural thriller
Logline: A young grunt in denial about his psychic ability is assigned to an elite squad of spirit hunters and is forced to come to terms with his family’s own supernatural past.

Analysis: If you follow my site, you know that extended genre descriptions take you out of the running immediately. You want one genre descriptor, two at most. In very rare situations, three. But whatever you do, you don’t want to add things into the genre description (Epic, Vietnam Ear Era) that aren’t accepted known genres. Not only does it come off as unprofessional, but it indicates that the script is all over the place. So, what do we see with this logline? Well, it sounds all over the place. Psychic abilities. Spirit hunters. It sounds out there and, based on my extensive experience reading scripts, like it’s going to have a very wonky and muddled mythology. Now, could I be wrong? Of course. But this is what my experience tells me is coming, which is why the script didn’t make the showdown.

Title: Edge of Humanity
Genre: Sci-Fi
Logline: Earth faces the final stages of environmental collapse from climate change. The global government secretly commits genocide to avert human extinction, while rival factions fight to uncover the truth.

Analysis: First of all, this writer sent a nice e-mail saying that he recently received his first “RECOMMEND.” So good on him! But, when it comes to Logline Showdown, the recommends are rarer than snow in Los Angeles. We’re tough graders here, and the problem with Edge of Humanity is that the logline is way too broad. There isn’t a single mention of a character. So who do we connect to? And what’s the actual story, since presumably we’re going to be following someone on a journey? On top of that, the broad strokes are too generalized and don’t set the script apart. More generic buzzwords: “environmental collapse,” “climate change,” “global government,” “genocide,” “human extinction.” It just sounds like a million other scripts, movies, and tv shows. This is your monthly reminder that a logline should not be about what makes your movie SIMILAR to others. It should be about what makes your movie DIFFERENT from others.

Title: Controller
Genre:  Sci-Fi
Logline:  A young fugitive, still traumatized from a high school assault, uses an experimental mind-control device to save a new lover from a jealous techno thief.

Analysis: This logline has several problems. For starters, the high school assault should not be in the logline. That’s backstory. It doesn’t add anything relevant that we *need* to know to understand the story. From there, you have “experimental mind-control” and “techno thief.” These are two major aspects of the logline and they don’t go together at all. The featured words in a logline MUST CONNECT for your logline to feel whole. So, for example, if you say your hero is a vegan, then it works well if, later in the logline, they find themselves in a slaughterhouse. Finally, I don’t really know what a techno thief is. You mean like they steal bitcoin? It feels like a dated word and it’s not clear enough all on its own. If any word in your logline has a chance of being even mildly misunderstood, you don’t want to use it.

Carson gives logline consultations for $25 a pop.  E-mail him at carsonreeves1@gmail.com if interested. 

The second episode always reveals the truth of whether you have a good show or a bad one

If you couldn’t tell by now, I’m fascinated by this series.

I think it’s kinda gangster, and also kinda insane, to try and make a show that looks exactly like another show that happens to be one of the most popular shows of all time in The Walking Dead.

So from a screenwriting perspective, I’m interested in how you get around that. It’s a big challenge. And I wanted to see how they were going to do it. I became even more interested when they went all in on the marketing. It showed they were really backing this show. So maybe they did figure out the trick to make it work.

But then last week, the same thing that happens to me when I read a bad script happened to me when I watched the pilot. Which is that these little red flags popped up. The super-generic post-apocalyptic city, for example. A main character who wasn’t compelling enough to carry an entire series. A secondary character – the girl – who has some standard lame secret power that’s going to be revealed later.

All of it felt way too familiar.

And that’s why I’m reviewing this second episode. I’m curious to see if my suspicions are correct. I believe that this show is in major trouble. The only hope I have for it is if they sacrificed story quality for setup purposes.

The weakness I saw in that pilot were a crippling reminder of how critical character is in a TV show. If we don’t fall in love with those characters right away… the show is screwed. And what’s so frustrating about screenwriting is that, theoretically, I should like Joel. We meet him, we see how much he loves his daughter, then watch his daughter get killed in front of him. Why am I not all-in on this guy?

I don’t know. All I know is that when we fast-forward 20 years Joel is this grumpy guy you kind of sort of like but also don’t. You know who he reminded me of? Obi-Wan Kenobi in the Obi-Wan show. Same idea. Grumpy. Head down. Goes to work every day. “Grumpy” is a tough character trait to make work. Audiences generally don’t like grumpy people. It’s possible, of course. “Up” did it. But, usually, it’s a bad move.

I want to be proven wrong about all this. Let’s get into episode 2’s plot and see if I was.

In this episode, we start back in 2003 in Jakarta. It’s here, apparently, where the virus was born and is starting to spread. The government’s head scientist determines that there’s no hope and they should immediately start bombing the city they’re in!

Cut to Joel and Ellie (the little girl) and Tess (the girlfriend) in the present. The three need to get through downtown Boston for some reason that isn’t well explained at all. I think they’re going to a courthouse for some reason? It’s confusing.

That setup is mostly an excuse to start playing with this world and seeing what it looks like. Buildings have fallen over onto each other. Hotel lobbies have become frog ponds. And the infected monster people are scattered about in various locations. Although, surprisingly, for most of our trio’s journey, we barely see them.

Eventually, our group get to the courthouse – again, I don’t know why they’re going there but they get there – and that’s when Tess reveals that she’s infected. Which means she’s going to have to off herself soon. Joel and Ellie then have to get out of Dodge, leaving Tess to lure in some other monsters so she can take them out along with herself. The End.

So… was I entertained?

Funny enough, this episode felt a lot like the first episode. It started off strong. Then got worse from there.

The show’s central problem continues to be its weak characters. Joel doesn’t talk much and, when he does, he usually says boring stuff. Tess is like a female version of Joe. She’s equally as moody and talks in that sort of angry whisper that all cliched characters in these shows talk like.

I guess Ellie, the girl, is supposed to be the comedic relief. But comedic reliefs only work when they’re not annoying.

With that said, at least we’re on the move now. We’re walking through this city. There’s potential danger around every corner, which heightens the tension whenever we’re in a scene.

But there’s just no X-FACTOR here. There’s nothing about this show to get you excited. Nobody’s going to finish an episode of this show, text their friend, and say, “Oh my God, did you see the latest episode of Last of Us!!??” And that’s what you need these days. Because the modern day equivalent of telling your friends is telling the internet. So if nobody’s running to social media to talk about how awesome the episode was, your show is in trouble.

House of the Dragon had that quality. White Lotus had that quality. This is missing something. And I think the problem is two-fold. Boring characters and a world that’s too familiar.

The one big difference between this show and The Walking Dead, I guess, is that these zombies are more like monsters. They can morph into more exciting beings. But is looking forward to these monsters enough to drive an entire show? I don’t think it is.

What matters most is CHARACTER. We need to love the characters. I wish I could put up one post a week that just repeated that line a thousand times. And I’m not even going to lay all this at the feet of the writers. Casting comes into this too. This is the fourth role in a row for Pedro Pascal where I am not impressed by him at all (Mandalorian, WW1984, The Bubble were the other three). I’m not sure how this guy became popular. But I think he’s freaking boring. He’s like Gerard Butler without the charm. So that’s probably playing into it why the show feels stuck in second gear.

Look. This show is better than some of the other high-profile releases that have come out recently. Rings of Power. Willow. Obi-Wan. But it’s nowhere near the class of House of the Dragon, White Lotus, and Stranger Things. It’s not even as good as Westworld.

This marks the last time I will watch The Last of Us. What about you?

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

What I learned: I love the writing move of a character sitting down somewhere random and the military comes up to get them, because this person is needed by the president to help them figure out a top secret problem. I love that moment where they walk up, stop in front of them, and then no words are spoken. We just cut to them in the car. Or in the helicopter. Because why do you need your characters to say anything? The audience understands what’s going on. Don’t write a line if you don’t have to. — This happens in the opening of this episode.

As I continue to read tons of amateur screenplays for my consulting services, I’ve noticed that I continue to give one note again and again. That note is, “Take a risk!” Take a risk SOMEWHERE in your screenplay. Because if you don’t take any risks at all, it’s very hard to write a screenplay that people actually remember.

Risks are scary. If I were to assess where I went wrong as a screenwriter, a lack of risk-taking would be up there near the top of the list. I can write you the most technically proficient screenplay that you’ve ever read. But without any risks taken, that’s all it would be.

Sometimes readers of this site erroneously assume that I’m Mr. Follow The Rules. And if you don’t follow the rules, that I believe it’s impossible to write a good screenplay. Well, I’m Mr. Follow The Rules with one major caveat. I want you to take at least one big risk in your script. Because that’s what’s going to bring your script alive.

But telling someone to take a risk is a weak note because what is a risk? Does anyone know how to break the word down into actionable tasks you can actually implement?

Yes.

I do.

Risk-taking breaks down into five distinct categories. I’m sure there are a few more. But these are the main ones. They are…

Concept
Plot
Character
Perspective
Time

Concept – Concept is picking a movie idea that is challenging just through its concept alone.

Plot – Something BIG happens in your plot that’s completely surprising and sets the story onto a previously unexpected path.

Character – You do something with one of your key characters that’s very risky. Something most movies wouldn’t do.

Perspective – The perspective from which you tell your story. Make it a little different, a little unexpected.

Time – Playing with time in such a way that challenges the story and challenges the audience.

Recently, I’ve been watching this show on Hulu called Fleishman is In Trouble. It’s about a New York doctor in his 30s, Toby, who’s in the midst of a divorce and, one weekend, when he’s taking care of the kids, his wife doesn’t show up to pick them up. She’s pretty much disappeared. We then spend the episodes bouncing back and forth in time, learning about how Toby met his wife and how they got to this point.

The show often contains narration by a third character, Libby, who is a former friend of Toby’s. She’s the one who takes us through Toby and his wife’s past and how they got to this point in their marriage.

So, in the case of Fleishman is in Trouble, the show is taking two of the six risks. First, the perspective. We’re not in some standard CW high school show where we dutifully see the story through each of the four main characters’ eyes, jumping back and forth between them in a very traditional 1-hour drama way. Instead, we’ve got Libby equal parts shot-putting and dragging us through this complicated relationship. The choice to make this random third character our narrator is definitely a big risk.

The other risk is Time. We’re jumping all over the place here. We’re in the present. We’re a year ago. We’re fifteen years ago. We’re five years ago. We’re never on this straight-forward linear path. That’s a risk.

Go watch an episode and see for yourself. The show doesn’t feel like other shows out there. And that’s because it’s taking two of the six risks!

In order to make this all a little bit clearer for you, here are five movies that took risks in each of the five categories.

Title: Parasite
Risk Type: Plot

Parasite was already a good movie before the big plot risk it took. This story about a family infiltrating another family’s home was one of the most entertaining commentaries on the disparity between the rich and the poor that we’ve ever seen. But the midpoint twist of there being an unknown basement in the home where another character was living, one who was even poorer than our protagonist family, elevated the film into an all-time classic.

Title: Marcel The Shell With Shoes On
Risk Type: Perspective

If you haven’t seen Marcel The Shell, it’s an animated film (for the most part) about a shell who’s living in this AirBnB house. The big risk the writers made was to tell the story in documentary style. This was a particularly risky choice due to the fact that animated films just don’t ever do documentary style. Which is a good lesson to internalize. Some risks are riskier than others. And this was definitely a huge one.

Title: Red Rocket
Risk Type: Character

One of my favorite movies from a couple of years ago, Red Rocket, follows a character, Mikey, a former porn star who’s been forced to move back to his tiny Texas town. Mikey starts dating a teenager who works at a local donut shop. The reason I liked this movie so much was because it was the biggest risk-taking character movie of that year. Sean Baker, the writer, made Mikey extremely likable. And you’re not supposed to do that in a story like this. And it made for a very complex viewing experience where you were constantly battling with how you felt versus how you were supposed to feel. And it was amazing for that very reason. I hold this movie up in the pantheon of how to take a big risk with a character.

Title: 1917
Risk Type: Time

When I say the words, “World War 1 movie,” what comes to mind? I’m guessing long-drawn out narratives about soldiers on the front lines for months if not years, and then coming home and dealing with the PTSD of war and not being able to re-integrate into society. Boring s—t, right? 1917 erased all that with one simple risk-taking choice. It made a World War 1 film real-time. Boom. Just like that, you have the most original World War 1 movie ever made.

Title: A Quiet Place
Risk Type: Concept

A Quiet Place did something very similar for the horror genre. It came up with a concept where nobody can speak. This instantly turned the movie into a silent film. That’s a pretty darn big risk. A major studio budgeted and promoted a horror film that was silent? Risks don’t get much bigger than that.

So I’m sure plenty of you are wondering, “Do you HAVE to take a risk?” The answer is no. You don’t have to. There are plenty of movies, with scripts, that didn’t take much of a risk at all. John Wick comes to mind. Top Gun Maverick. Black Widow. Free Guy. Knives Out. These are movies that know their lane and stay squarely inside of it.

But, here’s the thing. When you write a screenplay, you are now competing for readers’ interest. And readers read a lot of stuff. They see the same stories over and over again. The same characters. The same tropes. So, while it is possible to write this perfect version of a basic story, you can kind of hack the system with one big risky swing (assuming it pays off).

Uncut Gems is a huge character risk. We’re rooting for a truly despicable man. Barbarian took a plot risk. After that captivating opening, it jumped to a completely different character and now we don’t know where the script is going. Everything Everywhere All At Once, I believe, takes risks in all five categories. Which is why the movie is so beloved by the film community.

Risks are just like a lot of tools in screenwriting. You have to decide whether you want to use them or not. I can tell you, from personal experience, that when a writer a takes a big risk, that screenplay is always more memorable than the scripts that didn’t take a risk. Even if the risk doesn’t work.

So go out there and put your testicular fortitude on the line and take a risk in your screenplay. Something tells me it’s going to pay off.

Today’s script JUST SET THE BAR for 2023!!!

Genre: Sci-Fi Comedy
Premise: A low-level worker on a spaceship run by a dark god must steal the most powerful weapon in the universe to save his workplace crush.
About: This script finished Top 10 on last year’s Black List. The writer has a lot of credits in the animated kids TV space. He wrote on such shows as Monsters at Work and Vampirina. Which, after you read this review, is going to be beyond shocking.
Writer: Travis Braun
Details: 97 pages

This has Holland written all over it!

You are about to experience something so rare that you may not know what to do with yourself afterwards. The rumors are true. You’re about to read a glowing review of a Black List script.

This is no ordinary script. This isn’t graded on a curve to adjust for the current level of the Black List. This is a legit awesome script. I don’t know who this writer is. I don’t know where he came from. But if he doesn’t get snatched up by the Marvel universe by the end of this weekend, I’ll be shocked.

24 year old Charlie was delivering a package when earth was invaded and aliens either killed or enslaved everyone. Charlie is one of the enslaved. He lives on a Death Star like ship that travels around the galaxy, destroying planets.

The ship is run by a terrifying alien named Morticus. Morticus is the embodiment of evil. All he cares about is killing. The only reason Charlie, the other humans, or the other enslaved aliens on the ship, aren’t dead, is because he needs people to keep the ship running.

Charlie spends most of his time cleaning up weapons that have just been discarded during battles. This place is like the Wild West. If the guards aren’t killing you, another slave is. This is Charlie’s every single day. It is pure misery. He has no reason to live. The only reason he doesn’t kill himself is because he’s too much of a wimp to.

Then one day, he gets a message on his food ration plate. It says, simply, “Have fun.” Perplexed, Charlie looks to see who wrote the message, and sees Emma. Charlie is instantly smitten.

He writes her back a message, and the two continue to go about their days, stealing glances and smiles, but never actually talking to each other because if you talk to other people, they kill you.

For once, Charlie has a reason to be alive. And boy is he happy about it. (Spoiler) That is until Morticus comes down from his tower, finds out Emma was planning to escape, and takes his scepter and thrashes it into her, making her die the most horrible death imaginable.

Now, Charlie is even more devastated than he was before he knew Emma! His life truly sucks. That is until he hears a rumor that Morticus’s scepter has the power to bring people back alive. For the first time since he’s been on this hellscape, Charlie is going to rock the boat. He’s going to travel to Morticus’s tower, steal his scepter, and reanimate his girlfriend!

This.

Script.

Was.

Bonkers.

Good.

There’s so much bonkers good here, I don’t know where to start.

You read ten scripts in a row that are all somewhere between bad and average and you start to think that a) nobody knows how to write anymore. b) your standards have gotten too high, or c) some combination of the two.

But then a script like this comes along and reminds you that there is still good writing out there! Which means we have another script to place in the ‘good script’ archives to learn from.

First, I’ll start with the writing. It was so light and clever and effortless. It was such a joy to read. I know that’s cliche. But it really was. I found myself not just looking forward to plot beats, but looking forward to actual line descriptions. Which is crazy. Cause that never happens.

I mean how great is this line: “Charlie and Sodros enter the vast throne room. It’s cold and empty, no doubt a design choice to match Morticus’ soul.” Despite what one of the commenters here will say via a 750 word essay about why this isn’t a clever or good line, trust me, it is. I’ve read everything. I read anything. Nobody writes lines this effortlessly funny like this. It’s super rare. And Braun somehow keeps it up the whole script.

I mean check out this description of the ship: “A massive engine of intergalactic evil.” I don’t know many writers who can capture the essence of an object inside such a concise simple line with the kind panache that Braun does here.

And it’s just fun. The line is fun. The story is fun. Everything here is fun. Here’s a quick dialogue exchange.

HAYNES: C’mon man. I’m your bestie. I can practically tell everything you’re thinking.

CHARLIE: You’re a telepath.

HAYNES: That’s fair. But if I wasn’t, I’d like to think our connection was such that I could still tell.

Now if it was just about the description and dialogue, that wouldn’t be enough for me. It’s the way the story is told as well. This is a writer who understands the craft. For example, Charlie’s job is to clean weapons. Weapons are used non-stop on this ship because all anybody does here is kill. The script lures us into that reality without us really thinking about it. Then, when Charlie finally decides to do something and re-animate his girlfriend, guess who has access to a bunch of weapons in order to do so?

You can always tell seasoned writers because they’re great with setups and payoffs.

But probably the thing that I liked about this script the most and what really separated Braun’s script from all the others is his dedication to turning moments on their head end not giving you what you expect.

For example, we’ve got Charlie and Emma flirting from afar with the kind of sexual tension that, if converted into raw energy, could power a mid-size country. Braun builds that up to crazy levels over the course of 15 pages. Then there’s a big dust-up and several creatures are killed. Charlie and Emma are order to transfer the dead aliens’ armor and weapons down to another floor.

The two wheel the armor into an elevator, and it’s the first time they’ve ever been alone together. As soon as the doors close, Emma says, “I think we have about ninety seconds.” “Yeah,” Charlie replies. “We should use it wisely,” she says. “Totally.” I think you know where this is going.

One of the biggest teaching tools out there for screenwriters is measuring what you would write versus what a great screenwriter would write. I can honestly say that, 99% of the time, the weak screenwriter writes what you expect. This is why only 1% break through. Because those are the screenwriters who think differently. They’re the ones who come up with the moments that the audience couldn’t have come up with themselves.

So when you look at the above scene that I set up, where they’re in the elevator together, I’m guessing 99% of you assumed that we would then cut to them having sex. Or cut to the end of the elevator ride, the doors opening, and them looking disheveled, clearly just having had sex.

Guess what?

That’s not what happened. And if you would’ve written that, you would’ve lost the game of screenwriting. Because EVERYBODY would’ve written that. The accountant in the back of the theater who’s never written so much as essay in his life would’ve come up with that reveal.

Instead, after their little exchange, we smash cut to them each wearing the alien armor, swords raised and they proceed to play fight with it.

It’s such a clever cut that you can’t help but smile. But, more importantly, it displays pro-writer behavior. Which is to ask what the audience expects and then make sure to give them something different.

This happens repeatedly throughout the script.

Later on, Charlie, while sneaking around trying to get to Morticus, gets stuck in a fuel pipe, and is all of a sudden sucked deep into this thing by fuel, and will for sure drown. Except, at the last second, he gets yanked out of this thing by a cool Oscar Isaac like character named Ignacio. Ignacio is this bada$$ who’s been living here in the front of the ship, using his awesomeness to survive. We immediately love the guy.

Him and Charlie get to chatting and I’m all psyched about how Charlie is going to team up with this dude and they’re going to save Emma’s life together. That is until Ignacio confides that he’s heartless and only cares about himself. Charlie says, “No you’re not. You saved me.” And Ignacio’s entire persona flips on a dime. He replies, “Who says I saved you?”

All of a sudden, straps whip around Charlie’s arms and legs, tying him to the chair. Ignacio then says he’s sorry but he’s got to kill Charlie and sell him off for food pound by pound, cause human flesh is worth a lot around here.

Braun had me hook, line, and sinker. He set up the Ignacio character so well that I never in a million years thought he was a bad guy. But, again, this is what good writers do. They lead the reader towards a conclusion they’re sure of, then repeatedly pull the rug out from under them.

On a slightly different topic, today’s script is the perfect comparison piece to yesterday’s script. You may be saying, “Carson, are you insane? Yesterday’s script was set on earth and followed a depressed pregnant pizza deliver girl struggling to accept whether she would be a good mother or not. What does that have to do with running around a spaceship trying to reanimate the love of your life?”

Quite a bit, actually.

You see, movies are great at exploring universal themes, the things we all experience in life. But they’re not good at doing that LITERALLY. They’re much more effective when you find larger-than-life stories in larger-than-life genres that explore those same themes on a much larger tapestry.

Dying For You is about depression just like Pizza Girl is about depression.

The difference is, the depression is explored on a much bigger canvas, which allows us to actually be entertained while we’re exploring that theme. Writers make the mistake of thinking that if they’re very literal and show dying and crying and drug addiction and daddy hit me exactly how they happen, that we’ll eat it up. But if you show that exactly the way it happens in the real world, there’s a good chance we’re going to be bored and miss the point.

That doesn’t happen in a movie like Dying For You. This is a story about a guy who has zero reason to live. He’s a slave on a spaceship where everything is designed to kill you. The love of his life was killed in front of him. His baseline is depression. But because we get these fun exchanges between him and friend. Because we get this exciting adventure where he goes off and gets in all these battles and chases – we’re actually entertained. And because we’re entertained, we’re more present – WHICH ALLOWS US TO FEEL THE DEPRESSION MORE INTENSELY.

Let me summarize that: “If we’re more present, we care more about what’s happening. Which means we feel your emotional beats more effectively.”

Now, I can already hear some of you rolling your eyes. “So I should never write a drama Carson? What about Lost In Translation? What about Good Will Hunting? Those weren’t great movies that made us feel for the characters?”

That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying that as an unknown screenwriter trying to capture a reader – or even as a professional writer trying to bring in a real audience to his movie – you’re much better off looking for a larger-than-life setup to explore universal themes than you are doing it literally via a drama.

There’s a version of Everything Everywhere All At Once that doesn’t have multi-verses. That’s just about an Asian family that a mother has checked out of. The Daniels could’ve written that movie. And guess how many people would’ve seen it? Hold up both your hands, fingers extended, then lower three of those fingers. Count the rest. That’s how many people would’ve gone to see that movie.

I’m getting off-track here.

The point is, this is a great script. It’s honestly everything a spec screenplay should be. It’s got a big fun premise. It’s got a likable main character. It’s written in a fun, effortless manner with tons of white on the page. The dialogue is funny. The writer is constantly surprising us. The mythology is great. This is it, man. This script IS screenwriting.

All Hail Morticus.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive (Top 25!)
[ ] genius

What I learned: This script reminded me that when you create a scenario where two people can’t be around each other (in this case Charlie and Emma), every single moment they do get together is CHARGED. When these two were around each other, I can’t remember a time where a scene between romantic interests felt so big and important.