Genre: Sci-Fi/Spy Thriller
Premise: (from IMDB) Armed with only one word, Tenet, and fighting for the survival of the entire world, a Protagonist journeys through a twilight world of international espionage on a mission that will unfold in something beyond real time.
About: Tenet has had a complicated release journey. There was all this behind-the-scenes talk about how Christopher Nolan wanted Tenet to be the film that saved the movie business. He wasn’t just releasing this for Warner Brothers. He was releasing it for the world! But it’s said Nolan nearly had a heart attack when it was suggested that Tenet would need to be played in – GASP – drive-in theaters! All of a sudden, Nolan considered waiting until the pandemic was over. In the end, the movie was forced into an unenviable staggered release pattern. Some places would get it, some wouldn’t, which would make box office boasting – a key marketing tool for studios – difficult. Tenet isn’t even playing in my home town, Hollywood. How ironic is that? I had to travel down to San Diego to see the film. But see the film I did.
Writer: Christopher Nolan
Details: 150 minutes

Tenet.

It’ll open the right doors.

Some of the wrong ones too.

That’s a line from the movie. Which is apropos considering Christopher Nolan himself has opened some of the right doors with Tenet, but also many of the wrong ones.

The Protagonist (yes, that’s our hero’s name) is a CIA agent who tries to kill himself via a suicide pill rather than give up his men. But it wasn’t a suicide pill. It was a test. To see who was willing to go the distance. Now that he’s proven his worth, he’s been recruited into a next level mission. It’s called Tenet. Unfortunately, that’s all he’s told. I guess the Protagonist will have to figure out the rest on his own!

He eventually meets up with a female version of Morpheus who explains what “tenet” is – it’s time inversion. The secret tenet gatekeepers keep finding these small artifacts – such as bullets – that do things backwards. So instead of shooting the bullet, you “receive” the bullet back into the gun. Female Morpheus doesn’t know where these artifacts are coming from. That will be the Protagonists’s job.

A lot of stuff happens here but, long story short, the Protagonist bumps into a sloppy drunk named Neil, who may or may not work for a secret organization, and the two interrogate the manufacturer of the inverted bullets, a billionaire Indian woman named Priya. It turns out these bullets are being manufactured in the future. So Priya doesn’t even know she’s manufactured them yet (or does she? Tenet).

All signs of these inverted weapons point to a Russian oligarch named Andrei Sator. Sator is so big time that the Protagonist’s only way in is through his wife, Kat. Kat hates Sator, so there’s an opening there. She’s only still with him because he refuses to give her her son if she leaves. To prove his value to Kat, the Protagonist steals a painting for her. Okay, she says, she’ll introduce him.

The details are complicated, but to sum it up, Sator is secretly receiving gold and inverted weapons from his future self. This is what’s allowed him to become so freaking rich. He has also been searching for seven deliberately hidden pieces of a super weapon in the past from the future (Tenet). Once he finds all seven pieces, he will activate them, creating a super-inversion situation whereby the present and future will collide and the world will be destroyed.

Sator momentarily lets the Protagonist into his inner circle when he learns that he knows about tenet. Meanwhile, the Protagonist’s buddy, Neil, is looking for that seventh and final piece to the Wand of Inversion. They must get that final piece before Sator does. It’s the only way to stop the extinction level event. But then everything is complicated when it’s revealed that Sator has rigged himself so that if he commits suicide, the inversion event will happen automatically. I think. You think. Maybe. Maybe not? Tenet.

The one inarguable thing I’ve always said about Christopher Nolan is that he’s a great filmmaker.

He shoots everything in camera. There are no special effects. He’s said in numerous interviews that he believes the audience can feel when something has been done for real as opposed to with computer graphics. And I agree with that.

He casts his movies well. Everybody here is awesome. John David Washington is the perfect 2020 movie star. He’s got that screen presence a movie star needs yet he’s not too masculine. He almost has this cool feminine side to his demeanor that balances him out, making him easily accessible to audiences. I’m in love with Elizabeth Debicki. On the contrary, there’s something almost inaccessible about her that makes her alluring. She may be the perfect female star for a Christopher Nolan film. Kenneth Branaugh is over the top here, but my desire to see Sator go down proves that whatever he was doing was effective. Even Robert Pattinson was solid. He certainly looks good in those suits they dressed him up in.

And just the production value of a Christopher Nolan movie is so impressive. There was this moment around the halfway point where the characters are all out on one of those double-pontoon sailing skiffs. That scene did a better job of transporting me to another place than anything I’ve seen so far this year. Cause, to me, that’s what a Hollywood movie should do. It should take you to places you’ve never been. Show you things you’ve never seen.

And as much grief as I give Nolan for his pretentious film school approach (I mean who titles their main character “The Protagonist” other than an insufferable pretentious film school student? Come on.), he’s literally the only mega budget filmmaker making his own stuff. Without him, it’s all Disney and Marvel folks.

Maybe that’s why it’s so frustrating that Tenet didn’t work.

I fear that Nolan is approaching George Lucas level bubble territory. That elusive world where nobody says ‘no’ to you because of how successful you are. And this is the type of movie that requires a strong “no” person. It’s such a heady concept that if you don’t have people in your circle saying, “I don’t understand that, it needs to be clearer,” the movie isn’t going to work. And that appears to be what happened.

I mean there’s this moment early on where Female Morpheus is explaining to the Protagonist how inversion works. She hints at this idea of a Matrix like situation. That you can control this power. He tries to make the bullet come up to his hand but it won’t. “You have to drop it first” she says. He tries again, this time the bullet comes into his hand. But he didn’t drop it. She literally said, “You have to drop it first.” And he didn’t drop it and it still came up to his hand. The fact that nobody stopped to ask if the audience would be confused after that moment encapsulated what was wrong here.

The insurmountable issue with Tenet is that “inversion” is a difficult concept to understand. The more you think about it, the less it makes sense. That’s why you’re getting so many reactions that describe the film as “frustrating.” Because people don’t understand how the central concept of the film works.

One of the reasons the Matrix was so great was because its central concept was so easy to understand. “We’re unknowingly living in a virtual reality.” Boom. Understood! Tenet is the opposite. Even right now, as I’m writing this, I’m trying to figure out if inverted objects work under a different set of rules than inverted people. Aren’t inverted people on a pre-set tape? They’ve already gone that way (backwards), so there’s nothing you can do to stop them. These objects, however, you seem to be able to do unique things to them on a repeatable basis. Make them go backwards into your gun over and over again, for example. How does that make sense?

Nolan only makes things harder on himself with a borderline incomprehensible plot. I could take a UCLA course on why the Protagonist needed to a) steal a painting and b) do it by crashing an airplane and still not understand the logic, or what it had to do with the rest of the movie. He only exacerbates this issue by extending the film out to two and a half hours. It gives the audience even more time to get lost.

Maybe the best representation of what went wrong with this movie was the climax. In theory, it was a fun idea. You’re using both regular and inverted soldiers to obtain the final piece of the staff. I love that idea. But that’s all it ended up being, an idea. The actual execution was bizarre. We’re seeing soldiers head onto the battlefield while, simultaneously, soldiers leave the battlefield via the inverted timeline. They had already been through the mission.

So my first thought was, “Well then you already know you were successful, right?” But then I thought, “Wait, those are the different soldiers. Not the same ones.” “Or wait, are they the same soldiers?” The fact that I was still asking these questions this late in the game confirms how poorly the rules were explained to us. Because, at this point, I should be enjoying the moment. Instead, I’m trying to make sense of it all.

Nolan needs a “No” man moving forward or he’s in danger of becoming a parody of himself. A lot of us saw this as far back as Inception, which relied too heavily on exposition. Then came Interstellar, which had a lazy wonky structure. And now this. An idea that doesn’t even work at the concept stage.

Look, Nolan is a great filmmaker. Nobody argues that. But he needs to take a hard look in the mirror when it comes to his writing. He’s not doing himself any favors there. The one clean narrative he’s had out of his last four films was Dunkirk and the reason for that is that the timeline was simple. Everything happened on the same day. Moving forward, focus on what you’re good at – the directing side. But when it comes to writing, unless you’re going to hire people whose professional job it is to write, don’t do any more of these overly complicated concepts with sprawling narratives. They don’t hold together.

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

What I learned: You want your ending to be the biggest exploitation of your concept of the entire movie. Tenet got this right. The movie is about time inversion. So what better an ending than throwing both regular AND inverted soldiers at the enemy? Sort of an “attack on the Death Star” but with multiple timeines happening at once. The only reason it didn’t work was because the concept was weak to begin with. But this is the right move as a screenwriter. If your movie is about dinosaurs on an island, your climax better deliver the best dinosaur versus human situation we could possibly imagine. It shouldn’t feature a plane crash.

Genre: Horror
Premise: A mother and her twin teenage sons live in a remote cabin where they’ve developed a system to protect themselves from the evil that has destroyed the rest of the world.
About: Shawn Levy can’t get enough! Even after becoming Netflix’s number 2 man behind Reed Hastings, the Stranger Things producer wants an even bigger piece of the entertainment pie. This time he’s teaming up with Lionsgate to produce today’s spec script, written by newbies Kevin Coughlin and Ryan Grassby. Yes, Coughlin and Grassby have a couple of produced credits, but come on, one look at those credits and you know they had nothing to do with this sale. I’m pointing this out as a reminder that it’s possible for all of you to break in with a spec script. Never give up. Never surrender!
Writer: Kevin Coughlin & Ryan Grassby.
Details: 103 pages

Ruth Wilson for Momma?

Are crazy moms the new trend??

I dunno.

First Raised by Wolves and now this! I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before we get a coalition of mothers marching down Sunset Boulevard infuriated about their stereotyped representation in film. Until then, let’s all enjoy the craziness. Because it’s oh so boring when everything is running smoothly, don’t you think?

Momma lives in a remote cabin in the woods with her 14 year old twin boys, Nolan and Samuel. We can tell right away that something’s up. They have to pluck crickets, pick plums, and and set squirrel traps just to eat. Nothing like a plum squirrel sandwich.

Oh, and they all wear ropes around their waists that are tied to the house. Nobody can ever go anywhere without a rope. They’re like Motherland’s version of corona masks. Except instead of being shamed on Twitter, you’re killed.

By who?

That would be the “evil.” The “evil” is what destroyed the rest of the world, leaving this family as the only three human beings left. Luckily, Momma figured out how to defeat Evil. You have to always wear a rope. Lose the rope and Evil will snatch you up and pull you away.

Whereas Samuel is Team Rope, Nolan has lots of questions about the ordeal. Just how far has Mother looked? Is she SURE they’re the last people on the planet? Mother says she is absolutely sure.

However, things get real when Momma dies and they start starving. It would sure be nice, Nolan thinks, if they could go beyond the radius of these stupid ropes to look for more food. One day, he’s had it. So he goes to the edge of his rope and screams, “Help!”

Twenty minutes later, a hiker shows up. He sees the emaciated Nolan and tells him he can help. Let’s get you back to my truck. Just then, Samuel shows up with his crossbow. He tells the man, who he believes is the Evil, to leave. Confused, the man pleads his case, only to be shot.

Nolan and Samuel will have to figure out soon which worldview is the real one. Cause either more people are going to show up looking for this man, or Evil in Disguise is going to keep coming until it’s tricked and murdered them. The day of reckoning is near.

One word I’d use to describe this script?

Ambitious.

I wouldn’t have said that when I started reading it. But by the time I finished it, I realized there were a couple of complex themes being explored. Were those themes explored successfully? I’ll get there in a second. First, let’s break Motherhood down.

Here’s what I liked about the script. It built its entire structure around your expectations. Remember that awful M. Night movie, The Village? The one where a bunch of people are living in the year 1850, deep within a forest village? Then, at the end of the movie, we realize they’ve all been tricked and it’s actually present day?

Motherland could’ve done the same thing. Instead, it leans into the possibility that the children are being lied to. That makes us think, “Oh, we’ve been down this road before. It’s another Village situation!” This makes us feel smart, like we’re ahead of the story.

But then, just as we believe that the big reveal will be made and we can throw our hands up in victory: “See! We knew all along! We’re movie cinephiles!!!” Instead, Coughlin and Grassby start throwing in doubts that we’re living in the village. Maybe, just maybe, Mother was being truthful the whole time.

This is what saves the script. Because now, in these final 30 pages, you’re not sure which is true. Were the kids lied to or is there really an “evil?”

On top of that, Motherland explores the theme of perception in a very thoughtful way. All of us are the sum of our influences. Our parents, our friends, our faith, the things we read, the news we consume. All of that forms our belief system – how we see the world.

Motherland strips that down so that there’s only one influence – her. And what that does is it allows us to see how powerful influence can be. If you’re a kid who’s only ever known one parental figure and, therefore, they are the only one providing you with a worldview, it’s possible for you to have a completely incorrect worldview despite the fact that you’re positive it’s the right one.

That reality alone is a horror movie.

Because think about it. That’s exactly what’s going on right now. We’re all following our own “Mothers” who are giving us all the “correct” information, and we’re basing our entire approach to life around that. And many of us, despite not knowing it, are dead wrong in our world view. And no, I’m not going to get into the specifics about who because it literally happens on all sides.

But the point is, by distilling everything down to one influencing variable, it puts a spotlight on the theme of influence so that we understand how powerful it can be.

With that being said, there were times where the script couldn’t stand on its own two feet due to its shaky rule set. For example, the ropes. Let’s think about this for a second. We’re told that the ropes are magical lassos protecting us from the “evil.” If your rope is cut, you are susceptible to being eaten or murdered or taken away by the “evil.”

This rule alone had issues. The mother can see Evil in physical form but the kids cannot? So wait. If the evil has the choice of not showing itself, which it clearly does since the kids don’t see it, then wouldn’t it choose not to be seen by Momma as well?

That would allow it the advantage of being able to sneak up on Momma whenever it wanted. Sure, staring at momma in the form of a creepy delusional old woman makes for a creepy moment. But it’s working against its own goal, which is to kill her. Every time you show me how scary you can be, I’m going to be even more diligent about making sure I don’t fall for your tricks.

But that isn’t the real part that bothered me. The real part was the rope carried a convenient dramatic safeguard for the writer. Had there been no rope, the kids would’ve easily been able to confirm whether there was a Walmart six blocks away. Which made me think back to the original purpose of the rope. Which is to protect each of them from Evil killing them.

So Evil can’t kill people if they have a *rope* around them??? What????

The more you thought about it, the less it made sense. And because that rule was a story pillar (a centerpiece for how the story operated), it weakened the over impact. Again, this is why A Quiet Place was such a perfect concept execution. No crazy conflicting rules. If you made a noise, you were dead.

I’m torn about Motherland.

It’s imaginatively sloppy, which is about as backward a compliment as I can give. But that rope stuff – I concede that that type of visual works well in horror. Combine that with the “evil” being able to take on many creepy forms and you’ve got yourself a really effective trailer. There may be something here. It’s enough for me to recommend the read. But just barely.

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

What I learned: Have a character answer their own question – This is an old dialogue trick that I’ve always liked. At one point, Nolan asks Momma if what she’s saying about the world is true. Normally, these kinds of question and answer exchanges have NOTHING to do with the characters. They’re solely put there as a way for the writer to get exposition to the reader. The average writer would then have Momma explain what happened to the world to convince her son that, yes, it’s all real. Instead, Coughlin and Grassby have Momma give Nolan a stern look. Nolan then begins to recite the story *that mother has already told him dozens of times before about what happened to the world*. It’s all exposition but we don’t notice it as much when the character asking the question is also answering. For whatever reason, there’s something about when Character A asks and Character B answers that screams, “HERE’S EXPOSITION FOR YOU.” Cover that up with a character answering their own question.

1997’s The Postman was voted the most boring movie of all time

I was talking to a screenwriter the other day and we got on the topic of reading scripts. I asked her how many scripts she’d read this year. Her answer surprised me. She said, “How many have I finished or how many have I read in total?”

“Uh, how many have you read in total?” I responded, a little confused.

“About 60.”

This is the moment when I remind you guys how important reading scripts is for a screenwriter. It is where things you could never quite define which annoyed you in movies all of a sudden become clear. It is where you decode the screenwriting matrix.

I am not being hyperbolic here. Reading scripts is almost as important to your screenwriting education as writing them. That’s because you can keep making the same mistakes again and again if all you’re doing is writing scripts. It’s only through objectively seeing mistakes in other screenplays that you learn to correct your own.

I still remember this writer years back who was decent but lacked the skills to truly bump his screenplays up to a professional level. His biggest issue was a lack of detail. His scripts and his dialogue were always way too sparse. I’d tell him that if he wanted to improve this weakness, he needed to read scripts. But he didn’t see the point. Why wouldn’t I spend that time writing, was his argument. Fair enough. I’m not going to chain you down and force you to read if you don’t want to.

As it so happens, he went on to sell a script. It was a script I was familiar with and, to be honest, I was surprised. It was a fun concept but it had the same problem. It lacked depth. It was like a human being without any muscle. If he’d read a lot of screenplays, I have no doubt he would’ve known how to fix this.

But wait, Carson. He sold the script! Isn’t that what we’re all trying to do here? Didn’t he win the lottery? It depends on your definition of winning. As it happens, he spent the next three years trying to get work in the industry but was unsuccessful. He then tried to go back into spec-writing but none of his scripts went anywhere. He would eventually quit.

And while there’s no way to attribute any individual’s success or failure to a single variable, I’m convinced it’s because he never read a script. You don’t truly know how to write a screenplay until you’ve read a bunch of them. And not scripts from produced movies. Unproduced stuff, both good and bad.

Back to my conversation with the other writer, I asked her the obvious question: “And how many did you finish?”

“Three,” she said.

“Three??”

“Yeah,” she said, as if the answer were obvious.

“Why only three?”

“Because the other ones were either bad or boring.”

Okay, so here’s the thing, people. In the real world, as media consumers, all we have to do is either like something and keep watching it, or dislike something and stop watching it.

But that approach does not extend to the practice of reading scripts. When it comes to screenplays, you will probably learn more from the bad ones than the good ones. This is because you are bad. Or, to be more politically correct, you’re not yet good. And when you’re not good, you need to be shown other not good things on a consistent basis before those things register in your brain.

This is especially true if you’re new to this. If you’ve written under four scripts. You are of the belief that your screenwriting is a lot better than it is. I’m not saying your *writing.* Your writing may be great. I’m talking about screenwriting, this weird hacky version of writing that seems designed to make reading as unenjoyable as possible. You need to learn to perfect *that.* And seeing it done wrong over and over again is what helps it stick in your brain so that you don’t make the same mistakes yourself.

I’m in a unique position because I have a job where I’m required to read to the end of every script. If I wasn’t, I would admittedly bail on a lot more scripts. But it’s because I can’t bail that I’m able to talk about 683,000 different screenwriting topics a year. It’s because I’ve read a bunch of screenplays all the way to the end regardless of whether I liked them or not.

Only reading to the end of good scripts can be detrimental. Because when you read something great, everything about screenwriting feels easy. But it’s fool’s gold. What you’re experiencing isn’t an influx of skill. It’s an influx of excitement. You read something great so you want to write something great. And that kind of thing is awesome if you’re looking for motivation. But it’s not teaching you as much as the scripts that are bad. Or the scripts that are boring.

When you consistently read boring/bad scripts, what’ll happen is you’ll start identifying what doesn’t work in a clearer way specifically because it makes you so angry. Then, what happens is, you’ll be writing your own script a week or two later, and you’ll come across a similarity in your story to the script you disliked.

For example, maybe you hated the main character in the bad script because they were whiny. Now here you are in your script realizing that your hero could be categorized as whiny as well. This will immediately send you into defensive mode. “Well my character is different because a, b, c. And also, that script was a thriller and mine is a drama so it’s a different situation.” You’ll then keep writing but a few days later, you can’t get rid of this feeling that your character is just as annoying as that character you hated.

Now maybe you change your character and maybe you don’t. But the important thing is THAT YOU HAD THE CONVERSATION. Someone who doesn’t read scripts doesn’t have that conversation. They ignorantly assume their hero is fine because they wrote them and they’re a good writer so of course the character works. Without the experience of being bored by others’ writing, you challenge your own writing a lot less. That means you’re likely pushing an inferior product.

Some of you may say, “I watch plenty of bad movies, Carson. That’s where I learn what doesn’t work.” Sorry. Nope. With a movie, nothing is required of you. It’s a passive experience. Reading a script you dislike? That’s an active experience. You have to work to get through those pages. So it forces you to be more astute. And your anger at having to work for it actually benefits you. You see those things you dislike and because you’re being forced to endure them, they become tattooed to your brain. You say stuff to yourself like, “I will never ever do that in a script.”

But it’s more than that. With writing, you have to learn how to entertain people with words alone. You don’t have beautiful actors. You don’t have Academy Award winning cinematographers who make everything look beautiful. You don’t have an awesome score playing in the background. You have words. And using only words on a page is the hardest way to entertain people with a story. So you have to read the really bad scripts to learn what doesn’t work. To learn what not to do yourself.

So how many scripts should you be reading? At minimum, five a month. That’s only 60 a year. And that means reading the whole way through. No matter if they’re boring. No matter if they’re bad. And I got news for you. A majority of them will be. But that’s going to ensure that your scripts are neither of those things. :)

Genre: Comedy
Premise: Best friends and former time travelers Bill and Ted are called back by the heavens to save the world. All they have to do is write a song that unites every single person on the planet. And they’ve got 77 minutes to do it.
About: They have been trying to make this movie forever. I think since the late 90s. But Keanu was becoming a huge star and didn’t have the time. I believe that changed when Keanu hit that rough patch, doing 10 years of DTV work. Finally, he had the time to do another Bill and Ted movie. Ironically, that’s right when his career picked back up again with John Wick. But Keanu kept his promise to his buddy Alex Winter and here we are. These are also the original screenwriters from Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure.
Writers: Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon
Details: 90 minutes

The Keanusance?

Is that what they’re calling it?

Hey, as long as I keep getting Matrix and John Wick movies, I’ll call it whatever you want me to. The Keanuback. Return of the Kean Bean. Kicking it with Keanu. Tune My Piano Keanu. Hmm… maybe not that last one.

Bill and Ted are in their 50s and still plugging away as the group, “Wild Stallyns.” But things aren’t going well. The former Billboard-topping Stallyns can barely get wedding gigs these days. To make matters worse, they were told as teens they would write the song that unites the world. Except they still haven’t written it! Here’s co-writer Solomon on this writing choice (via Daily Dead)…

“I’ve always felt that comedy is best when it comes from one of the more negative, let’s call it emotions: sadness, despair, anxiety, fear, whatever. And the guys were feeling those things. In a weird way, we said from the beginning, “Let’s make a feel-good comedy about failure. Let’s make an absurd, silly, ridiculous, funny movie about dashed dreams and disappointment. And let’s have it end where you feel really good.”

Bill and Ted are then visited by an agent of Heaven (I think Heaven?) and brought to the city in the clouds, where they’re informed by some queen woman that time is up. They must write the song that unites the world… WITHIN 77 MINUTES! Should they fail, time and space, which are already starting to implode, will cease to exist.

Freaked out, Bill and Ted have no idea how they’re going to write a song in 77 minutes that they’ve been trying, and failing, to write for 30 years. But they realize they have a hack. The time machine! They can go into the future and take the song FROM THEIR FUTURE SELVES, who have already saved the world. Isn’t that stealing, wonders Ted. “Not if we’re stealing… from ourselves,” Bill points out.

This begins a trip deeper and deeper into the future to find the Bills and Tedss who have written the song. But the more Bills and Teds they visit, the more they’re lied to. It seems like nobody has the song. Could it be that they actually have to figure it out for themselves??

Meanwhile, Bill’s and Ted’s excellent 20-something daughters, Billie and Thea, who happen to be aspiring musicians, sense that their dads are in trouble and hijack a second time travel machine where they go BACK in time and recruit some of the best musicians ever – Mozart, Jimmi Hendrix, Louis Armstrong, Kid Cudi – to help their dads. Of course, we begin to suspect that this crazy adventure was never about the dads in the first place. It was really about… THEM!

Oh, and let’s not forget that Heaven secretly needs to kill Bill and Ted so they create a killer robot and send him through time to chase and assassinate the Stallyns. You read that correctly. There’s a killer robot in this movie. So, can Billie and Thea save the world and, with it, their dads? By golly, I hope so.

That’s right astute movie nerds. The actress who plays Bill’s daughter here is the real-life daughter of Agent Smith in The Matrix, Hugo Weaving!

Bill and Ted Face The Music will win you over by the end. But it sure tries its hardest to shoo you away in the meantime.

This was an odd project from the outset.

The fact that Keanu Reeves never makes sequels (that used to be his defining m.o.) yet he wanted to make a Bill and Ted threequel? Odd. Why Bill and Ted of all his properties? It’s not even like he made the first movie then wanted to revisit the fun of it, like Jim Carrey did with Dumb and Dumber Too. He’d already made a sequel.

As one of you pointed out after the latest Kevin Smith debacle (“Moochie and Spoochie Road Trip Shenanigans”), watching 20-somethings curse up a storm is funny. Watching 50-somethings do the same thing isn’t nearly as funny. Same problem here. Bill and Ted talking like dumb 20-somethings when they’re in their 50s makes for an uncomfortable experience.

Speaking of uncomfortable, did Keanu film all his scenes right after doing a day of John Wick stunt work? Why is he limping around half the time? Or struggling to walk from one end of the room to the other? It certainly doesn’t help sell the nonchalant “Yeah dude” persona he’s supposed to be exuding.

Something I realized while watching Face the Music, though, is that time travel works better with comedy than it does straight sci-fi. That’s because time travel never makes sense when you think about it. You go back in time to fix something but, by doing so, don’t you alter the course of history, essentially creating a second timeline? And doesn’t that mean the original timeline still burns? A butterfly flaps its wings and all that?

The nice thing about comedy is the audience doesn’t hold you to that same impossible standard. That’s because, in a comedy, laughing is more important to the audience than logic. In other words, you have more leeway.

But even Bill and Ted leaves you stumped at times with its time travel paradoxes. We’re told they only have 77 minutes to find the greatest song ever (the “U” in GSU – “Urgency”) yet they can travel through time. So doesn’t that mean they have unlimited minutes? Why does every minute that passes during time travel equal an actual minute in Heaven? Isn’t Heaven timeless?

Again, it’s annoying, but if you’re laughing, it doesn’t matter.

And Face the Music starts making you laugh later when it loosens the reigns. The daughters are surprisingly fun to watch, especially the one who plays Ted’s daughter. She somehow both sounds exactly like Keanu circa 1991 and adds her own weird take to the impersonation. I also loved Death’s scenes. One of my favorite lines is when they catch him playing hopscotch by himself and Ted realizes, “He’s cheating!” Death cheating at hopscotch when no one else is around is hilarious. But my favorite character was the one I initially hated the most – the killer robot. Once he fails at his mission and just wants to be one of the guys, I fell in love with him. He was so funny.

Also, some movies are lucky to come out at the exact time they’re needed. And Face the Music fits that description to a tee. Things are a bit charged up in our world to say the least. Having two goofballs go on a mission to unite the planet… well that’s a bit serendipitous don’t you think? Even the subpar “song that unites the world” couldn’t derail the good vibes that flowed from the final scene.

The strangest thing about this movie is that it tells us nothing about the movie business. It’s such an outlier in so many ways that it’s hard to formulate any “larger picture” thoughts on the film. And maybe that’s the point. This movie was made for one purpose and one purpose only – to bring a smile to your lips. And at that, it succeeds.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the rental (at 6 dollars, not 20 dollars)
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: When you write comedy, you have to be willing to take chances on the absurd. Comedy is the one thing in writing that you can’t argue with logic. Something is either funny or it isn’t. So if you’re stringently controlling every joke you write so that it works on a technical level, expect audiences to be unimpressed. A killer robot makes ZERO SENSE in this movie. It’s a “way out there” idea. But it ends up being the most interesting and funniest part of the movie. So play with absurd ideas in comedy. That doesn’t mean some of them won’t be stupid and you shouldn’t come to your senses and ditch them later. But if a joke/choice shouldn’t technically be working yet it is? Don’t question why. Keep it in there.

Your nights have been lonely. Your days? A pastiche of whimsical memories fading into each other like snowflakes drifting down to their sad thawed demise. Am I talking about your life since Covid? Nope. I’m talking about your life since Amateur Showdown.

But that changes today because AMATEUR SHOWDOWN IS BACK!

Like an old friend you’ve lost touch with who calls and screams, “I’m in town for one weekend. Let’s get wild!” That’s what Amateur Showdown has done. “Oh, don’t you worry. We’re going to get wild, Amateur Showdown. We’re going to get wild in ways that aren’t allowed on television!” That’s because this Amateur Showdown is the craziest of them all.

Character Piece Showdown.

Uh-huh. You read that right. How much more juicy does it get than introspective character exploration? Not even The Daily Mail will touch this it’s so risque.

I’ve been on the phone all week talking with frustrated advertisers. “Carson,” the CEO of Coca-Cola, Jerod Moss, said to me. “How can I post ads on your site when you’re talking about character flaws, inner conflict, the Hero’s Journey for God’s sake, Carson. The Hero’s Journey! How do I spin that to board members!?”

Believe me, it hasn’t been easy. I nearly canceled. I can’t have this kind of controversy following me around. But unlike Rick, I do stick my neck out. And despite the rabid protests outside my place demanding I not mention “character” and “piece” in the same sentence or I will face consequences, I’m moving forward. And I hope that you move forward with me. Cause I can’t do this alone.

That reminds me. The next Amateur Showdown will be October 16th and it will be a HORROR SHOWDOWN. Yes. We’re going to drape ourselves in the color of blood and indulge our inner freak show, all in time for Halloween. And don’t forget, you can enter SHORT HORROR STORIES as well as Horror scripts. So, if you’re going to enter, send me a title, logline, genre, why we should read your script/story, and a PDF of the story/screenplay to carsonreeves3@gmail.com any time before Thursday, October 15th, 8pm Pacific Time.

Now on to today’s scripts. If you haven’t played Amateur Showdown before, this is how it’s done. I pick five screenplays that were submitted to me and then you, the readers of the site, read as much of each script as possible and vote for your favorite in the comments. The winner will receive a review the following Friday that could result in props from your peers, representation, a spot on one of the big end-of-the-year screenwriting lists, and in rare cases, a SALE!

One last thing. This was one of the harder Showdowns to choose contestants for. A lot of you took the term “character piece” very liberally. The generes for these scripts were all over the map. I had to make some tough decisions on if picks were right for the showdown, but if you didn’t get picked, it was probably because I didn’t consider your entry “character piece” enough.

Anyway, good luck to all!

Title: The Wallace Web
Genre: Drama
Logline: When Eric’s business partner confesses that Eric’s dad has been paying him to ruin their company, Eric enlists the help of his estranged brother to confront their overbearing father.
Why you should read: When I was 18, my first job was the receptionist at a property management company. One of my many responsibilities was to accept contractor bids, log them in, and make sure they went into the correct job basket. One day a contractor handed me his bid proposal and asked that I pull his son’s bid for the same construction job. I politely told him no. He came back the next day with flowers, trying to bribe me to take his son out of the running! Who does that? I lied and told him the bids were already collected. His nice demeanor turned angry in an instant. I always wondered what the story was behind that family. Family and business are always good drama. I’ve had feedback from readers including “best dialogue ever” and another one called it the next “Warrior”. Thanks for reading my submission. I’m grateful for all the comments and suggestions.

Title: Dog Sled Patrol
Genre: Thriller, Period drama
Logline: In 1942, the sole survivor of an u-boat-destroyed British arctic convoy is paired with a native Inuit hunter on a months-long journey across the frozen wasteland of Northern Greenland. Before reaching civilization, they must survive the unforgiving conditions, an outside threat lurking in the dark — and the fact that one of them is not the person he says he is.
Why you should read: It’s World War 2, and you and your partner are on a patrol in one of the coldest, remotest, most desolate parts of the world — months of travel from the nearest outpost, in the deadly cold of a polar night, with only your 13 dogs for company.

To survive on the ice riddled with deadly traps of open-water “leads”, with white-coated terrors stalking just out of the view of your fading headlamp and the constant threat of a submarine Nazi incursion looming behind the icebergs, every “day” of the endless night you put your life in your partner’s hands — and him in yours. You get to know the other man closer than your own brother or a lover. One night, in your tent… he starts speaking German in his sleep.

Title: Few Die Well
Genre: Thriller
Logline: After a homeless veteran murders a banker in self-defence, he impersonates the dead man in an effort to land his dream job and lift himself out of poverty.
Why you should read: I’ve always been fascinated by stories of conmen and imposters, individuals for whom every word is fraught with the risk of discovery. Few Die Well charts the consequences of one penniless outsider’s attempts to claw his way up to the top through an elaborate lie of his own. He enters a world of staggering wealth and savage violence as he finds himself drawn into the orbit of scheming grifters, crooked cops and ambitious politicians. Its inspirations are myriad, the film noirs of the 1940s and 50s, the gritty crime dramas of the 1970s and the recent spate of intelligent thrillers like Nightcrawler and Parasite. In writing this screenplay, I set out to craft a character piece that has GSU at its core, that moved at a rapid pace without sacrificing development and depth. It comes in at a slim 87 pages and it ends with a bang.

Title: Love Sick
Genre: Character Piece / Romance
Logline: A door-to-door saleswoman struggles to keep her new relationship with a young journalist alive when she is forced to medically quarantine.
Why you should read: You may have noticed there was a quarantine going on for a while a few months ago. That’s to say that this script is insanely topical. Probably almost too much so. But maybe, just maybe… it’s also exactly the type of script that needs to be read right now: An introspective look at what it means to be human when the world goes to shit around you.

Title: Fever Dream
Genre: Psychological Thriller
Logline: After being assaulted, a struggling actress with a traumatic past gives a riveting audition, landing the lead role in a film. But the more she delves into the dark mind of the character, the more her dream becomes a nightmare.
Why you should read: Let’s face it, you gotta be pretty crazy to try and have a career in this industry. Most of us spend all our time working for free just in the hopes of one day getting a job that actually pays us. Well, after writing and directing my first feature (which landed a distributor, had a theatrical release, and even sold to Showtime), I actually thought I was on my way. And then… crickets. As far as the industry was concerned, no one f-ing cared. It was back to staring at the blank page all over again, hoping this time things would somehow be different. That’s when I realized how crazy this whole thing is, and when the idea for my new film was born.

Fever Dream is a timely, taut thriller that grabs you by the throat and never lets go. It’s a wild cross between Black Swan and Mulholland Drive that forces you to question how far you’re willing to go to achieve your dream, and at what price, and has an ending that will leave you breathless and wanting to go back and experience it all over again. Thanks for giving it a shot!