Sorry! I was out all yesterday so I wasn’t able to catch up on the Black List madness until the evening. Count me both shocked and thrilled, then, when I saw not one, but two active Scriptshadow readers in the Top 5!!!

I still remember meeting Angela and her newborn baby a few years ago when she was moving to San Deigo, worried about her chances of getting a staff writing job if she was outside of LA. Looks like, in the end, her decision was the right one! She’s also been killing it with her blog, LA Screenwriter, for a full decade now. So happy for you, Angela!

And then what can you say about Mayhem Jones (Sophie)? Is there anyone on this planet who possesses more positivity than her? I remember how bad I felt that I didn’t give Headhunter that ‘worth the read’ mark because I like Mayhem as a person so much. But you know what she said to me afterwards? She said, oh god, I don’t care about that at all, I was just happy to get a review on Scriptshadow.

I bring up that positivity because I’m always happy to see the people who remain positive succeed. It confirms the power that staying positive has. It’s so easy to become bitter. And I think the more bitter you become, the harder it is to succeed. Not so much because your writing gets worse. It’s more that people don’t like to be around people who bring them down. Or who are always complaining. Or who think the world is conspiring against them.

Now despite me missing the boat on my Headhunter rating (I’ll gladly take the L on that one!), I think we all agreed on one thing with Mayhem during that review – she has voice for days. A really strong voice. And those are the scripts that tend to do well on the Black List. Clever concepts do well. But dating back to the Diablo Cody days, Black List has always been about finding unique voices. And we all said during the day of her review that she had that part nailed.

Okay, with that, let’s take a look at this year’s Black List!

Title: HEADHUNTER – 29 votes
Writer: Sophie Dawson
Logline: A high-functioning cannibal selects his victims based on their Instagram popularity, but finds his habits shaken by a man who wants to be eaten.
Thoughts: WAY TO GO, MAYHEM! By the way, I don’t know if this is a new draft that went out. I’ll be curious to hear from Mayhem about this. Would love to know if she took any of your notes. And for those of you wondering where the review is on the site, Mayhem informed me a couple of months ago that her script was picking up steam and I didn’t want my review to affect any buzz so I took it down.

Title: CHANG CAN DUNK – 28 votes
Writer: Jingyi Shao
Logline: A young Asian-American teen and basketball fanatic who just wants to dunk and get the girl ends up learning much more about himself, his best friends, and his mother.
Thoughts: This is one of those loglines that only works when it has a big “28” behind it, indicating the number of votes it got on the Black List. Cause as a logline alone, this is screaming to me, “Too thin!” But with 28 people vouching for it, the cuteness of the idea all of a sudden sounds a lot more appealing. Plus, it’s one of the best titles in the bunch.

Title: NEITHER CONFIRM NOR DENY – 26 votes
Writer:Dave Collard
Logline: An adaptation of David Sharp’s book The CIA’s Greatest Covert Operation that chronicles the clandestine CIA operation that risked igniting WWIII by recovering a nuclear-armed Soviet Sub, the K-129, that sunk to the bottom of the ocean in 1968.
Thoughts: Scriptshadow Rule 2156b-L. Never ever write a screenplay about the Cold War. Nobody goes to see movies about the Cold War. People go to see movies about real wars all the time. Because, you know, it’s war! And war is exciting. But a war where there was no actual warring? People aren’t interested in that. BUT! Scriptshadow Law 78-9864E. Hollywood is due for a great submarine movie. And this sounds different from your usual submarine subject matter. This puts me on the fence for this one. I’m not sure if I want to confirm or deny.

Title: IF YOU WERE THE LAST – 25 votes
Writer: Angela Bourassa
Logline: Two astronauts who think they’ve been lost in space forever fall in love, becoming content with their isolated lives, only to suddenly have to return to Earth.
Thoughts: I’ve read 4 of Angela’s scripts and the thing that always strikes me about them is that they’re a) always easy to read, and b) cerebral. There’s always an element in the storytelling that makes you think a little deeper. If You Were The Last sounds like it fits in that camp. Simple story. Complex situation. Can’t wait to check this one out.

Title: TWO FACED – 25 votes
Writer: Cat Wilkins
Logline: A high school senior attempts to get her principal fired after observing racist behavior, but she quickly learns he won’t go down without a fight.
Thoughts: I don’t think I’m going to like this one if it’s super serious. I’m in more of a ‘heal the nation’ mindset these days so when it comes to social subject matter, I’m looking for lighter fare. If this is more of a satirical take on the topic, like Election, count me in. (P.S. Election is one of my favorite movies. If you haven’t seen it, check it out!).

Title: BRING ME BACK – 22 votes
Writer: Crosby Selander
Logline: When a woman on an interstellar voyage falls in love with someone during a cryosleep simulation, she attempts to discern whether the man is a real passenger on the ship or just a figment of her imagination.
Thoughts: I reviewed this one in the newsletter. Definitely one of the more interesting concepts of the year. Its weakness is that it’s so ambitious you’re expecting more from it than it’s able to deliver. That’s the thing when you get really really ambitious with a concept. The execution has to be amazing in order to live up to what you promised. But it’s a pretty good script.

Title: BUBBLE & SQUEAK – 21 votes
Writer: Evan Twohy
Logline: Two newlyweds traverse a fictional country on their honeymoon but slowly realize they’re yearning to take separate journeys.
Thoughts: Some great titles this year. Love this title. The thing that sticks out to me about this logline is the “fictional country” part. I don’t even know what that means. Which leads to me being half frustrated and half intrigued. What is this fictional country? What is it like? With that said, somebody should’ve taken Scriptshadow’s logline service. I could’ve helped Evan nail the back half of this thing.

Title: EMERGENCY – 21 votes
Writer: KD Davila
Logline: Ready for a night of partying, a group of Black and Latino college students must weigh the pros and cons of calling the police when faced with an emergency.
Thoughts: Whoa. Speaking of needing a logline service. Yikes. WHAT’S THE EMERGENCY??????? This is my yearly reminder to everyone that, often times, the writer of a Black List script does not write their own logline. Their agent or manager does. And those people do not know how to write. So you get this. The emergency needs to be in the logline.

Title: FOREVER HOLD YOUR PEACE – 19 votes
Writer: Emma Dudley
Logline: Twenty-four-year-old, quiet, self-conscious Hazel has struggled with her sexuality ever since her conservative dad walked in on her kissing a girl at a middle school sleepover and flipped his absolute shit. On the way back to her hometown for her dad’s wedding, Hazel gets drunk and makes out with an older, attractive female flight attendant. She’s thrilled to have moved past her hang-ups and had some fun until she arrives home and realizes that the flight attendant is her dad’s fiance.
Thoughts: I will fix this logline. “On the flight home to her conservative father’s wedding, Hazel hooks up with a female flight attendant, only to later find out the flight attendant is her father’s fiance.”

Title: VIDEO NASTY – 18 votes
Writer: Chris Thomas Devlin
Logline: Three teenagers who rent a cursed VHS tape are pulled into an 80s slasher movie that threatens to trap them forever.
Thoughts: This is one of those projects that’s more a movie than a script. As a script, it’s average. But you can envision how fun this would look from a marketing standpoint. It’s one of those ideas where, if it’s done well, it’ll look like a good time. And it’s a pretty decent concept. Not the most original. But still, fun. You can read my review here.

Title: SATURDAY NIGHT GHOST CLUB – 17 votes
Writers: Steve Desmond, Michael Sherman
Logline: After being haunted by a terrifying entity, a twelve-year-old boy teams up with his eccentric uncle and three other misfits to form their own ghost club, investigating all the paranormal sites in town so that he can find and confront the ghost that’s tormenting him.
Thoughts: Everyone is still trying to come up with the next Goonies or the next Ghostbusters without it feeling like Goonies or Ghostbusters. Which, when you think about it, is almost impossible to do. But this seems to strike the right balance. My only complaint would be mixing up a 12 year old with adults. It should be either all kids or all adults.

Title: THE SAUCE – 17 votes
Writers: Chaz Hawkins
Logline: A depressed, selfish black man fights for his life after taking a job at a white-owned beauty parlor, whose monstrous owners concocted a wildly popular shampoo that requires a sickening ingredient.
Thoughts: This sounds like it’s cut from the same clothe as Hulu’s “Bad Hair.” I’m not sure anybody saw that movie. But, for those who did and liked it, this script may be for you.

Title: SHARPER – 17 votes
Writers: Brian Gatewood, Alessandro Tanaka
Thoughts: A chain of scam artists goes after one wealthy family with the perfect plan to drain them of their funds. But when love, heartbreak, and jealousy slither their way into the grand scheme, it becomes unclear whether the criminals are conning or the ones being conned.
Thoughts: I love a good con movie. But just remember, whoever wrote this logline, that it isn’t the generalities that make a script sound appealing. It’s the specifics. You need to tell us what’s specific about these characters or this setup that makes it different from every other film in the same space.

Title: BIRDIES – 16 votes
Writers; Colin Bannon
Logline: When Tabitha, a struggling foster kid, wins a contest to become part of the BIRDIES, a popular daily YouTube channel featuring the radiant and enigmatic Mama Bird and her diverse brood of adopted children, she soon learns that things get dark when the cameras turn off.
Thoughts: This sounds good. Balancing these kids shows or kids personalities against a dark backdrop has been a proven recipe for Black List success. Dating back to number 1 scripts, The Muppet Man and The Beaver.

Title: POSSUM SONG – 16 votes
Writer: Isaac Adamson
Logline: After discovering his secret songwriting partner dead, a country music star struggling to record new material makes a Faustian bargain with a family of possums who have taken up residency within his walls.
Thoughts: Without question, this sounds like the most whacked screenplay on the list and, for that reason, I’m all about it. Shades of “The Voices,” here, which used to be in my Top 10 list.

Title: THE BLACK BELT – 15 votes
Writer: Randall Green
Logline: Eighth grader Simon Paluska dreams of being a Taekwondo Black Belt, but he’s not allowed to take lessons. So he buys a Black Belt on Amazon for twenty-five bucks. Then, he has to use it.
Thoughts: This is a fun idea that has the potential to be a thoughtful commentary on the state of humanity in 2020. Why spend 20 years attempting to master a discipline when you can get it sent to your door in 48 hours?

Title: RIPPER
Writer: Dennis MaGee Fallon
Logline: London, 1888: When their friends begin dying at the hands of a brutal killer, an all-female crime syndicate, The Forty Elephants, must work together to take down the predator stalking them – Jack The Ripper.
Thoughts: Is it even allowed to have a screenplay list without a Jack the Ripper concept on it? I don’t think so. With that said, this doesn’t sound like any Jack the Ripper script I’ve ever come across before. That means it’s either going to be amazing or awful.

Title: A BIG, BOLD, BEAUTIFUL JOURNEY – 14 votes
Writer: Seth Reiss
Logline: After both attending the same wedding solo, David and Sarah embark on a big, bold, beautiful journey with a little help from their 1996 Passat GPS and a little bit of magic for the road trip of their lives.
Thoughts: Quite possibly the worst logline on the list. That’s not at all saying that the script is bad. But your logline is basically, “Two people go on a road trip!!!” Wow. A road trip? I HAVE TO READ THAT. The most specific thing in your logline can’t be the car. You have to highlight something about the characters or the plot that separates it from other movies. If you’re not separating it from other movies, what makes you think we’d want to read it?

Title: ENEMIES WITHIN – 14 votes
Writer: Cat Vasko
Logline: In the 1950’s, Joseph McCarthy and his right hand man Roy Cohn sit at the height of their influence, casting aside democratic norms unchecked – until the Army’s lowest-level lawyer, John G. Adams, stumbles upon the shocking truth behind their power grab, and makes it his mission to reveal this to the public.
Thoughts: I mean, I guess if you’re going to do a political movie, McCarthy is a good subject. But, I mean, aren’t we all politcaled out at this point?

Title: THE MAN IN THE YARD – 14 votes
Writer: Sam Stefanak
Logline: When a dangerous stranger shows up at her front door, a depressed widow must confront her own past in order to protect her two children.
Thoughts: Pro – Strong setup. Con – Unoriginal. There are certain setups that work well. A dangerous person, or people, showing up at a house is the beginning of a lot good scripts. So this one will come down to the execution.

Title: SUNCOAST – 14 votes
Writer: Laura Chinn
Thoughts: An awkward teenage outcast comes of age against the backdrop of the hospice where her brother (and coincidentally, Terri Schiavo) are dying.
Thoughts: There are certain subject matters that don’t get my reading juices flowing. Hospices are definitely in my top 5.

Title: FISH IN A TREE – 13 votes
Writer: Jeff Stockwell
Logline: Based on the eponymous novel by Lynda Mullaly Hunt. A young girl in an intimidating new school finally faces seemingly insurmountable obstacles in her learning and in her social life when she crosses paths with an energetic-but-inexperienced substitute teacher.
Thoughts: It’s based on a book so I guess the logline doesn’t matter. But these movies are supposed to highlight the ironic differences between the two main characters. This doesn’t do that. It’s just some “young” girl who meets an “energetic” substitute teacher.

Title: THE NEUTRAL CORNER – 13 votes
Writer: Justin Piasecki
Logline: A Nevada court judge who moonlights reffing high-profile boxing matches must face his demons when he’s assigned to the Olympic fight of an ex-con he’d previously sentenced for murder.
Thoughts: When I saw this title, I thought it was going to be the true story about how Kathleen Kennedy greenlit Rogue Squadron. But seriously. Contrary to “Fish in a Tree,” this is how you connect your two characters in a logline. A judge has to face a man he sentenced to murder. There’s conflict in that setup. There’s history. We see that and we can start to envision the movie. That’s how it’s done.

Title: GUSHER – 12 votes
Writer: Abigail Briley Bean
Logline: Based on the story of Anna Nicole Smith, a shrewd young mother rises out of a small Texas town to become a famous Playboy centerfold, but when she falls in love with an eighty-nine-year-old billionaire, his son and the entire world believe she’s nothing but a gold digger.
Thoughts: My friends. I never thought we’d see that day. But it’s finally here. An Anna Nicole Smith biopic. May screenwriting rest in peace.

Title: BIKRAM – 11 votes
Writer: Silpa Kovvali
Logline: In the truly unbelievable story of Bikram Choudhury, his young wife Rajashree catapults the yoga guru to the heights of fame and fortune, and is left fighting for her survival when he brings their brand toppling down.
Thoughts: I’ve heard things about Bikram here and there that would indicate there’s an interesting story to tell here. But it’s the kind of thing I’d rather see in documentary form than fictional film form.

Title: BORDERLINE – 11 votes
Writer: Jimmy Warden
Logline: A bodyguard protects a pop superstar and her athlete boyfriend from a determined stalker in 1990s Los Angeles.
Thoughts: This is another script I would never read unless I’d heard that other people read it and liked it first. It’s too generic of a premise to get me interested on the logline alone. But it has the kind of dramatic elements that could result in a good script if the writing is strong.

Title: LURKER – 11 votes
Writer: Alex Russell
Logline: An obsessed fan maneuvers his way into the inner circle of his hip hop idol and will stop at nothing to stay in.
Thoughts: Am I having deja vu? Music star. Stalker. Same management. Same vote tally. If you spell Alex Russell backwards do you get Jimmy Warden?

Title: MY DEAR YOU – 11 votes
Writer: Meghan Kennedy
Logline: Based on a short story by Rachel Khong. A love story set in the afterlife about our struggle to let go of the past, even when our present is heaven… literally. Tess keeps searching for the love of her life without realizing he’s right there next to her the whole time, helping her look.
Thoughts: A love story set in heaven. In theory, these ideas have potential. But they’re always hard to pull off because heaven isn’t easy to conceptualize. It’s easy to come off as cliche. Yet, if you get too specific, you could put some people off. But anyway, I just noticed there are lots of love stories in this year’s list! Yay for love.

Title: OCCUPIED – 11 votes
Writer: Tara Cavanagh
Logline: When a tactless Nordstrom’s store manager denies two trans women access to the bathroom, Fran and Althea seek restitution and occupy the ladies room in protest.
Thoughts: If this is a “contained thriller” situation where they set up shop in the bathroom for the whole movie, that’s kind of a genius idea. Hot button topic. Contained thriller. Who’s not going to pass that script around?

Title: REPTILE DYSFUNCTION
Writer: Creston Whittington
Logline: A chemical leak in a local water supply in Central Florida wreaks havoc on the invasive population of pythons, leading a family to the fight of their life to survive.
Thoughts: Can we get a quick amen for this title? I am totally down for snakes in a Florida house. Although I’d be lying if I told you I knew how this script was going to be longer than 20 pages. “The front door is blocked! What do we do!??” “Try the back door!” The family runs to the back door. There are no pythons. They charge out the door and to their car. They drive away. The end.

Title: ST. SIMMONS
Writer: Greg Wayne
Logline: When a very fat and possibly gay boy from New Orleans is visited by an angel called Barbra Streisand, he sets out on a holy crusade in daytime television to touch and save the soul of every obese person in America before his demons consume him – if only to make his daddy proud. It’s the true gospel of Richard Simmons.
Thoughts: I will never be a fan of biopics. But if you’re going to write a biopic logline, this is how you write one. With a little style. Side story. I once saw Richard Simmons in the airport. He literally said “Hello” to every single person in the terminal. And there were more than 300 people. All with booming energy.

Title: THE U.S.P.S. – 11 votes
Writer: Perry Janes
Logline:: Following in his murdered mother’s footsteps, Michael Griffiths enlists in the United States Postal Service… only to discover a mail route full of surprises and a job that means maybe, just maybe, saving the world.
Thoughts: Another logline only 75% finished. You need to tell us more about the mail route in the logline. WHY it may be about saving the world. As it stands, I don’t know if this is an inspirational small story about a guy who finds meaning through his mail route or a wacky balls-to-the-wall supernatural comedy.

Title: ANNALISE & SONG – 10 votes
Writer: SJ Inwards
Logline: Annalise is a girl who quite literally “sees the world differently” than everyone else and finds herself a lonely, misunderstood outcast who keeps her “cursed sight” a secret as a consequence. But everything changes when Annalise meets her new neighbor, Peter Song — a fellow teenager whom everyone else sees as a disfigured boy, but whom Annalise sees entirely differently.
Thoughts: A lot of vagueness going on in this logline, making it hard to evaluate. While I’m all about the message of inspirational stories like “Wonder,” they’re just not my cup of tea. So I probably won’t be reading this one.

Title: BLOOD TIES – 10 votes
Writer: Aaron Katz
Logline: Based on the New Yorker article by Nathan Heller. A true-crime thriller based on the story of two brilliant college lovers convicted of a brutal slaying. An obsessed detective investigates the true motives that led to a double homicide, and the decades of repercussions that follow.
Thoughts: After just having finished “Murder on Middle Beach,” I’m reminded of how awesome true crime stories can be. But the thing is, they play out so much better in that documentary format. So while this does sound interesting, I wonder why not focus on it in doc form where it can truly shine.

Title: THE BOY WHO DIED
Writer: Monisha Dadlani
Logline: A young girl creates a robot version of Harry Potter while her father simultaneously is treating Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe for a terminal disease.
Thoughts: Okay, that comment about the possum wall script I made above about it being the wackiest of all the ideas? I take that back. This is it. I have a feeling that Monisha has deep conflicted feelings about Harry Potter and they’re all coming to light in this script. This sounds so weird, I have to check it out.

Title: CRUSH ON YOU – 10 votes
Writer: Shea Mayo
Logline: Summer on a secluded campus takes a dark turn for three college girls when a supernaturally sexy mystery man begins haunting their dreams.
Thoughts: All I can say about this logline is that I laughed as soon as I read it. Are we about to get 50 Shades of Gray meets Nightmare on Elm Street? I think so. And, for some reason, I want to read it.

Title: THE CULLING – 10 votes
Writer: Stephen Herman
Logline: A troubled priest confines himself to a remote cabin in the middle of the woods where he attempts to make a last stand against the demon that terrorized his family when he was a child.
Thoughts: I reviewed The Culling in the newsletter. Decent script. This is the one where I said it’s a good lesson in how to create metaphors in your writing. The monster he’s trying to kill in the movie is a stand-in for his alcoholism. Herman doesn’t nail the execution but does a good enough job that the script works.

Title: MAY DECEMBER – 10 votes
Writer: Samy Burch
Logline: Twenty years after their notorious tabloid romance gripped the nation, a married couple buckles under the pressure when an actress arrives to do research for a film about their past.
Thoughts: This sounds old fashioned. Like a play to me. For that reason, I’m thinking it only works if the dialogue is awesome.

Title: 1MDB – 10 votes
Writer: Scott Conroy
Logline: The incredible true story of the multi-billion dollar Malaysian government corruption scandal which led to the conviction of Prime Minister Najib Razak and almost $5 billion in settlements paid out by Goldman Sachs.
Thoughts: This is a documentary. It’s not a feature film. Let me take that back. It can obviously be a feature film. But its true identity is in doc form so that’s the version I’ll wait for.

Title: REWIRED – 10 votes
Writers: Adam Gaines, Ryan Parrott
Logline: Harvard. 1959. A young Ted Kaczynski is experimented on by Dr. Henry Murray during a secret CIA psychological study that may have led to the creation of the Unabomber.
Thoughts: Some subjects are so sad, they don’t translate well to storytelling. I’m not sure I want to know anything more about the guy who blew up a bunch of pre-schoolers. (edit, sorry! wrong killer)

Title: STORY – 10 votes
Writer: Emily Siegel
Logline: When a journalist turned stay-at-home mom relocates to Los Angeles to rebuild after a personal trauma, she blurs the lines between fact and fiction… only to find herself at the center of her own story.
Thoughts: If Franklin Leonard was smart, he’d start advertising logline consulting on his lists. What does this logline even mean? Is she writing a novel or something and the novel starts becoming reality? That’s what the end of the logline indicates but there’s nothing that comes before it to confirm whether that’s the case or not. I’m confused.

Title: COSMIC SUNDAY – 9 votes
Writer: MacMillan Hedges
Logline: A small percentage of the population is stuck in a time loop and have had to create a society that functions within the same day, repeated day in and day out. One man struggles to find himself for the first time in ages amidst a society clinging to a sense of normalcy.
Thoughts: This actually sounds like a fun angle into the time loop sub-genre. I do sense a complication in that, if everyone is aware of the loop, then they can keep living each day as if it’s different from the last, and essentially cancel out the loop’s influence. But I guess if the rest of the world isn’t changing, that’s where the conflict comes from. Oh, and the day needs to be the worst day of the week – Monday. And the title needs to be changed to, “Somebody’s Got a Case of the Mondays.”

Title: EARWORM – 9 votes
Writer: Austin Everett
Logline: A former music therapist is recruited to use a mysterious machine to dive into the memories of a serial killer on death row.
Thoughts: I’m struggling to connect the protagonist’s job to the events of the story. Is her singing going to inspire him to tell the police where the bodies are buried? Actually, now that I’m thinking about it, if this were a musical, it would be awesome.

Title: EXCELSIOR! – 9 votes
Writer: Alex Convery
Logline: The true story of the meteoric rise (and subsequent fall) of Marvel Comics and the star-crossed creators behind the panel: Stan Lee & Jack Kirby.
Thoughts: Hmmm. This or Falcon and Winter Soldier? If you held a gun to my head, I’m not sure I’d be able to give you an answer. Which means I’m dead. Which means I don’t have to read this.

Title: FLIGHT RISK – 9 votes
Writer: Jared Rosenberg
Logline: An Air Marshal transporting a fugitive across the Alaskan wilderness via a small plane finds herself trapped when she suspects their pilot is not who he says he is.
Thoughts: Ooh yeah, baby. I’m digging this. I love planes. I love contained tension-filled situations. This has a good setup. Shades of The Grey.

Title: HIGH SOCIETY – 9 votes
Writer: Noga Pnueli
Logline: A depressed, progressive woman stuck in a conservative small Texas town starts micro-dosing the entire town with marijuana to make them all get along.
Thoughts: Not sure I love this premise but Noga has one of my favorite unproduced scripts out there, Meet Cute. So I’ll be reading this for sure.

Title: HORSEGIRL – 9 votes
Writer: Lauren Meyering
Logline: Living under the full time care of her cancer-stricken mother, a twenty-six-year-old, socially awkward, horse-obsessed woman attempts to prove her independence by winning a hobbyhorse competition.
Thoughts: Hmmm… this sounds just weird enough that I think I’d like it. But they just had that other weird horse girl movie and that convincingly portrayed the weirdness of horse girls so I don’t know how this script tops it.

Title: MAGAZINE DREAMS – 9 votes
Writer: Elijah Bynum
Logline: A Black amateur bodybuilder struggles to find human connection in this exploration of celebrity and violence.
Thoughts: I mean, I wish I could comment on this entry but this isn’t even a logline. It does have shades of last year’s Black List script, Apex.

Title: MOUSE – 9 votes
Writer: Kelly O’Sullivan
Logline: When seventeen-year old Minnie’s best friend Callie is killed in an accident, she struggles to find an identity of her own and forms a complicated friendship with Callie’s grieving mother.
Thoughts: Where’s the unique element? The unique element is what allowed for The Big Sick to stand out. Right now, this feels like a subplot.

Title: MURDER IN THE WHITE HOUSE
Writer: Jonathan Stokes
Logline: The President is murdered during a private dinner, and Secret Service agent Mia Pine has until morning to discover which guest is the killer before a peace agreement fails and leads to war.
Thoughts: I’m getting an Agatha Christy meets As The World Turns vibe from this. Also, isn’t this the plot of every James Patterson book?

Title: NANNY
Writer: Nikyata Jusu
Logline: Aisha is an undocumented nanny caring for a privileged child. As she prepares for the arrival of her only son, who she left behind in her native country, a violent supernatural presence invades her reality, jeopardizing the American Dream she’s carefully pieced together.
Thoughts: This is a new sub-genre that’s becoming more and more popular. We saw it recently with the release of His House. Very serious social-minded subject matter mixed with horror. I do like that Jusu is not going with the obvious here. Most writers would’ve made the heroine South American. It sounds like Aisha is Japanese. By the way, does anybody find it strange that His House has a 100% RT score and only a 6.4 IMDB score?

Title: A SINGLE POINT OF FAILURE – 9 votes
Writer: Terry Huang
Logline: Journalists race to expose how Boeing knowingly misled regulators, pilots, and airlines to cover up a problematic flight software system on the 737 MAX, leading to two major airplane crashes and the deaths of 346 people. Based on real events.
Thoughts: This is definitely a documentary, not a narrative feature. But I’ll watch it because: plane crashes! The story with this is pretty fascinating. When these planes started having problems, then crashing and killing people, Boeing took the approach of, “It’s only because you don’t understand the plane, pilots.” Yes, I’m sure that multiple planes almost crashing and two crashing has nothing to do with the makers of the plane.

Title: STATE LINES – 9 votes
Writer: Rachel Wolf
Logline: When headstrong but well-intentioned college student Sara Jane bails on Senior Spring Break to drive a fourteen-year-old girl to get an abortion, she’s shocked to discover that her passenger is an undercover pro-lifer who has kidnapped her.
Thoughts: I like the twist on this one. These controversial political topics are not my cup of tea these days, though. I might read this.

Title: VICELAND – 9 votes
Writer: Chris Parizo
Logline: The true story of how Vice magazine grew from a free magazine in Montreal into a multi billion dollar media empire, making two of its founders multi-millionaires while the third founder was kicked out and went on to modernize the white supremacist movement by creating the Proud Boys.
Thoughts: Right on cue we get… a big political script! There’s a better chance of me going to my local grocery store and reading the ingredients of every single item in there than reading this script.

Title: EMANCIPATION – 8 votes
Writer: Bill Collage
Logline: Based on a true story, a runaway slave has to outwit bounty hunters and the perils of a Louisiana swamp to reach the Union army and his only chance at freedom.
Thoughts: Ooh, if they wrote this like 1917? This would be awesome.

Title: FIGHT OR FLIGHT – 8 votes
Writers: Brooks McLaren, DJ Cotrona
Logline: A mercenary takes on the job of tracking down a target on a plane but must protect her when they’re surrounded by people trying to kill both of them.
Thoughts: If you’ve been paying attention you saw “plane” in the logline and thusly recognized that this would be something I want to read. I’m always down for a good “unexpected team-up” too. This looks like it’ll be a fun read.

Title: THE GORGE – 8 votes
Writer: Zach Dean
Logline: A brazen, high-action, genre-bending, love story about two very dangerous young people, who despite the corrupt and lethal world they operate in, find a soulmate in each other.
Thoughts: It isn’t a Black List unless there’s a Zach Dean script on it. Dean continues to be one of the only big writers who routinely writes original ideas. And I’m guessing this script is better than 90% of the scripts listed above him.

Title: HERE COME THE BANDITS – 8 votes
Writer: Ethan Dawes
Logline: Mickey Bradley, a wildly talented minor league baseball player in his early twenties who returns home to Los Angeles after an injury and coaches a little league team full of misfits who remind him why he fell in love with baseball in the first place. And theres a sweet romance in there too.
Thoughts: I mean, I’m trying to think of a way to phrase this that’s respectful. But is this for real? Hasn’t this movie been made 624,872 times already? I suppose if the voice is unique. Or maybe it’s a reminder to me and everyone else that Hollywood has certain movies it will always make every 3 years and this is one of them. So maybe we’re the dummies for not profiting off that.

Title: PLUSH – 8 votes
Writer: Alexandra Skarsgard
Logline: Sex, money, and one schoolyard fad that took a nation by storm. Based on the true story of Ty Warner, the enigmatic entrepreneur behind a ‘90s toy craze that sparked madness, murder, and a billion-dollar empire.
Thoughts: Sometimes I think a computer writes these Black List scripts. With that said, if there was indeed murder involved in the plush craze, maybe this is good. You know what they say. If you have a dead body, you have a movie. However, something tells me the only thing that’ll get murdered with this script is the time I spent reading it.

Title: TOWERS – 8 votes
Writer: Aaron Rabin
Logline: A businessman’s obsession with his competitor leads him down a rabbit hole of self-discovery, fantasy, and delusion.
Thoughts: Not enough information to judge the concept but I do like stories about people who become unhealthily obsessed with other people. Definitely a fast way to driving one’s self insane.

Title: TRESPASSER – 8 votes
Writer: Gabe Hobson
Logline: A father and daughter living in remote isolation must fight for survival after aliens arrive seeking revenge for killing one of their own.
Thoughts: Okay, first off. Aliens. So I’m in. I’m not sure I like the thing about them already having killed an alien though. But I do like the attempt to make a sci-fi idea cheap to produce (one location – out away from everything where that location would be cheap to secure).

Title: UNCLE WICK – 8 votes
Writer: Gabe Delahaye
Logline: An action comedy wherein Benji Stone, a lovable but deeply unpopular sixteen year old, is pulled into an international assassination plot by his uncle, a retired undercover assassin charged with babysitting Benji for the weekend.
Thoughts: This sounds fun. When I read the title, I thought, “How cool would it be if this was a John Wick spinoff and they were so obsessed with building a franchise that they were actually going to make comedic offshoots?” Cause that’s basically what this is.

Title: WHAT IF? – 8 votes
Writer: Alvaro Garcia Lecuona
Logline: An unassertive seventeen year old turns his high school on its head when he asks out his crush, a transgender classmate.
Thoughts: I believe this is one of five trans-centered scripts on the list? Hey, if you know a certain topic is going to be popular on the Black List, why not take advantage?

Title: BELLA – 7 votes

Writer: Jason Markarian

Logline: Set against the backdrop of an unprecedented crime wave that gripped New York City in the 80s, a hyper-stylized action thriller about a cop’s daughter who, after her father clings to life following an assassination attempt, goes on a rampage to unearth her father’s assassin and weed out deep-rooted corruption in the NYPD.

Thoughts: In one of my articles, I said that if a writer was smart, they’d write a female version of Joker. I guess someone listened!

Title: DUST – 7 votes
Writer: Karrie Crouse
Logline: A young mother in 1930s Oklahoma is convinced that her family is threatened and takes drastic steps to keep them safe.
Thoughts: I think this is the dust storm project? It’d be nice if that was somewhere in the logline. It is nice to know what a movie is about sometimes.

Title: FRENEMY – 7 votes
Writer: Ariel Sayegh
Logline: A chronicle of the infamous Lindsay Lohan/Paris Hilton feud of 2004-2006 over who would be Britney Spears’ best friend.
Thoughts: I like how it says “the infamous.” I had zero knowledge that there was ever a Lindsay Lohan Paris Hilton feud over anything. You know what would be hilarious? If this had never happened. But the movie operates as if it did. Cause you can believe that it happened. If you told me that Mr. T and Vanilla Ice warred with each other, I’d probably believe it. It sort of makes sense. I guess I’m setting myself up for disappointment if this turns out to be a true story.

Title: GABI SEEMS DIFFERENT – 7 votes
Writer: Victoria Bata
Logline: After spending several years recovering from a devastating car crash that pulled her out of the spotlight, Gabi, a famous pop star, gets ready to perform again for the first time. But with the pressure mounting and her memory failing her, the young woman begins to doubt who she really is — and if Gabi really survived the crash at all.
Thoughts: Maybe it’s because I’m getting to the end of the list and I didn’t intend for this to go on for 10,000 words, but I have no idea what this is about. I think they should wrap this script up into “Frenemy.” There are some crossover components that work well. The more I think about it, the more obvious this decision is. I want royalties when that makes these writers billionaires.

Title: GENERATION LEAP – 7 votes
Writers: John Sonntag, Thomas Sonntag
Logline: After a global pandemic causes NASA to send a crew of astronauts into deep space to find another habitable planet, the crew is unexpectedly awoken from hypersleep and must survive a mysterious new threat that comes from the future generations they sought to save, and the one place they never expected – Earth.
Thoughts: As a narrative structure, the setup of leaving someplace at the beginning and having to come back later – it doesn’t work well. Audiences like moving forward, not backward. You can start the movie with the astronats coming back. That might work. But if you build up to them leaving and then put them in space and then have wake up, talk to each other, realize they have to go back. All that stuff is logistical and sucks the momentum out of a story and, on top of that, it just feels messy. So we’ll see where the writers took it.

Title: GET LITE – 7 votes
Writer: Eric Gross
Logline: Saunders, a headstrong Bronx teenager, is caught between his love of Litefeet subway dancing and his strict father’s insistence on becoming an engineer. After he finagles his way onto a ragtag Litefeet crew, he’s exposed to an electrifying new world as well as a new crush. Now he has to decide who and what he’s willing to sacrifice in order to compete in the biggest dance competition of the year: Kingdome.
Thoughts: Uh oh. Did somebody say an updated Footloose? Uh Footlooose. Uh Footlooose. Kick off the Sunday shoes! Yes, I’m now singing my thoughts on Black List scripts. I don’t know how much I have left. Of course, I learned earlier that music can help you enter a serial killer’s mind. And there’s a serial killer in the number one script on the list. This is like… all coming together, man. It’s like a giant equation. Parallel universes. Kevin Bacon!

Title: GOOD CHANCE – 7 votes
Writer: Tricia Lee
Logline: A feisty transgender teen helps a church-going, undocumented Asian woman escape deportation, and they form an unlikely friendship that helps them heal the rifts in their own families.
Thoughts: This one’s not doing it for me. You want the disenfranchised character to have to team up with a member of the patriarchy. That’s where things get interesting. That’s where you get conflict. The unexpected team-up is so much juicier than the expected team up.

Title: HANDSOME STRANGER – 7 votes
Writer: Greg Navarro
Logline: Based on the incredible true story of serial killer Paul John Knowles and the week he spent with British journalist Sandy Fawkes in the midst of a murderous killing spree.
Thoughts: These serial killers just won’t go away, will they. I haven’t heard about this story and it does sound kind of interesting. But I’m giving the ribbon to Mayhem right now. Her serial killer concept is definitely the best so far.

Title: I.S.S. – 7 votes
Writer: Nick Shafir
Logline: At any given moment in time there are roughly six astronauts living on the International Space Station (ISS). The station itself is divided into two segments one half Russian, one half American. When a world war event occurs on Earth, America and Russia find themselves on opposing sides. As such, both nations secretly contact their astronauts aboard the ISS and give them instructions to take control of the station by any means necessary. The six astronauts must each secretly choose between their friendships with each other and their allegiance to their country.
Thoughts: I’m having deja vu here. Did I review this script? If not, I know I’ve encountered at least a couple of other similar ideas. And, look, it’s a good setup for a movie. But I don’t think anybody’s figured it out yet. The space station is the most cinematically-unfriendly location in existence. There’s nowhere to go that isn’t ugly to shoot. It’s all cramped. That’s why I suggest, if you’re making something like this, to set it in the future, where you can create your own space station.

Title: MARGOT – 7 votes
Writer: Emily Adams
Logline: Annie Mills has always known Margot Ellison to be two things: her best friend and a devout Mormon. But as high school graduation nears and Margot starts to crave change, the girls must grapple with the fear that growing up might require growing alone.
Thoughts: Where is the strange attractor? This was a subplot on like 150 episodes of 90210.

Title: THE PEAK – 7 votes
Writer: Arthur Hills
Logline: A troubled young surgeon travels to a desolate peak to climb the mountain where her father suffered a mental breakdown years earlier, only to realize halfway up the rock wall that she might be subject to the same fate.
Thoughts: Deja vu again! Did I review this already? Definitely a familiar sounding concept.

Title: REALITY – 7 votes
Writer: Heather Quinn
Logline: A woman abruptly discovers nothing she’s known until now is real, and she must recover the truth in order to save the rest of the country, still trapped inside of the lie.
Thoughts: I think my head just exploded.

Title: RUBY – 7 votes
Writer: Kat Wood
Logline: After her husband is attacked, assassin Ruby is lured into the open to hunt down those responsible, leading her back to the boss who wants to keep her in the fold at any cost.
Thoughts: This is that big project that sold to Amazon, I believe. I would’ve thought this would’ve done better as it was one of the more high profile specs of the year.

Title; TIN ROOF RUSTED – 7 votes
Writer: Michelle Harper
Logline: When two life-long best friends discover that they’re both pregnant, they promise to embark on their journey together. But with the constant pressure of outsiders, the two struggle midst personal differences and must re-learn that what connected them as children can still be their glue as adults.
Thoughts: I am definitely not the audience for this.

Title: WAR FACE – 7 votes
Writer: Mitchell Lafortune
Logline: A female U.S. Army Special Agent is sent to a remote, all-male outpost in Afghanistan to investigate accusations of war crimes. But when a series of mysterious events jeopardize her mission and the unit’s sanity, she must find the courage to survive something far more sinister.
Thoughts: Ugh. TELL US WHAT THE SINSITER THING IS. Just so everyone knows, seasoned readers usually throw these scripts out when they read the logline. You have to tell us what thing is that’s going to sell the movie so that we know it’s a sellable movie. Anybody can write a logline that reads, “A mysterious woman meets a strange man and the two become roommates in an odd home that has a history no one in town wants to talk about.” Give us the hook.

Title: THE WOMEN OF ROUTE 40 – 7 votes
Writer: Erin Kathleen
Logline: A struggling single mother must confront dangerous forces – and sins of her past – when her world collides with that of a serial killer. Inspired by the true story of Delaware’s only serial murderer, the Route 40 killer.
Thoughts: Mayhem, you’re still winning the serial killer concept contest.

Title: YOM KIPPUR – 7 votes
Writer: Brett Melnick
Logline: After getting high on the night of Yom Kippur, three distant cousins wake up with muddled minds and empty stomachs as they find themselves in the middle of a kidnapping and a major drug ring.
Thoughts: I like mixing something that’s supposed to be pure with something impure. That’s the recipe for a lot of good concepts. This does feel a little disjointed, though. I was hoping for the two elements to mesh a little more organically. But this isn’t a bad idea.

Originally, I was going to do a “Mank” script-to-screen review but after spending an hour with the film and realizing Fincher hadn’t changed a word from the disastrous screenplay, that the review would’ve been a bloodletting and sent everyone into the week feeling miserable.

Conversely, my weekly Friday night whipping boy, The Mandalorian, had one of its best episodes. Which set up an interesting question. How is it that someone who is so good can make something so bad, while something so bad can manage an episode so good?

Let’s start with Mank.

I mean… I’m just going to say it. This movie was a disaster.

Now you may say, “But Carson! Look at the Rotten Tomato score! It’s high!” A couple of things. Critics love David Fincher. And rightly so. He’s one of our best directors, hands down. But for that reason, their default setting for every Fincher film is a thumbs up. I’m not sure they’d be able to give Fincher a negative review if they tried. Also, what critics are scoring here is not the movie as a whole. They’re scoring the direction. They love how Fincher has recreated a 1940s film to chronicle what is, arguably, the best movie ever made

But as a story?

AS A STORY!????

This is one of the worst scripts of the year.

With almost every bad script, lack of focus is a problem. And that’s exactly what I’m seeing here.

A good movie has a focused narrative. Somewhere in the first act – preferably as soon as possible – you explain to the audience what the problem is, which necessitates that your protagonist solve that problem. This creates the hero’s goal and the rest of the movie follows his struggle to achieve that goal.

In the recent hit film, The Invisible Man, the problem is that the heroine’s evil dead husband has found a way to come back to life and torture her. The goal, then, is to prove that this is happening then defeat him. You can break almost every good movie down into this formula.

The thing about Mank is that it PRETENDS to incorporate a problem, but it’s a sham. A lie. A misdirect. The movie starts with Mankiewicz being placed in a hotel room and told by a studio suit that he has 90 days to write the screenplay for Citizen Kane.

Except the movie then proceeds to COMPLETELY ABANDON THIS SETUP. The next 50 on-screen minutes contain scenes that literally have nothing to do with Mank’s pursuit of this goal. They are, rather, flashbacks of him hanging out on movie sets and in studios. And whenever we do manage to get back to that room, we get conversations between him and his typist that – how do I put this nicely – have nothing to do with fucking anything.

It takes until HALFWAY THROUGH THE MOVIE before we get a scene of our suit returning to Mank’s drab hotel and saying, “You only have 10 days left! And you haven’t even finished the first act!” Normally, an escalation like this would pump life into the movie. But everybody in Mank treats the goal with such a lack of importance that we don’t feel anything.

You’re only ever as good as a) your concept and b) your execution. If either of those things is weak, you cannot recover. I would argue that Mank is weak in both areas. I don’t even understand what the concept of Mank is! Mank needs to write Citizen Kane, which is followed by a movie that has nothing to do with Mank writing Citizen Kane? Anyway, this is how a great filmmaker can make a bad movie. Latch onto a concept that wasn’t any good in the first place and then abandon all pretense of a hero resolving a problem.

I mean the scenes in Mank are so aggressively disconnected from one another you must draw on an insane amount of concentration to keep track of what’s going on.

There was this scene where Mank and Marion are walking around the Hearst Castle babbling about the most inane things, and I thought to myself, “What is this scene about? How is it pushing the story forward? Where is the conflict? Why is it important that this scene exists?” It seems like all but a few scenes fail to answer these questions.

I remember one good scene in the entire first half. It’s the scene where Mank and his brother come to MGM and studio head Louis B. Mayer a) gives them a tour while explaining to them the rules that dictate MGM before b) making a speech to the entire MGM staff that he’s cutting their salaries by half.

Why does this scene work while all the others don’t? Because it incorporates the only two scenarios in the movie that we actually understand. We understand when someone gives someone else a tour of their domain and explains the rules of the house. We understand the concept of a man standing in front of his employees and having to give them bad news. For once in the movie, it was actually CLEAR what was going on.

I don’t have any clarity on why Mank and Marion are stumbling around Hearst’s house mumbling about shit that doesn’t have anything to do with the story.

The failure of Mank comes down to the ignorance of one simple reality – Decide what your movie is about or face the consequences.

Meanwhile, in a galaxy far far away, a certain show has decided that it actually wants to become entertaining again.

The problem with the Mandalorian is that it had eased into this relaxed storytelling style by which Mando was assigned some directive which he then had all the time in the world to achieve and, even if it didn’t work out, it wasn’t a big deal. In other words, each episode had a goal. But both the stakes and urgency regarding that goal were low.

This is why the latest episode of Baby Yoda, err, I mean Mandalorian, was so good. Directed by Robert Rodriquez, we got our first full GSU episode in Mandalorian history.

Goal – Protect Baby Yoda while he sits on the sacred rock to see if a Jedi teacher arrives.

Stakes – Losing Baby Yoda (Darth Gideon has arrived to kidnap him)

Urgency – The onslaught of storm troopers to retrieve Baby Yoda starts and never stops the whole episode.

That’s what stood out to me most about the episode. It contained an urgency that no other episode up until this point had. Remember, that’s what made the original two Star Wars movies so good. Urgency. Darth Vader relentlessly pursuing Luke Skywalker and the rest of the gang from the start of the movies to the finish.

It’s something I felt, before the show even began, it would struggle with. Could Star Wars sit inside those slow moments? It’s been able to every once in a while. I like the little scenes with Mando and Baby Yoda hanging out in his ship together. But mostly these moments have been a dud. In order for slow moments to work, the character writing must be exceptional. That’s because if we like a character, we don’t need the plot to be “go go go.” And, unfortunately, Mandalorian has had a lot of dud characters.

But the last two episodes are changing that. This Ashoka Jedi chick is pretty badass. And Boba Fett (who arrived this week) is VERY badass. I get a little weak in the knees imagining all three of them teaming up together, Avengers style (let’s not forget that Jon Favreau began the Avengers universe with Iron Man – so he knows a thing or two about team-ups).

But the bigger takeaway from these last two weeks of Mandalorian is that the show works better when the plot is ramped up. There seemed to be more purpose in both of these episodes – from Mando needing to find Ashoka to Boba Fett needing his armor and the Empire trying to kidnap Baby Yoda – and that’s what’s been missing in the Mandalorian so far.

A lot of this harkens back to an age-old screenwriting problem, which is that the idea you originally conceive isn’t always the idea you should go with. My guess is that Favreau originally conceived of this show as a straight Western. That’s why it was so slow. He liked the idea of his character lazily strolling into a new town, hanging out, chatting, building up a little suspense, then resolving whatever villain-of-the-weak problem the town/planet had.

But I think the Star Wars DNA requires importance and urgency. We see that in these last two episodes. Last week was the importance of finding a Jedi to take Baby Yoda. And this week’s episode was all about the urgent nature of holding off the Empire as they tried to kidnap Baby Yoda.

So if I could tell Favreau anything, it would be that you’re good with the G(oal). But you need to embrace the S and the U. The S(takes) and the U(urgency) are what made these last two episodes of the show two of the best.

Many years ago I went to one of those Screenwriting Expos.

I think that’s what it was called, actually – “The Screenwriting Expo.”

This was back in the day when the word “e-mail” was as buzzy as saying “TikTok.” “You’ve got mail” was as addictive a sound as the “ding” you hear when you get a new text. It was the original dopamine hit. In other words, it was a simpler time. And a world where the only screenwriting information you could get was from books and expos. So I was excited to be there.

However, the more I walked around the place, the more I realized it was nothing more than a giant excuse for bottom feeder industry types to hawk their wares and get you to sign up for classes or mentorships or newsletters you didn’t want to sign up for. I went from top of the world to ‘lost all faith in humanity’ in 60 minutes.

However, there was one teacher from the Expo I still remember. I don’t remember his name (for the purposes of this article, I’ll call him Jason). But what I do remember is that he was passionate, a stark contrast to the 200 other tricksters who leered at everyone as if they were giant walking wallets.

After everyone who’d signed up for the class arrived, Jason popped in a DVD of “Stand By Me,” and proceeded to pause it every so often to explain the screenwriting mechanisms that were going on underneath the surface.

It was instructional, effective, and fun, due to his outsized passion for the movie. I mean, I dug Stand By Me. But this guy really REALLY liked Stand By Me.

The part that he liked the most still sticks with me to this day. Jason went bonkers over Gordie’s midpoint story to his friends about a pie-eating contest. If you haven’t seen the film or don’t remember it, it’s about four 12-year-old friends who travel across the state to see a rumored dead body in the woods.

The scene in question occurs as the friends are taking a break and they ask Gordie (this is based on a Stephen King story so, of course, there has to be one writer in the mix) to tell them a story. We then cut out of the kids story and for EIGHT ENTIRE MINUTES we get a story THAT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH ANYTHING ELSE IN THE MOVIE. I capitalize that because that’s what this teacher kept emphasizing.

“EIGHT MINUTES! EIGHT MINUTES THE STORY WENT ON! AND IT HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH ANYTHING ELSE IN THE MOVIE!”

The story Gordie tells is funny. It’s about an overweight kid who enters a pie-eating contest and the experience is so overwhelming that, at the end of it, he throws up. That leads to the other contestants throwing up. Which then leads to the audience throwing up. Soon everybody is throwing up.

Jason kept hitting on the fact that you just “don’t do this.” You don’t stop your movie for eight minutes to introduce brand new characters and a brand new story that has nothing to do with anything else in the movie. If these characters were related to our heroes, you could justify it. If these characters somehow came back into the story later on, you could justify it. But none of that happens. It’s its own self-contained movie within a movie.

Jason was so obsessed with this little scene that, over the years, I’d find myself recalling the famed sequence and wondering why he’d gotten so worked up about it. His point seemed to be contradictory. He both loved the scene but was baffled that they’d included it. I couldn’t resolve what his message was.

Flash-forward to 2020. I’m reading a script just a few days ago from a very talented writer. He’d written a road trip movie and, during the script, one of the main characters tells a story that we flash back to. The story, like Stand By Me, was eight pages long. The story, like Stand By Me, wasn’t directly connected to anything else in the plot.

The flashback was pretty good, mainly because the writer was good. But as I weighed the flashback’s impact, I couldn’t help but realize it took up a full 10% of the screenplay. 1/10th of the script was dedicated to a story that wasn’t connected to the plot. What I mean by “not connected” is if you were to eliminate the flashback, nothing else in the script would have to be rewritten. That’s the easiest way to identify if something is necessary in your script or not. If you can get rid of it and you don’t need to make a single other change anywhere? It probably wasn’t a necessary scene.

Analyzing this sequence brought me back to Jason’s Stand By Me class. Because I finally understood what he meant. If a scene is not moving the story forward, it’s either a) pausing it, or b) moving it backwards. As a screenwriter, you want to avoid both of those things. Pausing and going backwards are antithetical to keeping an audience invested. Therefore, you should avoid them.

What Jason was saying was that the screenwriters for Stand By Me, Bruce Evans and Raynold Gideon, knew this. They understood that each scene must push the story forward. And that this pie eating story tangent wouldn’t do that. However, they decided that the scene was still worth it anyway. I suspect they felt it helped viewers understand Gordie better, since it showed how talented a storyteller he was and gave us some insight into him as a person (since you can get a feel for a person by the kind of stories they gravitate to).

As screenwriters, making sure every scene moves the story forward is one of the most important pieces of advice we can follow. The scripts that derail the quickest are the ones where too many scenes aren’t pushing the story forward. Think of it like a car ride. As long as you’re moving forward, you’re happy. But the second you get stopped in traffic. Or the second you get stuck behind a long stoplight, you start feeling anxiety. You didn’t get in the car to stop. You got in it to continually move forward until you got to your destination. A script read works the same way. If there’s too much stopping (scenes that don’t push the story forward), the reader gets anxious. And, at a certain point, that anxiety hits a breaking point. We’re out.

Of course, that doesn’t mean you can never write a scene/sequence that doesn’t move the story forward. Like the pie-eating contest. As long as you recognize that it’s a gamble and that, therefore, the scene has to be amazing, you should be okay. Just don’t make a habit out of including these scenes. Jason was quick to point out that every other scene in the movie pushed the story forward.

The next project from the 10 Cloverfield Lane writers!

Genre: Sci-Fi (Short Story)
Premise: Set in the future, a former serial killer is “rightminded,” the process of digitally altering the brain to take away its psychopathic tendencies.
About: This short story from 2014 sold earlier this year for the 10 Cloverfield Lane writing team, Josh Campbell & Matt Stuecken, to adapt. The short story comes from Elizabeth Bear, who’s won two Hugo Awards, one for short story Tideline, with follows a sentient war machine that is the only survivor of an apocalyptic war that has reduced the human population to cavemen. And the other for her novelette, Shoggoths in Bloom, about the famed HP Lovecraft monster, the shaggoth.
Writer: Elizabeth Bear
Details: about 5000 words (you can read it here)

Alicia Vikander for the narrator?

This idea of serial killers getting mind-altering treatment to take away their killing impulses is not a new one. I’ve probably read five full scripts covering the same subject matter over the past decade. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. If lots of people are gravitating towards the same idea, that means there’s something to that idea. And if no movie of worth has yet been made with that concept, then why shouldn’t you be the one to do it?

It’s a reminder, though, that a good concept doesn’t naturally translate into a good script. The reasons for why vary, but mostly it comes down to weak writers exploring the most obvious route of the idea. That’s definitely not what we get today. This story is quite complex and gets you thinking. Which may be the reason why it becomes the version of this concept that finally makes it to the finish line.

Our unnamed narrator killed 13 women. And even though he’s been caught and placed in prison, he wants to kill more. In fact, when his female lawyer tells him about this new technology that can eliminate his impulse to kill, all he can think about the entire conversation is the number of ways in which he could kill her.

It’s hubris that dooms him, however. He doesn’t volunteer for the treatment because he wants to be a better human being. Quite the opposite. He plans to keep killing for the rest of his life. He volunteers for the treatment because he believes he can beat it.

Now here’s where things get a little confusing, so stay with me. In addition to changing your brain, the government wants to push you as far away from that killer as possible. So they also change your look and your insides. It is decided that our narrator will become a woman.

Back to present day, where our female narrator, who no longer has those impulses, is jogging on the outskirts of town during winter. A few minutes after helping a driver with directions, she’s attacked from behind. The directions were a ruse. And when our narrator wakes up, she’s in a cold dark basement. The situation is not unlike the scenarios she put her own former victims through.

But it’s that familiarity with what’s happening that allows our narrator to stay calm. She slowly and methodically picks away her restraints and then waits by the doorway for her captor to return. When he does, she viciously attacks him. But seeing as she’s now a woman, she’s much smaller and much weaker than before. It doesn’t look like she’s going to defeat him. At least the 13 families of the women she killed will be happy. Unless, of course, she can find one last burst of energy and get the heck out of here.

I liked this.

Bear is a strong writer. You can tell right off the bat that she has an ease with words, sentences, exposition, prose, that make for a more advanced read than you’re used to. “This cold could kill me, but it’s no worse than the memories. Endurable as long as I keep moving. My feet drum the snow-scraped roadbed as I swing past the police station at the top of the hill. Each exhale plumes through my mask, but insulating synthetics warm my inhalations enough so they do not sting and seize my lungs.” You feel like you’re in good hands, that’s for sure.

Let’s talk about the execution. Like I mentioned above, I’ve seen this idea before. What is Bear doing better than everyone else? That’s simple. She’s integrating irony into the execution. This isn’t yet another “helpless woman gets kidnapped by a serial killer” story. It’s about a serial killer who gets kidnapped by a serial killer. In other words, there’s a heavy dose of irony baked into the setup.

Now I’m not going to say the setup is perfect. Bear conveniently hurries through the explanation of why our narrator needed to be changed into a woman. Methinks Bear knew that the later kidnapping played better if our protagonist was a woman so just sort of threw some science fiction gibble gabble explanation in there as to why part of the treatment was changing the killer’s gender. But it’s one of the only weak parts of the story and since almost everything else was so well done, I didn’t allow it to destroy my suspension of disbelief.

Bear’s skills come into play the strongest when she has to write exposition. Exposition is the writing equivalent of fresh breath. When someone has it, you don’t think about it. But the second you smell bad breath, your romantic interest in that person nosedives. Same is true for exposition. Done well, you don’t notice it. Done poorly, and it’s all you think about.

There’s this sequence early on where the lawyer is explaining to the narrator (when he’s still a man) the process of “rightminding.” It’s an exposition-heavy exchange that would’ve tripped up a lot of lesser writers. But Bear does something clever. She intersperses the lawyer’s exposition with the thoughts of our narrator, who is thinking of the many different ways he’d love to kill her. It takes an average exposition-heavy scene and makes it interesting.

But the real accomplishment of this story is the complexity in which we see the main character. On the one hand, the protagonist is the only person we sympathize with. We’re in their head with them. So we want to see them survive. On the other hand, we know who they were. That they killed 13 women. So there’s also a part of us who wants to see this kidnapper kill our protagonist.

When everything is too straight-forward, it’s often boring. You want complexity of thought to be involved in parts of your story. It’s the same thing I talked about yesterday, with the amazing script, “Ambulance.” When all four parties converge on that ambulance, I was rooting for all for them, even though they weren’t on the same team. That’s when your script starts transitioning from 2-D to 3-D. It’s worth looking for storylines that create that kind of complexity.

One last gripe – the ending. Which I will kind of spoil here.

For all of their outstanding writing abilities, these talented award-winning short story writers all seem to have the same weakness, which is that they wimp out on the ending. They’re terrified of giving you a definite end, so they all cut out before a clear ending occurs. I’m sure lots of writers will defend this move. But what they can’t defend is that if I know exactly what your ending is going to be before you write it, you’ve chosen the wrong ending. And I knew Bear wasn’t going to tell us whether our narrator lived or died. So even though you picked the literary acceptable ending that English Professors would give you an A on, you failed the reader test. And we’re the ones who matter.

So PLEASE don’t make that same mistake with the movie version. Because this one has potential.

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

What I learned: Never underestimate the power of movement. – This story starts with the narrator talking to us during a jog. The narrator’s thoughts themselves aren’t the most interesting in the world. Not to mention, there’s exposition in there. But it didn’t bother me as much as it usually does because the main character was moving. They were going somewhere. Even if that somewhere was just the end of the jog. I don’t know what it is about movement but it helps speed up otherwise slow sections. I suppose it’s a psychological thing. But I knew it was working when I thought how much more boring her thoughts would be had she been giving us them while sitting down on her couch. I was reminded of this while reading a recent screenplay that had a large flashback scene early on. You know how much I hate flashbacks. But the character who was sharing the flashback was in a car driving with his friend. The mere fact that we were going somewhere made that flashback more bearable.

Genre: Comedy?
Premise: (from IMDB) When an all-powerful Superintelligence chooses to study average Carol Peters, the fate of the world hangs in the balance. As the A.I. decides to enslave, save or destroy humanity, it’s up to Carol to prove that people are worth saving.
About: A lot of people will focus on the terrible Rotten Tomatoes score of Superintelligence (26%). But Superintelligence actually achieves a rarity for any comedy, which is to get a worse audience score (23%) than critic score. Audiences are always more forgiving with comedy than critics. Which means this must be a really really really really really bad movie. Melissa McCarthy teams up, once again, with her husband, Ben Falcone, who directed the film and basically wrote it as well. This winning combo has created Tammy, Life of the Party, and The Boss.
Writer: Steve Mallory (but from what I understand, Falcone and McCarthy basically told the writer what to write)
Details: 2 hours of hell

First of all, you’re probably wondering why I’m reviewing this. I’ll tell you. This is one of the worst pieces of professional entertainment I’ve ever seen. Normally, I’d take that in and move on with my life. But I can’t. I can’t because if there’s one thing that bothers me about this business, it’s when someone with less-than-zero talent gets millions of dollars to make movies.

I’m not dumb. I understand that untalented people weasel their way into every industry. And, truth be told, they only make up about 10-15% of those industries. But their level of ineptitude is so extreme, that it always feels like a lot more than that. And Ben Falcone has to be the single most untalented writer and director I’ve ever seen get this many opportunities in Hollywood.

Of course, he has an ace up his sleeve. He’s married to Melissa McCarthy, who, ironically, is one of the most talented people in the business. I’m a huge Melissa McCarthy fan. Go to Youtube right now and search “SNL Melissa McCarthy.” There’s a reason no SNL host has more video views than her. She’s hilarious. And that’s what makes this all the more frustrating. Falcone’s lack of talent isn’t just dooming him. It’s taking down someone who actually has talent. Someone who should be making much better movies.

I’m going to try to summarize the plot of Superintelligence for you. But I’m giving you advance warning that the nonsensical nature of everything you’re about to read is going to make it sound like I didn’t understand it. No, this was the actual plot.

Carol Peters – the nicest person in the world – lives in Seattle and is trying to find a non-profit job. She’s having some trouble and, yet, that doesn’t seem to play into the plot at all. In other words, if she fails to get a job, it doesn’t sound like it will affect her life in any way.

Why does this matter? Because, later, the Superintelligence will buy Carol a 5 million dollar apartment, a 100,000 dollar car, and put 10 million in her bank account. But since Carol has never needed or wanted money, these developments feel random and unimportant. I’m sorry. I’m getting ahead of myself.

Out of nowhere, the first ever self-thinking AI contacts Carol, presenting itself as James Corden, since Corden is Carol’s favorite TV personality. The AI says it’s going to destroy humanity in 72 hours. Why? No idea. Never says. Probably best we not get into the specifics as we will then find out that if he destroys humanity, he also destroys himself, which would make absolutely no sense. But what in this movie does make sense?

First, AI James Corden says, he wants to learn about humanity. And he’s ID’d Carol as the perfect guinea pig. Why did he pick Carol specifically, though? No idea. To Falcone’s credit, this question is asked like 50 times in the movie. And yet, nobody answers it. Even AI James Corden answers it once and we don’t understand his explanation. ANYWAY!

To learn about humanity, AI James Corden asks Carol what she would do if she only had three days to live, since she does. She says make things right with her ex-boyfriend, George. Coincidentally, in the only attempt at writing an actual screenplay, George is moving to a new city in three days. So Carol better hurry up! Wait a minute. Do we even need a ticking time bomb with the George relationship if the earth is going to blow up in 3 days? Oh, who needs logic in screenwriting? MOVING ON!

As if understanding just how bad this script is, AI James Corden attempts to help out, giving himself a motivation for why he wants these two to be together. He wants to “better understand humanity” you see. And seeing if Carol can rekindle her relationship with George will somehow… achieve this? Maybe?

Quick plot summary break here cause I’m about to explode with anger. This script is so bad that I am positive it would finish fifth in voting an any Scriptshadow Amateur Showdown. That’s how bad this. It can’t even beat an average amateur screenplay. One of the primary issues with a bad script is that every screw is loose. It’s not clear why James Corden is going to blow up the world. It’s not clear why he wants Carol and George to rekindle their relationship. It’s not clear what Carol’s financial situation is or why she can be eternally jobless and not have to worry about money. Every single aspect of the script is vague. That’s bad writing. And for screenwriting this bad to be produced? Shame on these people. Seriously. Shame on them.

Sorry, I got distracted again. Where were we with the plot? Oh yeah, so the US Defense Department gets wind of the AI and is going to turn off the entire internet except for one small computer, trapping the AI there and then killing it, which is the only well thought out plot point in the entire movie. But AI James Corden gets wind of this and makes it impossible to turn him off.

However, at the last second, he has a change of heart when Carol does something unexpected (she doesn’t tell George about the impending doom). This makes AI James Corden realize that he has a lot to learn about humanity, so, okay fine, he’ll keep them around for a while. The End.

First of all, James Corden. You need to do better. You’re very talented but you’re George Clooney level at picking your projects. Have your agent start picking them for you.

Okay, maybe I can take a break from being so angry and use this opportunity to teach some lessons here. Unlikely but I’ll try.

Concept. When a concept is weak, nothing you write will matter. A concept is what forms your movie. It is the initial structural beam. Without a strong one, you’ll spend your entire script in “search mode,” where you’re searching for the story. Guess what, you won’t find it. You need to have done the work in the concept stage.

Superintelligence is not a concept. It’s a concept fragment. The only part that has concept potential is the superintelligence part. But then you need something that the superintelligence interrupts that is clever or ironic or has some form to it. A superintelligence studying an average person is not a concept. A superintelligence studying the dumbest person in the world still isn’t a movie-level concept, in my opinion, but it’s better. The irony of the highest intelligence trying to learn from the dumbest intelligence has some irony baked into it.

The biggest clue that this isn’t a concept is that you would have the exact same movie without the superintelligence part! This movie is about a woman who reconnects with an ex-boyfriend. You didn’t need the superintelligence for that. Like we already established, you didn’t even need the 72 hours before planetary destruction since George was moving out of town in 72 hours himself. EXACT. SAME. MOVIE.

Sure, you wouldn’t have had the AI buying Carol a car or a nice apartment. But like we established, those things had zero impact on our heroine. If our protagonist had been dirt poor and always wanted money, those purchases would’ve mattered. It could’ve been a Cinderella type situation or a “be careful what you wish for” film. But that’s how bad the screenwriting was here. They didn’t even know to marry the character situation to the concept. They were two completely different things that they attempted to mash up against each other the whole movie in some desperate attempt at comedy.

This shows what happens when there is no oversight, no pushback, no conflict, in development. That’s the thing I don’t understand with writers. They’re afraid of feedback. Afraid someone is going to tell them their idea sucks or their character sucks. BUT THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT YOU WANT!!! You want pushback. You want people to say, “No, that doesn’t work.” “No, that’s boring.’ Because then it forces you to go back in there and come up with something better. That’s how good movies are made.

The reason you can tell that nobody pushed back here is because everything that occurs in this movie occurs easily. Carol lives an easy life. We know the AI is never going to hurt Carol. We know Carol isn’t going to encounter much resistance getting back with George. There isn’t a lick of genuine conflict at any stage at any point in this movie.

It’s so badly written that I believe this script should be commemorated by all major film schools as the defining example of how not to write a screenplay. Every single choice in this script is wrong. I’m serious. Every one. If you made the exact opposite decision on every one of these story choices, you would likely come up with something great. That’s how misguided this was.

I don’t know how you can be this bad. You have to try to be this awful at something.

This goes down as one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen in my life.

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

What I learned: If you want to pay something off, you actually have to set it up. I didn’t know that people were so dumb that they’d need to be told this. But apparently, it’s the case with Ben Falcone. So there’s a scene around the midpoint where Carol takes George to a Seattle Mariners game and former Mariner great Ken Griffey Jr. comes to say hi to them and George nearly has a seizure. Ken Griffey Jr. is saying hi to him! Oh my God! This is amazing! He takes like 50 selfies with him and can’t stop talking to him. There’s only one problem with this moment. It was never set up. We were never told, before this moment, that George was a Ken Griffey Jr. fan. We were never told he was a Mariners fan. Heck, we were never even told he liked baseball!!! Which made this freakout session bizarre. Had a, you know, real screenwriter been in charge of this, they would’ve mentioned several times early on how big of a Mariners and Griffey Jr baseball fan George was, which would’ve helped this scene play a lot better.