It’s the WWEEEEEEKKKK-EEEENNNND.

Which means we’ve got THREE new movies being offered up at the cinemas. And it just so happens these three films give us the perfect snapshot of what the industry is looking for. We’ve got Gretel & Hansel – our horror movie. We’ve got The Rhythm Section – our Jane Wick flick. And we’ve got The Assistant – our socially conscious entry of the week. All three films, it should be noted, have female leads.

While none of these movies will do huge box office, this is the kind of stuff that Hollywood is looking for from spec screenwriters. The Jane Wick flick might be on the way out, especially if Rhythm Section doesn’t do well. But with the well-written “Ballerina” coming soon under the John Wick banner and therefore with a ton of those Wick marketing dollars, the Girl with a Gun genre might not be dead yet.

What are your thoughts on this weekend’s crop of films?

Let’s move on to Amateur Showdown. Is it ever coming back? Or is it DEAD? Let’s find out together, shall we? On March 13th, we will have SCI-FI SHOWDOWN. My favorite genre. Or wait, wasn’t contained thriller my favorite genre? Who cares. Sci-fi is my favorite genre now.

This gives you 43 days to get your s%#@ together and polish that sci-fi gem you’ve been tirelessly working on for the last six years. Oh wait, that’s me. We’re talking about you guys. Yes, starting today, you can send in your script for Sci-Fi Showdown. Just e-mail carsonreeves3@gmail.com and put “SCI-FI SHOWDOWN” in the subject line. Include the title, genre, logline, why you think the script deserves a shot, and, of course, a PDF of the script. You’d be surprised at how many people send me entries with no script. You have until Thursday March 12th, 8:00 PM pacific time to get your entries in.

And, if you’re still getting that Last Great Screenplay Contest script ready, a reminder that the deadline is Sunday, June 14th. I need the title, genre, logline, and PDF sent to the same e-mail (carsonreeves3@gmail.com). Except the subject line should be: “LAST GREAT CONTEST.”

Meanwhile, for those who’ve got time to waste, let’s talk about The Outsider. If you haven’t been on the site for a while, I gave a glowing review to the first couple of episodes of this show. I liked it so much, I thought I was watching one of the great TV shows of all time.

Two weeks later I find myself struggling to finish Episode 4. Welcome to the challenge of TV writing, where great television can nosedive in as few as two episodes. So what happened to The Outsider? I’m not sure. But I can tell you exactly when I sensed it was in trouble.

It came in episode 3 with the introduction of a new character named Holly Gibney, a private investigator. Since this character is so all over the place, I’ll leave it to the Stephen King wiki webpage to describe her: “Holly suffers from OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder), synesthesia, sensory processing disorder, and she’s somewhere on the autism spectrum.” In other words, she’s a “LOOK AT ME AND HOW WILD AND WACKY AND DIFFERENT I AM” character, one of the worst characters a writer can write.

Holly Gibney

Up until this point, the reason The Outsider was so good, outside of the fact that it had a great hook, was that it had embedded itself in authenticity. These felt like real people. This felt like a real town. These felt like real consequences. This felt like real mourning.

By writing in a totally unrealistic desperate attempt at a scene-stealing character, all that authenticity went out the window. We now had a WRITER (notice the capitalization) who wanted us to know he was WRITING. It doesn’t help that the actress is awful, but the important thing to note here is that, before, characters were authentic. I mean who’s more believable as a person than Detective Ralph Anderson? Holly Gibney might as well be in the next Bad Moms sequel (Bad Moms “Easter Shenanigans!”) she’s so outlandish and unrealistic.

It doesn’t matter what you’re writing or how good it is. The second you start writing to impress the reader – whether it’s with your purple prose or outlandish plot twists or crazy characters – you lose. Because that’s the moment when the reader or viewer becomes aware that someone is writing this. And that’s when you’ve lost your audience, when they’re no longer suspended in disbelief. I wouldn’t say that Holly Gibney single-handedly ruined this show. But it’s hard to stay invested in a show when you’re rolling your eyes half the time.

I’m going to keep trying though. Ben Mendelsohn is such a good actor that it’s worth continuing to watch just for his scenes. I mean what other actor could’ve made Captain Marvel watchable? But I’m worried. I’m going to pray this Holly abomination gets knocked off at some point. And that they can ramp up the mystery again. There were full loaves of mystery early on. Now they’re trickling little breadcrumbs at us and expecting us to clap like dolphins.

What do you guys think? Am I being too hard on it? What’s your take on the last few episodes?

Lonestarr357 had a great question in yesterday’s comments. After Scott S. eviscerated the uncomfortably detailed opening scene of I Heart Murder, Lonestarr asked this:

I’m unmistakably reminded of a script from a couple months ago and the indelible scene where the investigating hero was caught, paralyzed and fellated by the villains, who told him to back off or they would not only kill his daughter, but deposit the sperm they just extracted inside of her, so it’d look like he raped her before killing her.

I feel like this ought to be an article in the making. We’re told to create memorable scenes to get the attention of readers, but how far is too far? Does the reaction you hope to elicit fall more toward ‘This is a memorable scene! Let’s give the writer lots of money!’ or ‘This is a memorable scene. I need a fucking shower?’

This is a great question.

I know it’s a great question because as soon as I began typing up my response, I realized I didn’t know the answer. I thought I knew. But this is a far more complex question than it first appears to be.

I remember the exact scene Lonestarr is referring to. And I thought the same thing he did when I read it. This is way too far. It’s uncomfortable. It’s a weird choice. And yet, I DO REMEMBER it. I’ve read thousands of scenes since then and have forgotten almost all of them in the process. But I do remember that scene. So does that mean the scene is a success? You must be doing something right if your scene is more memorable than two thousand others, right?

This leads us to a broader question of, “What makes a memorable scene?”

Strangely, when I tried to compile a list of standout scenes over the last few years, not a lot came to mind. I even googled, “Most memorable scenes of 2019,” and a lot of the scenes they listed were okay. But I wouldn’t call them TRULY MEMORABLE STANDOUT SCENES.

A few that people seem to agree on were The Spahn Ranch scene in Once Upon A Time in Hollywood. The Baby Delivery scene in A Quiet Place. The Birthday Party at the end of Parasite. And The Beheading scene in Hereditary. Some of my personal favorites over the last few years would be the Pennywise sewer scene at the beginning of It. The failed Deadpool Team attack in Deadpool 2. And the highway border shootout in Sicario.

What do almost all of these scenes have in common? They’re SPECIFIC TO THEIR SUBJECT MATTER. The Spahn Ranch was Charles’ Manson’s spot in a movie where Charles’ Manson’s shadow is leaning over the whole movie. It made sense to set a major scene there.

What’s the worst thing you can put your characters through in a world where you can’t make a noise or you die? Force a woman to have a baby under those circumstances. A Quiet Place.

Parasite had been setting up the son’s infatuation with Native Americans the whole movie. So it was only natural to have a Native American themed birthday party that all of a sudden becomes violent and murderous.

What’s more “super heroey” than trying to put a new superhero team together. Hence a superhero interview process that ends with six heroes going after the bad guys, only for all of them to die horrible embarrassing deaths, was very specific to that genre.

When you have a movie about a clown who lives in the sewers who likes to eat children, you probably want to write a featured scene where a clown in a sewer lures a young boy in so he can eat him.

The best way to understand the power of writing a scene specific to your subject matter is to see what happens when a movie TRIES to write a memorable scene and fails. Look no further than the motorcycle chase scene in Gemini Man. Now this isn’t a bad scene. But it’s far from a memorable one. Chances are you’ll forget the details of it within 48 hours.

While I’m not saying a lack of specific subject matter is the only reason the scene is memorable, it is a major one. WE’VE SEEN MOTORCYCLE CHASES BEFORE. We just saw one in John Wick 3. And that one had freaking samurai swords. Yet you’re here trying to make a nuts and bolts motorcycle chase scene your big memorable scene of the movie? Of course it’s going to be forgotten. And the big reason for that is that motorcycle chases are a dime a dozen in action movies. You needed to come up with a scene that was SPECIFIC TO YOUR SUBJECT MATTER.

So let’s go back to Lonestarr’s original question. What is it about that fellatio sister rape-framing scene that, even though it *is* memorable, doesn’t place it in the same category as the scenes I highlighted above?

The main problem is you’re introducing SHOCK for shock’s sake. A truly shocking moment *will* be memorable. For example, I could have a character butcher a live elephant over the course of five minutes. It would be shocking. It would be memorable. But would it be the good kind of memorable? No, of course not.

These scenes also become a problem when the writer makes it more about them than the story. Again, if you look at all of the examples I used above, those scenes organically fit into the story. But when you’re having characters say and do things that are utterly disgusting and way further than they need to go, that gives off the impression that the writer is trying hard to make his scene shocking. And in those cases, it’s more about them than the story.

But that brings us to the curious case of Hereditary. As some of you remember, I hated Hereditary’s script. I thought it was the epitome of desperate shock-value writing. There’s no movie here. It’s just a collection of “look at me” shocking moments. And no moment was more “look at me” and shocking than the sister decapitation scene.

However, in director Ari Aster’s defense, it’s legitimately in the top 5 most memorable scenes of 2018. Many Hereditary fans will use it as proof positive of Aster’s genius. But this is a scene that does not pass the SPECIFIC TO ITS SUBJECT MATTER test. You could’ve written this scene into any horror film of 2018 without much story rearranging.

So that’s what’s tripping me up on creating a clear set of rules regarding MEMORABLE GOOD scenes and MEMORABLE BAD scenes. Clearly it’s in the eye of the beholder. However, I do think that focusing on creating a big clever well-set-up scene that’s specific to your subject matter is always going to yield better results than writing a shocking or vile or uncomfortable scene. Those will be memorable. But for all the wrong reasons.

Genre: Thriller
Premise: A fixer who brokers off-the-books exchanges for powerful corporate clients finds himself being hunted after he’s hired to protect a whistleblower and the evidence she’s uncovered.
About: This script finished in the top ten of last year’s Black List. This is the writer’s breakthrough screenplay.
Writer: Justin Piasecki
Details: 108 pages

Jon Hamm kind of looks like a broker, right?

Just yesterday I was talking about how Sundance movies don’t make money anymore. Well today shows just how much stock Hollywood puts in my opinion. In a most unlikely alliance, Neon and Hulu (??) teamed up to pay the most money for a Sundance film EVER – 18 million bucks – that being for the Andy Samberg time-loop black comedy, Palm Springs. Wondering what the movie is about? Scriptshadow’s got you covered. I reviewed the script last year. Immediate thoughts – the time loop conceit is alive and well. But, also, SOME CATCHY HOOK is better than NO CATCHY HOOK, even if that hook’s a little tired.

On to today’s script, which has a much more subdued hook. Actually, I don’t know if this constitutes a hook. It should lead to some good debate in the comment section (what is a hook?). I would say a hook is any strong unique quality in your concept that begets intrigue. I’d never heard of this unique job before, and I *was* intrigued by it, so I guess that makes it a hook, no?

Karen Grant has found herself in a quandary. She decided to blow the whistle on her company, which develops a synthetic tobacco strain which she knows causes the same types of cancer as regular tobacco. Her 400 million dollar company is about to be purchased by a billion dollar company and let’s just say that if this info gets out, it’s not going to be good for either company.

But Karen gets cold feet when both companies learn of her plan and send people after her. Scary people. Karen is in no man’s land. The bad guys are so powerful they’ll probably find a way to bury the story before it spreads, and afterwards, they’re going to make the rest of her life miserable. But she can’t just give the documents back either. She knows too much. And when gigantic companies encounter problems like this, they tend to dispose of said problem.

So Karen is referred to a guy named Tom, or as he’s known in the business, a “broker.” This is a man whose specific job it is to broker high profile behind-the-scenes deals, such as this one, so that nobody gets in an accidental car crash and that the company in question can be assured that this compromising info never reaches the public. A broker has no allegiance. He’s not here for Karen. He’s here to broker a deal for both sides.

But as you’d expect, the billion dollar company would prefer to do things their way. So their M.O. is to track down these brokers and introduce them to the old concrete feet in the local river routine. Except they’ve never run into a guy like Tom. Tom uses old school technology to communicate – old phones, p.o. boxes. If he needs to have a conversation with his clients, he calls an operator and does what deaf people do, use an old machine to type out his responses and the operator reads them out loud for the other person.

This frustrates the heck out of Karen’s company, who can’t seem to get a beat on this guy. So they eventually decide to do the deal, a deal that will net our broker a cool 40 million bucks. But then something unexpected happens. Tom starts to fall for his client. And that compromises everything.

This one did not start out strong. The problem was voice over.

Here’s the thing with voice over. It’s a great tool. It can be used effectively in a handful of situations. For example – Fight Club. Voice over there is a part of the story’s DNA. It would be weird if that story didn’t have voice over. That’s how well-woven it is into that movie.

The Broker does something you don’t want to do early on in a screenplay, which is to give us voice over that doesn’t clearly connect to the people or the images we’re seeing. We’re watching two people have a conversation at a diner. We meet a couple of other folks also. During this, we hear some random voice from some random guy talking about something vague.

I understand why writers like to do this. There’s something artsy and creative about using voice over with a series of unrelated images. In the rare cases where it’s done well, it creates a sense of mystery that drives the reader to turn the page. But when it’s done badly, which it almost always is, it creates a sense of confusion. I don’t know who ANYBODY IN YOUR STORY IS YET. So when you’re showing me one face and you have some other person talking about something different, it’s frustrating.

And while I did eventually figure it out, there’s no guarantee that the reader will give you that much time. I only did because it was a Black List script, a script that lots of other readers had vouched for, and therefore something I had some assurance would get better. But if you’re a random writer with a random script, I wouldn’t give you the same length of rope. Not because I hate you. But because I’ve read thousands of scripts that started badly and never got better.

So you can get fancy all you want in your opening. But do so knowing that there’s high risk involved.

The good news is, once this story hit its stride, it got good. I liked this broker character. It made sense to me that there are high profile unique situations that occasionally pop up where there isn’t some yellow pages number you can call for help. The only help you could get would be from a specific person who does this specific job, and because of that job, lives in the shadows.

And the writer took that one step further by giving the broker old school technology. It provided the story with an opportunity to create set pieces you don’t traditionally see in movies these days because everyone is using cell phone tracking software and back door sniffers to steal passwords. You can’t do that when the target’s primary communication method is postcards.

I was really digging that aspect of the story. However, the writer takes a calculated risk by adding a love story to the plot. And while I didn’t have a problem with that in theory, it’s not executed very well. First of all, these two can’t communicate face to face. Most of the time when they’re talking to each other, one half of the conversation is coming from the telephone operator, not Tom.

So for Karen to all of a sudden become interested in this guy – she begins asking him personal questions, wanting to get to know him – it doesn’t make a lot of sense. It does open up a fun plot development, though, in that Tom starts getting sloppy because he’s starting to have feelings for her too. But the physical separation aspect of the story becomes too much of a hurdle for that plot development to work.

The script makes some other good choices, though. I’ve read a lot of scripts like this where we only see the story through Karen’s eyes. But The Broker puts us in the room with the bad guys almost as much as the good guys. This allows the writer to create fun dramatically ironic scenes, such as Karen going to the airport and us knowing that the bad guys have already tracked her here. So she doesn’t know she’s being watched but we do. They’re hoping she’ll lead them to Tom. But the climax of the scene is that Tom was playing them the whole time to get them out in the open so he could get a visual on who was following her. You can’t write that scene if you’re only telling the story through Karen’s eyes.

So I’d say The Broker is worth the read. It’s by no means perfect but it’s got enough going on to keep you interested, that’s for sure.

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

What I learned: Beware complicated family dynamics. And if you do have complicated family dynamics, spell them out for us. The reader understands “mother,” “father,” “son,” “daughter.” But things can get confusing when you run into cousin and step-father and step-son and father-in-law and daughter-in-law territory. To the writer, the connection is obvious. But if you don’t spell it out for us, we can easily be confused. I spent half this script trying to figure out who Ray was. At first I thought it was Tom’s brother. But then later we learn they have different moms. So I made an educated guess that their moms were sisters, which would make them cousins. And then Ray has a daughter who Tom has a strong family bond with. What’s the relation when your cousin has a daughter? A cousin-niece? At a certain point, you have to ask if complicated family dynamics are worth it, especially when most of the people reading your script are reading it faster than you’d prefer.

What I learned 2: Why is this a big deal? Have you ever had a reader ask you a question about something in your story that you thought was obvious? Like, “So did John kill Sarah or not?” And you want to point to page 54 where John is being interrogated and he clearly says, in the scene, “I killed Sarah.” Why did your reader miss that? It may be because they were trying to figure out something as stupid as how two characters are related.

I have a question for you.

Does Sundance matter anymore?

It used to be the number one hotspot to find the next breakout hit. Little Miss Sunshine, Reservoir Dogs, Memento, The Usual Suspects.

But what’s come out of Sundance recently?

Late Night. Blinded by the Light. The Report. And let’s not forget that 2017 Sundance darling that lit the box office on fire – Beach Rats.

Okay, to be fair, there are still some success stories. Eighth Grade. The Big Sick. Call Me By Your Name. But Sundance movies used to make money! Little Miss Sunshine made 100 million bucks at the box office. Where are the money-makers these days? It feels like Sundance has become more of a place to feed streamer content.

Back in the day, film festivals were the only way to get non-traditional movies a) seen and b) distributed. But the internet’s been steadily eating away at that model for years and I think we’ve finally reached a point where festivals no longer make sense. The one argument they still had over the internet was, “Do you want your movie to be seen on a big screen or on someone’s phone?” But outside of Christopher Nolan, people aren’t picky about how they watch their media anymore.

I suppose it’s still a place to build buzz for projects. You have a movie that does well at Sundance and that translates into a studio getting behind you and putting together a legit release with an actual marketing budget behind it. But how did that go for a movie like “The Farewell?” Yes, it was a critical darling. But nobody saw it. Why? Because there were a bunch of people looking really sad on a poster for one (nothing screams “I HAVE TO SEE THAT!” better than a bunch of depressed faces). But also, Sundance no longer carries the same level of cache. There aren’t enough successful movies coming out of there to generate interest when they say they’ve found a new one. And The Farewell continues that streak.

The point is, I’m not sure film festivals work as a model anymore. They were perfect for 1997 when it was the only way to break out from obscurity. But nowadays, it seems like the better option is to make a great short film, put it on the internet, get a lot of views, and find someone to bankroll the feature (a la Lights Out). I also believe it’s a matter of 3-4 years before a Netflix or Amazon creates a direct distribution model for films the same way they have for self-publishing novels. “But how will anyone know about them, Carson??” The best movies will rise to the top via rankings and word of mouth. If I had the resources, I would put that system together in a second.

While I was ruminating on all this, what should appear on my iTunes main page but the latest “Jay and Silent Bob” movie. Before I knew what was happening, Carson circa 20 years ago rented the flick. Great, now I had to watch it.

I decided to enter this viewing experience with a simple directive: LAUGH ONE TIME. That’s it. That’s all I was asking of this 90 minute movie – to make me laugh one single time. Did it succeed? I’ll share that answer with you in a second but first let’s talk about Smith.

Kevin Smith is the single luckiest person who’s ever made it in Hollywood. And I say that sans hyperbole. I truly believe he’s at the top of the list.

This is a man who maxed out his credit cards to make a movie, in black and white mind you, that he then used the last of his money for to submit to the Independent Feature Film Marketplace, got the world’s worst screening time (11 am) and nobody showed up except for one guy named Bob Hawk who had a little pull in the indie business. Hawk literally told Smith that the only reason he showed up was because he saw the publicity card for the movie and it looked like the saddest thing he’d ever seen. He showed up because he felt bad for the film. It just so happened that his sense of humor lined up with Smith’s. He began telling everyone it was great, and this was back when you could tell people through backchannels that something was great, build a buzz, and the movie would succeed regardless of whether it was good or not. It was the buzz that propelled it, not the quality of the film.

It is safe to say that had Hawk not gone to that Clerks screening, nobody would’ve ever heard of Smith.

Mind you, I’m not saying Clerks wasn’t good. There are obviously people who love it. But is it as good as it was made out to be? If you look at the rest of Smith’s contribution to film, does it support the belief back then that he was a talented filmmaker?

I throw in Jay and Silent Bob Reboot and, like I said, I only want to laugh once. The plot isn’t as bad as I expected. Jay and Silent Bob get arrested for growing weed and during their court case, accidentally sign a document giving up the rights to their names, which allows Kevin Smith, as in the actual director, to use their likeness to make a Jay and Silent Bob reboot movie so they need to get to California to stop him. Actually, what am I talking about? That sounds awful. Am I deranged?

Which would explain why I was not able to achieve my goal. Jay and Silent Bob Reboot does not have a single solitary laugh in it. Not one.

I’m sitting there thinking to myself, how can this be? Just the sheer number of jokes implies that one of them has to hit. Even a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day. But nope. There isn’t even a funny dialogue line. And that’s arguably Smith’s only strength, is his dialogue.

I could’ve disposed of the film’s memory right then and there but my screenwriting analysis side wouldn’t let me. I had to understand why the movie was so unfunny. Comedy is the most subjective genre there is. But this was objectively unfunny. Why was that?

The first thing that popped out at me were the letters “S” and “U.” Longtime Scriptshadow readers know what I’m talking about. G = goal. S = stakes. U = urgency. Jay and Silent Bob had the “G.” The goal is to get to Hollywood to stop the movie from happening.

But what are the stakes? What happens if they don’t stop it? The movie gets made and… then what? They don’t have the rights to their own names? Does it really matter? If it does, they don’t do a good job conveying that to us. The value of high stakes is that they make your characters’ actions feel important. This trickles down to every single scene because if our characters encounter an obstacle, we’re a lot more invested in them overcoming that obstacle if the ultimate goal feels important.

Stakes work hand in hand with URGENCY. If you can create an important situation and you can then give your heroes less time than they need to accomplish it, your script is going to feel tense, and that’s something Jay and Silent Bob Reboot lacked.

Jay and Silent Bob has what I call “FALSE URGENCY.” It’s urgency that’s on the page (“We only have 3 days to get to Hollywood!”) but it never truly feels like they’re in a hurry. This is something I try to remind screenwriters. You can’t pay lip service to the formula. It has to be authentic. In The Hangover, you really felt the characters’ need to find the groom by the end of the day so they could get him to his wedding on time.

Or look at one of the biggest comedies from last year – Good Boys – to see how to get the formula right. In that film, the boys lose their dad’s really expensive ‘they’ll be grounded for life’ drone to some older neighborhood girls and they have to get it back by the end of the day. Goal = get the drone back, Stakes = grounded for life (high stakes for 6th graders), and Urgency = Dad gets home at the end of the day.

When you don’t have GSU in a comedy, you’re hanging your characters out to dry in every single scene. What I mean by that is, “being funny” is the only thing driving the scene, which is the fastest way to write an unfunny scene.

For example, there’s a scene where the characters stop for food at a fast food joint. There are no stakes attached to this scene. No urgency. The only goal is to order food. Smith does everything in his power to write funny dialogue. But funny dialogue without any purpose behind it is the equivalent of pointing at someone and saying, “Be funny right now.” Who’s ever been able to be funny in that situation?

And that’s almost every single scene in this movie. But here’s the curious part of all this. That was the same approach Smith took with Clerks. So why did that movie work and this one didn’t? How come rule-breaking dooms this film but doesn’t doom that one?

Well, it IS actually possible to write funny stuff without a plot or GSU. It’s just a million times harder. It’s like anything in writing. Sure, you can write a good movie with a passive hero. It’s just a million times harder than if you write a movie with an active hero. So why would you stack the odds against yourself?

I have a theory on why Clerks worked while this didn’t. Energy. The energy a screenwriter has before he’s made it is his superpower. You’re hungrier. You’re angrier. You’re more willing to rewrite it until it’s perfect. All of that comes through in that movie. Regardless of how you feel about Clerks, there’s no denying that it’s packed with a manic energy that picks up the slack in places where the plot and characters dip.

Conversely, Jay and Silent Bob feels like a tired film. Everyone looks tired. And when you have weaknesses in your writing as big as Smith does, you can’t afford for other parts of your production to be lacking.

Share your thoughts about Sundance, Kevin Smith, and this weekend’s box office in the comments section. 1917 with another strong hold. Seems like a shoe-in for Best Picture at this point. And I still haven’t seen it! Maybe this week. :)

Genre: Thriller
Premise: Trapped at a three day personal development retreat, a woman fights to save her husband and herself from being brainwashed by a charismatic self-help guru.
About: This script finished with 10 votes on this past year’s Black List. The writer is repped at Verve.
Writer: Levin Menekse
Details: 107 pages

I know, lazy casting. But Claire Foy would be perfect for this.

Despite all the great entertainment options out there, there’s still nothing quite like reading a good script. Something that sucks you in and never allows you to disengage. That’s the power of good writing.

To that end, I owe today’s experience to you guys. I saw a few of you fawning over this in the comments section and I had to see what all the fuss was about. As it turns out, the subject matter was right up my alley. A cult movie? But not the obvious kind (people in white robes saying weird s%#@ and secretly trying to kill you). The much more sinister kind. Cults dressed up like a self-help organization. Where is the line between genuine self-discovery and manipulation? That’s what today’s script asks. And the answer is splendid.

38 year old lawyer Kirsa Rein finds herself somewhere outside of Los Angeles at a big bland gray building with her 31 year old husband, Peter. Kirsa is trying to make partner at her firm and recently her boss came to this Tony Robbins on steroids retreat called “The Process” which is able to transform you into your bigger better self within three days. Peter is begging Kirsa to ditch the sketch-fest in the last minutes before entering the drab building but she thinks it’s gong to be great.

Famous last words.

Once inside, they’re treated to their first lecture by Aiden Caul, a big intense dude who’s equal parts terrifying and charming. Aiden starts screaming at everyone that this isn’t going to be easy but it’ll be a lot easier if everyone’s honest. Immediately he calls on Kirsa to give her initial impressions on the event but whatever she says, he’s not buying it. This is a woman who’s gotten straight A’s her whole life. Immediately, she’s on the teacher’s s%@$ list.

Afterwards, she meets up with Peter, who’s laughing it up with one of the volunteers, Maya. One of the gorgeous volunteers, Kirsa notices. Hmm, this isn’t going to be anything like she thought. The men and women are separated into different rooms and when Kirsa wakes up, her anti-depressant medication has been taken from her suitcase. She freaks out and yells at the volunteers, which only results in everyone hating her more.

Peter gets called up on stage at the next lecture where Aiden meticulously dresses him down. He starts asking Peter if he’s happy with his life. If he’s happy with his career. If he’s happy with his marriage. At first Peter says, yes, he’s very happy. But Aiden keeps pushing him. Again, the process isn’t a place for bulls@%#. It’s a place for truth. So Peter starts giving him the real answers, starts having real breakthroughs. It’s at this point where Kirsa realizes that this is no longer about getting a promotion. It’s about breaking her husband out of here before he’s fully brainwashed. The question is, will Peter want to go with her?

So there are two ways I recommend starting a spec. Notice I’m saying “spec” here. Not every script. Spec scripts. I use that distinction because people reading specs have zero faith that they’re going to be good. Under those conditions, option 1 is to give us a mysterious situation right out of the gate. This creates a sense of mystery which compels the reader to read on.

Option 2 is to give the reader a familiar situation but to spin it in a way that we’re not expecting. A good example would be The Matrix. A team of cops go to arrest a woman in a building and all of a sudden she starts running on walls and leaping over buildings.

Of these two options, I like number 1 better. I like the opening of It Follows. A young woman runs out of a house and keeps looking back at something chasing her but there’s nothing chasing her. If I’m reading that script, I will definitely keep reading to find out what the heck is going on.

The Process goes with Option 1 in a subtler way, but nonetheless just as effective. We start in this large gray room with no windows. It is populated by half a dozen “volunteers” in unisex uniforms, all staring forward, silent. We don’t know what “volunteers” are yet. We then move out of the room down a long gray hallway, “swallowed into the bowels of an endless building.” Immediately I want to know where I am and what’s going on. These may seem like simple questions but these are questions readers will want answered and therefore keep reading to find out.

All of this took place in one page and already I’m curious to find out more. Remember, your goal when writing scripts is never to impress the reader. Your only job is to make them want to keep turning pages. So give us some questions we want answered right away and we’ll keep turning the pages.

The mystery behind exactly what this place is drives the first 15 pages of the story. And by that point, we’ve gotten to know our couple, Peter and Kirsa. Injecting a couple into this scenario as opposed to an individual was a stroke of genius. Because now it isn’t just about, “How evil is this guru and to what extremes is he willing to go?” It’s “Is this couple going to survive this process?”

This is something I wish I could tattoo onto every screenwriter’s forearm. The cool hook gets us in the door. But it’s what’s going on with the characters that keeps us there. And you have choices in that department. You can just explore what’s going on internally with a character, like Arthur in Joker. Or you can build the exploration around a relationship (marriage, parent-kid, best friends), which I find to be more fun because it’s easier to play with conflict and tension and flaws when two characters can talk about it. When you’re only exploring a character internally, their flaw needs to be actionable to resonate. For example, the flaw of greed is an actionable flaw because there’s lots of ways to show your hero being greedy.

But there are so many more scenes you can write when you’re exploring a relationship and that’s where this script shines. It has a “THAT” scene that explores marriage as intensely as I’ve ever seen. Remember what “THAT” scenes are. They’re big memorable scenes that everyone is going to be talking about after the movie. If you have a below-average script but you have a THAT scene? It’s worth it to keep rewriting your script until you get it right because THAT scenes are indicative of a concept that has potential. You can’t write one of these scenes off a bad idea.

The scene in question is when Aiden takes Peter up on stage and starts asking him if he’s happy with his life. Out in the crowd, we occasionally cut to Kirsa’s reaction to Aiden’s questioning. It’s an amazing scene because Aiden is so blunt at laying out how bad Peter’s life is. Peter is finally confronting this reality. And Kirsa is watching it all unfold helplessly from her seat and terrified with how much further it’s going to go. There is a genuine possibility that by the end of their interaction, he might want to leave her. Talk about a high stakes moment.

There are a lot of strong choices in this script. For example, the reason they’re here is because Kirsa’s boss at the law firm, who also took this course, recommended she do so as well. Kirsa is determined to make partner. So it’s imperative she make her boss happy. This gets rid of the question that is often asked in movies like these: Why don’t they just leave? If things are getting out of control, why wouldn’t they leave? And that’s why. Because she knows if she goes back a failure, she’ll never get that promotion.

The thing that pushed this script over the edge for me was the character of Aiden. He could’ve been a one-dimensional bully. But there’s a lot here he says that makes sense. When he’s challenging people to confront their lives and if they’re happy and if they’ve been lying to themselves, it rings true. And it’s when you have those conflicted feelings as a reader, where you can’t hate the bad guy straight out, that make for a more introspective conflicted read. You don’t want to be feeling this way but you are, and it slyly pulls you into a deeper realm of the story. It’s almost like you have to keep reading to confirm that this guy is bad so that you don’t feel bad yourself about agreeing with him on some things.

This was a perfect mid-week read. And a very financially doable movie. This is exactly the quality of storytelling I’m looking for in The Last Great Screenwriting Contest.

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

What I learned: There are pivot moments where the previous reasoning for something no longer makes sense because of a plot development. When those moments happen, you have to up the reasoning to reflect the new reality. So earlier I said the reason they don’t just leave is because she doesn’t want to go back to her boss and say she didn’t finish the program. However, when Aiden starts destroying her marriage, that logic doesn’t work anymore. You need another reason they stay. So what The Process does is, by that point, Peter is a convert. He believes in what Aiden is saying. So he doesn’t want to leave. This forces Kirsa to stay to try and rescue her husband.