I’m not going to lie. I’m fascinated by Jordan Peele’s “Nope.”

Now that I’ve had some time to reflect on the film, I better appreciate what Peele has done. He swung for the fences in an industry that locks you in a batting cage. There’s something big and crazy and mystical about this movie that makes it unlike any other movie experience this year. And that’s to be admired.

But “Nope” is also a shining example of what an unfinished spec script looks like when it’s up on screen. It’s uneven. It’s sloppy. The main character isn’t very likable. The climax lacks clarity. You can feel the story trying to find itself as the movie is happening.

Who the f@%& is this character???

Which is what I want to talk about today. A finished script should never read like the writer is still playing with ideas, still trying to figure things out. Your script should have a certainty behind it. It should feel solid, like it always knows where it’s going.

To understand why this happens, you must first understand that a screenplay is a living breathing thing. We think we know our story when we start writing it. But, often times, we’ll discover new things that weren’t in the original plan. And, as an artist, it’s our duty to explore those new avenues to see if there’s anything there.

The most famous example of this is Good Will Hunting.

That movie started off as a thriller chronicling a genius mathematician who’s being pursued by the government for his abilities. But the drafts that Matt Damon and Ben Affleck were writing showed much more promise in the story’s character development, particularly the relationship between Will and his psychiatrist.

Matt and Ben did not want to change their story. But they were unknown back then and, in order to get the movie made, had to do what Castle Rock, who owned the rights, wanted them to do. So they scrapped the thriller angle and made it a character piece. The rest is history.

Part of what drafts 2, 3, 4, and 5 are about is identifying what’s working in your script and what’s not working, then leaning into the stuff that’s working. Just like Matt and Ben didn’t expect Psychiatrist Sean to be as interesting a character as he was, you might come up with a character, in the heat of writing, who you never thought of before you started, and that character might turn out to be a game-changer.

It’s in your best interest to then rethink your story to better incorporate that character. If that changes your movie – heck, even if it changes your genre – you have to consider it. That doesn’t mean you *have to* to deviate from your original vision every time this happens. But you should certainly weigh the pros and cons of the new option before writing it off.

I can’t help but think of this when reflecting on “Nope.”

Jordan Peele clearly had this vision of two Hollywood horse ranchers who discover that a UFO might be killing their horses. Admittedly, when you get that original idea in your head, it’s very hard to move away from it. So I suspect that once he had that idea, he never considered deviating. Which is too bad. Because it prevented him from writing a much better movie.

I don’t know how Peele conceived of the Ricky subplot. But based on his interviews and how obsessed he was with this monkey-massacre sitcom backstory, I assume it went something like this.

Peele had his crazy horse rancher UFO story over on one side. But he’d read about that story years ago (which we all did) about a monkey that tore its female owner’s face off. And he was so haunted by it that he just HAD to get it into his movie somehow. But how?

It would be too weird if the monkey massacre happened in the present. It would detract from the UFO-horse stuff. So he knew he had to put it in the past. Okay, well, how do we tie some crazed monkey backstory to the present? Maybe we have the woman whose face the monkey ripped off, many years later, involved in the story somehow.

They have animals in movies and TV shows all the time. What if this monkey was on a sitcom? And he didn’t just tear one person’s face off, he went ballistic and started attacking everyone on set? Okay, that’s cool. What if there’s a kid on this sitcom and he somehow comes away unscathed? And what if, many years later, he has his own little Western theme park out in the boondocks, not far from our horse ranchers? Okay, now we’re gradually finding tentacles to connect these two storylines.

Unfortunately, that’s as far as Jordan Peele went. Ricky (the kid from the sitcom) was going to be a supporting character in the movie.

This is the critical moment as an artist where you need to step back and objectively ask the question: Which of my two storylines is more interesting? The former kid sitcom star who survived a horrific monkey attack that killed two of his cast members and ripped the face off another, who’s put together a theme park where he tries to lure in UFOs… or a couple of horse ranchers who occasionally rent their horses to Hollywood?

Is it even a competition?

One’s a 9 out of 10 on the interesting scale.

The other is a 4 out of 10 at best.

Not only that but you could easily slide many of the current story elements over to the Ricky plot. For example, Ricky needs horses too. So if you really wanted to do the horse thing, you still have your horses as a main part of the plot. You could’ve even kept OJ. Have OJ begrudgingly working for Ricky. When the sh#t hits the fan, Ricky and OJ have to team up, which, unlike what they currently have, would’ve been fun to watch, since OJ doesn’t like Ricky.

Now some of you may be saying, “Hold on, Carson. Let’s play this out with some other movies. What about Star Wars? Han Solo had a way more interesting life than Luke Skywalker. Are you saying that George Lucas should’ve scrapped the whole Luke Skywalker Obi-Wan journey and made Star Wars, “The Adventures of Han Solo” instead? Cause we later saw the Han Solo movie. And it sucked.”

Totally fair argument. But I would combat that by saying while, yes, Han was the cooler character, Luke and Obi-Wan had the way better story. And since Han becomes a big part of the team after they meet anyway, we get all the Han Solo we can handle.

Here, Ricky has the better storyline AND is the more interesting character. He has the better story because he has an actual theme park he’s running. He’s putting all his resources into this new show. He doesn’t know if it’s going to work or not. If it doesn’t, it might bankrupt his whole business. Just as I’m writing this out, I’m imagining a 20 times better movie.

Ricky is also a guy who went through the most traumatic experience a kid could possibly go through. Yet here he is today, chipper and upbeat, always in a good mood. He clearly hasn’t dealt with that trauma. If we had more time with him, we’d be able to build more of an arc into that disconnect and see what happens when he finally breaks down and accepts what he saw.

So why did we build the story around the ranchers again?

One of two reasons, likely. As I said, once Peele locked into this idea of ranchers, he couldn’t let it go. He just had to tell the story from their point of view because they’re who he originally envisioned going through this. Another possibility is that he simply ran out of time. Unlike his 10 year journey writing Get Out, I’m guessing Universal dictated the release date of this film, which was strict enough that it prevented Peele from writing as many drafts as he would’ve wanted.

Which sucks because, he might’ve eventually figured this out. It’s clear to everyone who watched the movie that he was way more into Ricky’s storyline than the ranchers. That whole world of Ricky’s was like a sandbox full of toys. Every direction you looked (his current rodeo show, his old sitcom, killer monkeys, a weird theme park, maimed co-workers from his past) there was something to play with. Yet we instead get scenes like being stuck in Angel’s apartment while our three loser protagonists smoke weed together. It’s like, “uhhhh, I think there’s a better movie over this way, guys?”

Use this as a cautionary tale. Our minds are wonderful creative instruments and, sometimes, they come up with inspiration in the most unexpected of places. It could be that you’re writing a zombie movie and conceive one of your characters as an amazingly weird and captivating chess player. If Chess Guy is, far and away, the best thing about your zombie script, maybe you shouldn’t be writing a zombie script anymore.

Believe me, I know these choices aren’t easy. The more time you’ve invested in a storyline, the less motivation you have to change it. And, of course, there’s the danger of changing your mind *too much*. If you keep changing your script’s direction every time you come up with a new idea, you’re never going to finish. But if you encounter a scenario like Jordan Peele’s, “Nope,” where the subplot is actually way cooler than the main plot, you have to at least entertain the change. Cause I believe Jordan Peele missing the cue that Ricky was the main plot for Nope was the difference between making an okay movie and a great one.

Are you looking for help on your latest screenplay? – Let someone who’s read over 10,000 scripts identify your screenplay’s weak points and how to fix them.  I have a 4 page notes package (2300-2500 words) or the more detailed 8 page option (4600-5000 words).  I also give feedback on loglines, outlines, synopses, first acts, or any aspect of screenwriting you need help with. This includes Zoom calls discussing anything from talking through your script to getting advice on how to break into the industry.  If you’re interested, e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com and let’s set something up!  I look forward to working with you. 

Today’s script has a very real shot at becoming a future Oscar contender!

Genre: War
Premise: JULY 20, 1942: Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich becomes known around the world for writing an epic symphony during the deadly World War II siege of Leningrad.
About: This script finished fairly high on last year’s Black List and is, surprisingly, the only World War 2 script that made the esteemed list. While Daniel Persitz does not have any previous writing credits, he was a producer on the 2014 horror film, Ouija.
Writer: Daniel Persitz
Details: 117 pages

One of the early lessons I learned about screenwriting was that they will never ever run out of movies to make about World War 2. I thought they’d scraped the bottom of the barrel and that was 20 years ago. I was wrong. Hollywood will scrape the blood off the carcass of a dead World War 2 soldier if there’s even a SLIVER of a new movie concept in it.

At first glance, writing a symphony seems low stakes in the shadow of one of the most devastating wars ever. But let’s not forget, they made a World War 2 movie about a piano. A piano! A symphony has, like, what? 30 more instruments? Which, by the power of maths, means it must be 30 times better. Right?

Stop being such a film snob and agree with me.

The year is 1937 and famous Russian composer, Dmitri Shostakovich, has just finished his latest musical, Lady MacBeth. While Dmitri is the 1937 celebrity equivalent of Drake in Russia, the tide has been turning against Russian artists lately. Joseph Stalin, threatened by the new ideas that art contains, is quietly disappearing Russian artists across the land. During Lady MacBeth, he stomps out mid-performance, implying that it won’t be long before Dmitri disappears too.

Things only get worse as this new German rabble-rouser, a guy named Hitler, starts taking over Europe. Tensions grow because even though Stalin and Hitler make a deal to be friends, Hitler is becoming unpredictable. And then it happens. Hitler invades Russia, storming up north through the giant country.

At a certain point Dmitri, along with his wife, Nina, his mother, Sofia, his father and his two children, start getting worried. They’re safely tucked inside Leningrad at the moment. But Hitler’s forces relentlessly move north, getting closer and closer to the city. Nina freaks out, demanding that they leave. But it’s inconceivable to Dmitri that Leningrad could fall so he says, “let’s stay, it’ll be fine.” It’s a critical error, because soon, the city is surrounded. There’s no way out.

Dmitri passes the time by writing his seventh symphony, inspired by the atrocities of war – the bombing, the starvation, the hopelessness. Every day, through thick and thin, he keeps writing that symphony. Then, when the city is devastated and without hope, word travels about Dmitri’s determination, and he’s invited onto Leningrad radio. In one of the most powerful moments of the war, he tells the Russians to remain defiant. That the Germans can’t stop him from working. He’s still writing his symphony. They, too, should keep working, keep resisting.

His speech is so powerful that Stalin himself orders Dmitri to be rescued from Leningrad. He’s allowed to bring his wife and kids, but not his parents. Dmitri is then ordered to finish his symphony as soon as possible as Stalin believes it will inspire other countries, particularly America, to join the war. But Dmitri is more concerned with his parents. He asks, if he can deliver the symphony, can his parents be rescued? Stalin’s right-hand man says, “We’ll try.” That’s enough for Dmitri, who puts everything he’s got into finishing that darn symphony.

This was pretty freaking good.

I went in wondering why I was going to care about a man finishing a symphony. And while the plot itself never convinced me it was a necessity. From a character perspective, I liked Dmitri so much, that I wanted to see him finish.

I always try to figure out the exact reason (even the exact moment) why I like or dislike a hero. Because that’s usually the moment in a script that determines everything that follows. If you don’t like the hero, you’re probably not going to like the story. If you do, you probably are.

So it’s worth it, whenever you watch a movie that you like or read a script that you like, to figure out exactly where you started liking the character. For me, it was two-fold. When I heard that Soviet artists were being killed, I felt this immediate fear for Dmitri. He was vulnerable. For making music of all things. Audiences don’t like when people are unfairly attacked. So, right away, we feel sympathy for him.

And then Persitz got more specific. He had Stalin show up to Lady MacBeth and have him hate it. Now we really hate Stalin, cause he hates our guy’s music. So we want Dmitri to thrive so he can prove him wrong. But again, it’s that base setup of someone being unfairly threatened/attacked that ensured we would root for Dmitri.

But the script still had a tough mountain to climb. The story takes place over five years. That’s a long time in movies. Most movies do well with a short timeframe – under two weeks if possible. However, war movies are one of the few genres that do well with passing time because there’s an organic-ness to watching the toll of war play out over time.

And Persitz makes good use of the time. He makes sure that things keep getting worse for his hero. First, it’s bad enough in Leningrad that people start evacuating. Then, people start need ration cards. Then, the city starts getting bombed. Then, the city is surrounded, as the Germans try to starve the population out.

Just when that starts to feel repetitive, Persitz introduces the “radio interview” scene, which allows Dmitri and his family to get out of the city. And that gives the narrative new life, since we’re in a new place. This plotline is subsidized by Dmitri’s determination to save his parents (the stakes) and this newfound excitement around this defiant composer who’s writing a symphony while his city is being bombed. It’s inspiring stuff.

If I have a gripe, it’s that the symphony isn’t tied enough to the war. The writer makes all these inferences that the symphony is going to inspire the world. But I wasn’t ever sure what that meant, or if I even believed it. Granted, I don’t know what it was like living in 1941, or what the music scene was back then. But I find it hard to believe that all the kids are waiting by the radio for that new 1 and a half hour song with lots of old-timey instruments and no singer.

Still, the writer does an exceptional job of making us like and care about the hero. The circumstances surrounding the goal make everything feel big and important. Even with a sketchy connection to the war, I was tearing up when composers around the world played Dmitri’s music.

It really does have that juicy Oscar feel to it. More importantly, it’s a good script. I recommend checking it out!

Script link: Symphony of Survival

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

What I learned: Beware “out of character” character introductions. Here’s a line early in the script. “He’s pulled aside by ISAAC GLIKMAN (25), his secretary and friend. A sophisticated intellectual who usually exudes warmth, at the moment Glikman fidgets with anxiety.” Notice that normally, Glikamn is sophisticated. That’s his true character. But we’re meeting him acting the exact opposite (“fidgets with anxiety”). The reason this is problematic is because readers put a ton of stock into how a character acts when they’re introduced. So if a character is a jerk, it doesn’t matter if you say in the description, “He’s normally nice.” Actions speak louder than words and right now, this guy is acting like a jerk, so that’s how we’re going to see him. For this reason, ALWAYS avoid out-of-character character introductions for your protagonists. And try your best to introduce every supporting character IN CHARACTER. If you absolutely positively can’t do that, then you can do what Persitz does here. But it should be your last option.

There isn’t a whole lot going on in the movie world this weekend. The Superpowered Pet Express, or whatever that movie was called, slinked into first place with 25 million dollars. In a somewhat surprising development, “Nope” only dropped 58% from its inaugural weekend. Some thought, with the weak word of mouth, it would dip as much as 70%. Maybe the film is better than I gave it credit for.

The lack of movie excitement gave me an opportunity to take in the TV landscape, more specifically the rapidly rising popularity of showrunners. Now I’m not sure I’d go so far as to say Shonda Rhimes, Taylor Sheridan, and and Eric Kripke have supplanted the names of Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, and James Cameron. But people are definitely becoming more familiar with those names. And it seems like when all these splashy directors retire, their namesake in popular culture will not be replaced by new movie directors, but rather by showrunners.

This got me thinking about how big the current TV space is. Some days it seems like there are more TV shows than there are people to watch them. And because there are so many shows, only a select few rise to the top and become what I refer to as, “The Talked About.”

“The Talked About” are the shows that have found a footprint in public discourse. Movie sites write articles about them. Reddit creates subreddits about them. Content creators vlog about them.  These shows are hash-tagging their a$$es all the way around Twitter. And, of course, most importantly, when you see the show yourself, you want to tell a friend about it.

“The Talked About” shows are not to be confused with the critical darlings or shows that get a ton of Emmy nominations, even though you’ve never heard to them. A good example would be that show Ramy, on Hulu. It won an Emmy even though not a single person was aware the show existed (which the creator admitted in his acceptance speech). Side note: Go watch one episode of that show and you’ll know exactly why critics loved it despite it being overwhelmingly average. We’ll leave it at that.

I admit this even for shows I loved. I thought “Devs” was great. But I’ll be the first to admit that it was not talked about other than the times I talked about it to myself. I don’t think Severance is a talked about show. I don’t think Hacks is a talked about show. I don’t even think personal favorite, The White Lotus, is a talked about show. The TV landscape is littered with shows like this.

See
The Wheel of Time
Big Sky
Virgin River
Equalizer
New Amsterdam
Loot
The Stand
Lost in Space
The Wilds
The Gilded Age
Foundation
Life and Beth
Invasion
Irma Vep
Good Girls
Physical
The Orville
Outer Range
Night Sky
Our Flag Means Death

I’m not saying you can’t personally like these shows. I’m just telling you that nobody, and I mean nobody, talks about these shows. Meanwhile, you have “The Talked About.”

Only Murders in the Building
The Boys
Squid Game
Game of Thrones
Umbrella Academy
Stranger Things
Euphoria
You
Ozark
Barry
Yellowstone
Ted Lasso
Better Call Saul
Succession
Peaky Blinders
Fleabag
Cobra Kai
Billions
Killing Eve
Big Little Lies
The Handmaid’s Tale
Bridgerton
What We Do In The Shadows
Normal People

Riddle me this: What are shows like Ted Lasso, Billions, and Euphoria, doing that shows like Foundation, Outer Range, and Virgin River are not?

To understand this, you need to break these “talked about” shows down into two categories. Big-budget and Normal Budget. Big Budget would be shows like The Boys, Squid Game, Stranger Things, and Peaky Blinders. Normal Budget would be shows like Barry, You, Euphoria, Cobra Kai, and Better Call Saul.

When it comes to Normal Budget, the formula seems to be, first and foremost, create a really interesting main character. The best bet appears to be a “bad” character who does bad things who we still like, usually because they’re taking on even worse people. Barry, You, and Better Call Saul fall under this category. Even the goofy Cobra Kai is built on this premise, as it celebrates the character of Johnny, a “bad” karate instructor who teaches his students how to defeat “even worse” karate students.

If you’re going low budget and don’t have a standout character, you need to add something to the plot to counter-balance this hole. I’d argue that neither Only Murders In The Building or Big Little Lies had stand out characters. But Murders is built around an intriguing mystery and Big Little Lies is a thriller constructed around a woman trying to escape a marriage. Both shows have genre components that help keep the plot zipping along.

From there, we move into the comedy space, and that’s where it’s harder to pinpoint what makes a show stand out. Ted Lasso is definitely an outlier in that the main character is the nicest guy in the world and endlessly optimistic. Usually shows have main characters with issues that they need to overcome. So I confess I don’t know why that show is popular other than people find it funny. Both What We Do In the Shadows and Fleabag are also really funny, each in different ways. Although I might slide Fleabag into the same category as Barry, Better Call Saul and You in that the main character is heavily flawed, yet we still want to see them succeed.

And Euphoria and Normal People are also outliers in that they cover extremely familiar territory (high school and romance) but do so with unique directing flairs that make them stand out. Euphoria goes deeper into the underbelly of high school than any other high school show you’ve seen. And Normal People is much rawer, and therefore realistic, than any young romance show.

Things get more complicated once you move into these bigger shows. But one thing that pops out at me immediately is that many of these shows embrace a, “We’re not going to sugarcoat s#@t” attitude. The shows aren’t afraid to kill characters off. They’re not afraid to say controversial things. They’re not afraid to be risky or unpredictable. Squid Game falls under this category. Game of Thrones does, especially the early seasons. The Boys. Succession. Billions. It’s been a while since I saw The Handmaid’s Tale, but it felt like that show embraced that mantra as well.

One of the things that’s surprised me in the last five years is how much audiences love a great period TV show. They love that big budget high production value period setting. Yellowstone, Peaky Blinders, The Queen’s Gambit. The more authenticity you can bring to these shows, the better. Audiences really want to live in these worlds. So you can’t half-a$$ your research. The Queen’s Gambit team had been trying to make that project for 15 years. They knew every single thing about that time and place so that when it was time to make the series, it felt authentic.

Then you have shows like Stranger Things and The Umbrella Academy which seem to be outliers in that I don’t think they exist in any clear genre. I’ve honestly never met anyone who’s seen The Umbrella Academy. But it’s definitely a talked about show on social media. I suspect that may be because the media really wants it to succeed. But Stranger Things, man…. I don’t know if there’s anything to learn about this show. It’s like Lost – the ultimate “caught lightning in a bottle” show. Remember how every single showrunner in Hollywood created a Lost knockoff and they all failed? That’s what I mean by “lightning in a bottle.”

I’m curious what you think the reason for Stranger Things’ success is and if it can be replicated. Because I don’t think it can be.

The big thing that inspired today’s post was hearing so much about this season of The Boys that I decided to give it another go. I want to see what it is about the show that makes it so “talk-worthy.” So don’t be surprised if you get a few “Boys” articles in the near future.

Genre: Comedy
Premise: Patricia Ford feels pretty good about trading her South Boston roots for a “perfect” life on New York’s Upper East Side, until everything falls apart and her raucous girlfriends throw her a Divorce Party at the home she’s about to lose. As the night goes from wild to totally insane, Patricia takes back control of her life.
About: Imagine being a writer nobody’s heard of with no credits and then finishing top five on the Black List! This life-changing experience happened to today’s writer, Rebecca Webb.
Writer: Rebecca Webb
Details: 105 pages

I will bet my retirement savings that Aniston plays Patricia.

I’ve put off reviewing the number 3 script on the Black List long enough. But it’s only fair that I give it a shot. Hey, I still remember when I waited two years to review the number one Black List script, Blonde Ambition, thinking it was going to be yet another boring biopic, and it turned out to be great! Can Divorce Party do the same?

I do think there’s something to building comedy scripts around trendy phrases in pop culture. There was a spec script that sold in 2006 called “Bromance” back when that word was a thing. We got “Cougarville” after the mainstreaming of the word “cougar.” And here, we’ve got “Divorce Party,” which follows one of the newer trends, having a party for your divorce.

An additional trait that helps elevate this concept is irony. You’re not supposed to have a party for a divorce. That’s what makes the whole ‘divorce party’ trend fun, and is why someone decided to turn it into a screenplay. Now let’s see if that screenplay is actually good.

We begin in the aftermath of the biggest party ever. A beautiful Hamptons home has been trashed beyond all recognition! Oh, and there’s a dead dude with an arrow in his head lying face-down in the pool. Whatever happened here was really bad.

Cut to several months earlier.

40-something Patricia Ford finds her long-time husband getting pegged by a 23 year old woman in a hotel room, initiating her worst case life scenario – DIVORCE! If that’s not bad enough, her ex-husband takes everything, leaving Patricia with nothing except for one night a year at their Hampton’s home.

Searching for meaning, Patricia visits her childhood best friend, Amy. Whereas Patricia has become uptight and socially conditioned by her rich New York lifestyle, Amy still dances on Boston bar tops and beats up anybody she doesn’t like. She’s the anti-Patricia. And she thinks the solution to this divorce is a DIVORCE PARTY.

So Patricia invites all of her friends to the Hamptons on the one night of the year that she gets the house, and the group buys a ton of sex toys that they then play games with. As they get more and more drunk, they head to a local bar, where they meet a bunch of men, who they invite back to the house.

After each woman explores the sexual potential that their current relationships aren’t giving them, they find themselves, inexplicably, tied up. That’s because… THIS IS A ROBBERY! I guess these men are professional divorce party targeters who systematically befriend divorce parties that have taken detours to local bars then came home with them so they can rob them. Ummm…. Yeah!

So that happens. And after the men leave, our ladies learn a valuable lesson. Which is that divorce parties are dumb. Or maybe that it’s worth getting all your things stolen if it wisens you up and makes you realize that life is hard and you need to keep overcoming obstacles… or something. Or maybe there’s some other lesson here. Oh, and if you’re wondering who killed the dead guy in the pool, let’s just say you’re going to be disappointed.

Divorce Party wants to be the next Hangover or Bridesmaids.

But it’s missing a very important screenwriting ingredient to achieve this feat.

A clear destination.

In The Hangover, the clear destination is finding Doug, the missing groom. In Bridesmaids, the clear destination is the wedding. We know that’s where we’re headed.

Divorce Party doesn’t have that. The destination is the divorce party, so we’re technically at our destination by page 40. Now, what are we supposed to hang around for? Because I’m sorry, but “shenanigans” isn’t enough. The reader needs a destination.

Webb tries to solve this by creating a murder-mystery element. We start our movie at the end, a la Sunset Boulevard, with a dead guy floating face down, in a Hamptons pool, at a house that’s been decimated by the titular “divorce party.” We then intersperse post-party police interrogations of all the women, as we try to get to the bottom of what happened.

The issue with this approach is that nobody seems all that concerned about the dead man. Everyone’s rather blasé about it, which takes the one element that’s pushing the plot forward – the murder-mystery – and neuters it.

Of course, nobody comes to a comedy film for the plot. They just want to laugh. So does Divorce Party make you laugh?

I think if you’re a 40-50 year old woman, it will.

I don’t think anybody else is going to laugh, to be honest. The jokes and writing are highly specific (“Despite Bonnie’s best efforts, the house is still a cross between a Nancy Meyer wet-dream and a wing of the Whitney”). What the heck is “The Whitney??”

That’s not a dig at the script. I’d actually prefer that a comedy target a specific demographic than go with generic poop and fart jokes that are attempting to make 99% of the planet laugh. Even when you’re laughing at those films, the laughs are always hollow.

To Webb’s credit, there’s an undercurrent of drama here that gives the script more depth than your average comedy. There’s a harsh exploration of how terrifying it is for a woman in her 40s to get divorced. And if there’s an underlining theme, it’s that a lot of women hang on to their marriages not because they love their husbands, but because they’re terrified of being alone.

I feel like any screenplay that can connect the reader to some truth hits harder than the screenplay that doesn’t. And Webb seems to have some keen insight into the world of marriage in your 40s.

She also does a good job with the key friendship in the story between Patricia and Amy. You could feel the pain in Amy when Patricia shows up after 20 years, looking for a shoulder to cry on. Some of the better scenes in the script are when the two try and reconcile their broken friendship, with Patricia admitting that she’s been terrible.

The contrast between the characters – Amy doing whatever she wants and not fearing consequences, and Patricia doing whatever she’s supposed to do in desperate fear of the consequences – makes them fun to watch. You couldn’t ask for two people who were more opposite.

Comedy often comes from contrast. So the more opposites you can have bumping up against each other, the better. And when I say “opposites” I don’t just mean people. I mean anything that’s the opposite. One of Larry David’s best Curb Your Enthusiasm episodes involves a Palestinian chicken restaurant located next to a Jewish deli. Two opposites.

Much like the bulk of the 2021 Black List, though, Webb is clearly a newcomer. One of the easiest ways to tell is all the dual-side dialogue. Nobody I know who’s written more than three screenplays uses dual-side dialogue except maybe for one line when they’re really emphasizing two characters talking over each other. Otherwise, it’s a purely beginner habit.

Which should be motivating to you guys. Cause it shows that you don’t have to be perfect to make the Black List.

Divorce Party is a tough call. It’s probably a better drama than it is a comedy. But it’s marketed as a comedy. So… how do I judge this thing? I suppose I recommend it. I very well may be lowering my standards because we’ve gotten so few good scripts off the Black List lately. But it does have a nifty little twist ending that makes you feel good. And if you make the reader feel good at the end of your script, they’re probably going to recommend it.

Script link: Divorce Party

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

What I learned: This is smack dab exactly where you want to be for a comedy script – at 105 pages. You do not want to go ONE PAGE OVER 105 for a comedy.

What I learned 2: An ironic comedic premise is always better than a non-ironic one. Divorce Party is better than Christmas Party. Whereas Christmas parties are expected, you’re not supposed to celebrate something as sad as divorce (where is where the irony comes from!).

No, this is not my response to the entries! But there is a projectile vomit scene in one of the featured scripts!

Today we’re going to look at ten entries from the Scriptshadow First Act Contest. For those who don’t know my judging process, I give each entry at least 10 pages. From there, I keep reading until I get bored. If the script manages to keep me reading all the way to page 30, it advances to the next round. From there, I’ll re-evaluate every script that advanced, pick five finalists, then choose a winner.

Today, I’ll be letting you know a) what page I made it to, and b) if the script advanced or not. Also, just so there’s no confusion, I’ll often open a script without reading the logline because I want the writing to speak for itself. Therefore, if I seem confused by something in my analysis that’s easily explained in the logline, you know why. By the way, roughly 1 in 30 scripts are advancing, so there’s little margin for error. Let’s get to it!

Title: Haven
Genre: Supernatural Crime Drama
Logline: Held on an isolated farm, three desperate and debt-ridden scientists have twenty-four hours to recreate a failed experiment. When their captors seek to erase the secrets of the site, its full, terrifying potential is unleashed and their logical world descends into chaos.
Writer: Ben Allan Watkins

Analysis: There were a couple of things right off the bat that hurt this entry. First, we have a second page dedicated to the script’s logline. You don’t want to do that. That’s a pretty overt sign that an amateur writer is writing the script. But the more damning mistake was introducing the main character, Sam, without a character description or even an age. You can’t make that mistake. From there, I couldn’t really understand where I was or what was going on. I was in some sort of farm, as far as I could tell. It was a commune, maybe? People were sleeping everywhere. Nobody seemed to be related, which is where I drew the “commune” assumption from. When it’s hard to figure out even the basic building blocks of a story, that’s a script killer. Those early pages cannot, under any circumstances, be confusing. I would encourage Ben to work harder on his clarity. Put yourself in the reader’s shoes. Ask, if you were them, would you easily be able to tell what was going on? If not, add more information.

Read until: Page 10
Advance?: No

Title: Killer Instinct
Genre: Action Comedy
Logline: A man gets injected with a pheromone-based serum that makes anybody who smells him suddenly want to kill him…
Writer: Mike Hurst

Analysis: This entry felt more professional. But it was a mixed bag and, ultimately, I had a couple of issues with it. The first scene is a senator beating up a woman and then throwing her out a window to her death. That’s a dangerous scene to write in a post #metoo world, even if it’s motivated by the concept. But that wasn’t my main issue. My main issue was that the woman was super sick or something. She could barely stand? So she’s got her own weird thing going on (sickness). Then this senator comes in and has a completely different thing going on (rage). So there’s just no consistency across the scene. I suspect it will later be revealed that the woman’s sickness is what activated his rage. But, in the moment, there are too many rules being thrown at us so the scene doesn’t go down easy. By the way, I would recommend switching genders here. Have the senator be a woman. Have the person in the hotel room be a guy. It’s a way more interesting scene if a woman easily beats this guy up. Not bad writing at all. Had a good laugh later in the classroom scene. But that opening scene was problematic enough that I decided not to advance Killer Instinct.

Read until: Page 10
Advance?: No

Title: Too Old to Rock and Roll, Too Young to Die
Genre: Comedy
Logline: When they are mistakenly plucked from obscurity to headline a summer festival tour, a band of middle-aged Dads have four weeks to live out their rock and roll fantasies and learn that not all dreams are quite what they seem.
Writer: David Glitzer

Analysis: Comedy is a funny thing. Just like it’s hard to make a joke funny by explaining it, it’s hard to explain why a joke didn’t make you laugh. Here we open on a guy who works in a bird store and the recurring joke in the scene is all the birds say dirty sexual sexual things (“Lick my balls.” “Tickle my a$$hole”). I just didn’t understand why all the birds were sexual. I thought maybe they overheard the owner having a lot of sex all the time? And they were parroting the things they heard from his dirty sexual exploits? The problem was that the owner was described as a loser who owns a bird store. So that would imply he doesn’t have a lot of sex. Which brings me back to the birds. Why do they scream out sexual things? Frankly, I just didn’t get the joke. That’s followed by a projectile vomiting scene and I was pretty much out from there. As I’ve said numerous times, I think body fluid jokes are lowest common denominator comedy. I like comedy that’s more clever. That’s just me personally. Doesn’t mean the next reader won’t like it. But, obviously, if I wasn’t connecting with the comedy, I can’t advance the script.

Read until: Page 10
Advance?: No

Title: Swift Wing <—- Carson note: Needs a better title!
Genre: Science Fiction/Dramedy
Logline: On a dying wish, two explorers land on a strange planet in search of the legendary Winged Creatures, but the local inhabitants believe otherwise and try to kill the alien invaders.
Writer: Bruce Richardson

Analysis: A lot of times when you read a script, you’re just reading things that are happening. The writer isn’t in that mindset of “I must write a series of events that are so good, the reader cannot stop reading.” That “non-urgent mindset” is what leads to scripts like this one. Nothing here is bad. But nor is it “I must turn the page” good. We’ve got some beginner errors. When characters are introduced, their names are not capitalized. A park ranger is casually shooting and killing people. I suppose, if this is a comedy, casually killing people can work. But it seemed a little *too* casual. It just felt like life didn’t matter in this story, which is a bad way to start any story because it lowers the stakes. If lives are unimportant, then who really cares what happens to anyone? The two aliens who show up were *mildly* amusing. But I needed them to be *highly* amusing to keep reading. This is a classic example of the writer not understanding what the bar is. Cause I think Bruce is a good writer. But he’s not writing scenes that knock you out. He’s writing scenes that casually nudge you along. No nudging please. Readers don’t respond to nudges.

Read until: Page 10
Advance?: No.

Title: Paramedics on Patrol <—- Carson note: Needs a better title!
Genre: Thriller
Logline: A mysterious woman wakes up inside an ambulance to find she’s being abducted.
Writer: David Fabian

Analysis: This is the best of the batch so far. It’s a really fun idea. You wake up in an ambulance. You don’t know what happened to you. Then all of a sudden you start to suspect these aren’t really paramedics. And you may be getting abducted. That’s a movie premise right there for sure. I think the problem David runs into is that he moves the plot along too quickly. I know that’s a criticism that seems counterintuitive since I’m always saying to move the story along fast. But he’s got such a good setup that he should be milking it. I just feel like if we’re on page 20 and we’re already getting into the abducted woman’s secret life and reasons for why this entity wants to kidnap her – I don’t find that interesting. Her having some secret thing going on is a good plot twist but you don’t want to bring that up until the midpoint. Until then, this should be about her gradually realizing she’s been abducted. And instead of screaming at them, “You’re kidnapping me! Stop!” She should be more discreet about it and start to work the problem, figure out a way to escape. In other words, the story is more interesting when both sides are keeping secrets. Once everything’s out in the open, it’s just a screaming contest. I’m going to do something rare and advance this even though I didn’t get to page 30. Even though I feel like I’d need to guide David a lot to get this where it needed to be, the idea has a ton of potential. I would tell David, start writing a version of this where she suspects she’s being kidnapped but doesn’t tell them. And she starts working the puzzle. Trying to figure out who these guys are. Trying to figure out where they’re headed. Trying to figure out how she’s going to escape.  There can be a scene where the bad guys are both up in the front for a minute and she tries to reach her phone and contact someone. We want those types of scenes, at least at first, rather than all this screaming nonsense. Oh, and one more quick thing, David. It’s “were,” not “we’re!!!!!”

Read until: Page 23
Advance?: Yes

Title: Gutshot
Genre: Thriller
Logline: A cop-turned-snitch fights to survive a night in the wild as she bleeds out from a gunshot wound sustained during a failed kidnapping attempt by her former partners.
Writer: Caleb Yeaton

Analysis: This script has the right idea. You start by showing a bad guy staking out a house, about to do something bad. Cut to inside the house to show unsuspecting people, in this case, a couple of women (or maybe one woman, with the other one being on the phone, it wasn’t clear) and now we have this dramatically ironic situation brewing where we know the women are in danger. But here’s the problem. None of this was clear. When the bad guy drives up, we’re told there are other people in his car, so I thought it was a family and, therefore, didn’t tab him as dangerous. Therefore, when we were in the house, we get this endlessly boring conversation between these two women where they’re talking about some random trial we know nothing about. This goes on for five pages (!!!). I was fighting to keep my eyes open. Granted, this dialogue plays a lot better if I know the bad guy is lurking outside. But it’s up to the writer to make that clear. I think so many writers are terrified of being on-the-nose that they’re too subtle with the details of their scenes. But the details are everything, especially in a scene like this, where, if we’re confused about even one variable, we miss the point of the whole scene. Also, the dialogue between the women here needs to be 10,000 times better. It just doesn’t have anything going for it. Needed more purpose.

Read until: Page 10
Advance?: No.

Title: Artificial Obsession
Genre: Sci-Fi
Logline: After a video of her goes viral to the world, a small town cop gets caught in the most dangerous love triangle in history when the first artificial superintelligence capable of taking over the planet becomes romantically obsessed with her.
Writer: Gregory Mandaro

Analysis: I’m not in love with the choice of spending the first two pages of the script focusing on an interview on the TV in a restaurant. I understand that we have to get exposition in somehow, especially if it’s complex exposition. But those first ten pages are such valuable real estate that I don’t think spending them on a television interview that doesn’t contain any of our main characters is the best way to go. From there, we get a random Twitch streamer approaching our heroine, who’s waiting for her date at the aforementioned restaurant. This leads to more exposition regarding our heroine’s deaf sister, who, coincidentally, is also a streamer. You’re trying to cram three different things into this scene (TV interview, girl waiting for her date who hasn’t shown up, random Twitch streamer who stumbles up and decides to have a conversation with our heroine). It makes for a clumsy reading experience. It was hard for the script to recover after that. We then get a chase scene (our heroine is a cop) which was fine, with a decent reveal at the end (there was no one in the car she was chasing – it’s A.I. driven). It was nice that Greg gave us a scene with something exciting happening. But that first scene really did the script in for me. That’s not the kind of clear entertaining streamlined scene you want to open a script with.  Let’s focus less on exposition and more on entertainment in the next draft (straight up starting the script with the car chase and the “no one inside” reveal would be a much better first scene).

Read until: Page 10
Advance?: No.

Title: SYSTEM ERROR (alt: A CYBORG MANIFESTO)
Tag: What happens when you’re the glitch in the system?
Genre: Sci-Fi
Logline: When her brain-implanted medical device suddenly develops a personality, a codependent geneticist must save the rest of a tech-addicted humanity from the same glitchy global update.
Writer: Katie Gard

Analysis: It’s good to finally see Katie get in on the action. She always contributes thoughtful and inquisitive comments. I started off liking this one due to the intense specificity regarding the computer talk. A ton of world-building went into this and it pays off. I liked the stuff where she controls “skins” on the people she’s talking to. So she can make her 60 year old therapist look like Tom Cruise in Risky Business. I can see how that would lead to some interesting character situations. If you were with an average looking boyfriend, in order to make him look more attractive during sex, say, you could just add a skin to him. And he doesn’t even have to know. But what if he suspects that’s what you did because the heroine was more into the sex than normal? Now you have some interesting conversations to play around with. So I like that this setup makes you think. My issue is more on the storytelling end. 10 pages go by and what’s really happened? A woman has talked with her fake AI therapist and we’ve gotten some flashbacks to explain why she has a special ability to control the variables by which she sees the world. It’s essentially all exposition. Where is the entertainment? I suppose some of it comes from learning about this cool technology. But that can’t carry the entire load. You need to come up with scenes that ‘show don’t tell’ and have fun with them. Take my boyfriend example above. Start with them having sex, he’s suspicious after it’s over, he asks if she used a skin on him, something they agreed not to do. Guilty, we see from her POV as he goes from Zack Efron to Paul Giamatti, and now you’ve given us exposition in a more dramatic, and therefore, entertaining way. What I read was not bad but we need the storytelling to come up to the same level as the world building.

Read until: Page 14
Advance?: No.

Title: Druid
Genre: Horror
Logline: After returning to his family home on the wild North York Moors, a failed businessman must battle for survival against the human-hunting worshippers of a prehistoric god.
Writer: Finn Morgan

Analysis: “Druid” has the right idea. It starts off with a big snazzy cold open. A guy in an animal mask in the middle of nowhere throws himself in front of a BMW and gets obliterated. What was that all about? We have to keep reading to find out. We then meet a guy who tries to kill himself but fails. He goes home to his ex-girlfriend. Looks like they’ve broken up. This dude has definitely seen better days. Then he moves from the city back to his farm, I think. And immediately he sees someone in an animal mask chase someone else in an animal mask onto his property and kill them. He then has to run from the killer, and a chase ensues. To Finn’s credit, there’s a lot going on here, unlike many of today’s entries. I don’t know why I wasn’t more into it, though. The main character’s suicide attempt gives him some depth which makes us root for him. I guess my hesitancy comes from already having seen the whole “animal mask” thing before. So maybe it feels a little cliche to me. Not new enough? All I know is that around page 15, I wasn’t compelled to continue reading. I didn’t *have* to find out what happened next. And that’s the ultimate question in a script. Always. Have you created something that readers can’t *not* keep reading? I’d put this in the upper 30th percentile of today’s entries. But it wasn’t quite enough to advance.

Read until: Page 15
Advance?: No.

Title: America or Die
Genre: Action-Adventure
Logline: Post World War III, a fierce backcountry woman is enslaved to the Balkan Federation’s cruel Defense Minister and ends up in a do-or-die struggle for freedom.
Writer: Joe Stevens

Analysis: This is another script that does some things right. After setting up the post World War 3 world we live in via a title scroll, we meet this small community of non-technological people. The people are then attacked by a group with motorcycles and cars and drones. The pursuit soon centers on our heroine, Shelby. But here’s a crucial component to writing that you have to nail. Before Shelby gets chased, you gotta give us a reason to love her, to root for her, so that we care when she’s chased. Cause I didn’t care. The only thing I know about this person is that she thinks prayer is a waste of time. That’s not enough insight for me to say, “Oh my god! I’ll be miserable if these guys catch her!” Whether it’s through a save-the-cat scene or a more elaborate protagonist setup that really makes us like this woman, you need that part. Big action scenes carry with them a natural intensity. So they can be a good choice early on in a script. But if we don’t care enough about the characters involved in that big action scene, we’re not going to care what happens to them.

Read until: Page 13
Advance?: No.

And there you have it! One script advances. Congratulations to David Fabian. Download the scripts themselves above. I’ve provided links to all of them. Tell us what you think. Did I make a gigantic mistake and miss an obvious finalist? Let me have it. If you guys liked this exercise, let me know, and I’ll do another one next week. :)

Happy Weekend!

GET PROFESSIONAL FEEDBACK BEFORE YOU SEND YOUR SCRIPT OUT THERE!!! – I give screenwriting consultations for every step of the process, whether it be loglines (just $25!), e-mail queries, plot summaries, outlines, Zoom brainstorming sessions, first pages, first acts, full pilots, full features. E-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com if you’re interested in any type of consultation.  I want to help you make your script as good as it can possibly be!