Genre: Drama/Supernatural/Comedy
Premise: A family becomes internet sensations when they find a real ghost in their home and start posting videos about it on social media.
About: One of the hot projects that came together this month was the David Harbour Anthony Mackie collaboration with director Christopher Landen (Happy Death Day, Freaky, Paranormal Activity 2). Landen will be adapting the Vice short story by Geoff Manaugh, which you can read here. This one came out of nowhere, as the short story was published all the way back in 2017. Netflix bought the package.
Writer: Geoff Manaugh
Details: about 5000 words (one-quarter of a screenplay)
Today’s story institutes the dreaded 3-genre mash-up. For those new to screenwriting, the 2-genre mashup has resulted in some amazing movies (Comedy and Supernatural = Ghostbusters). But it is REALLY hard to pull off the 3-genre mash-up. Why? Because the more genres, the less focus. And focus is everything in a screenplay narrative.
Now I’m not saying it’s impossible! No no no no no. Don’t you misquote me now. Yesterday’s movie, which I loved, spanned three, maybe even four genres. But the degree of difficulty rises exponentially with multiple genres. And I’m not convinced Ernest rises to the challenge. All things considered, this is such a weird short story, that I’m not going to dismiss it out of hand. It’s worth discussing for sure.
Frank Presley, the newly headhunted president of a suburban hospital-billing firm, has just moved into an old house in the Chicago suburbs with his wife, Melanie, his 14 year old son, Fulton, and his 18 year old son, Kevin. One night, while trying to sleep, Frank hears a noise, goes downstairs, and finds a ghost hanging out.
Frank pulls out his phone camera, presses record, and, for some reason, starts laughing uproariously. He later puts this up on Youtube. People don’t take it seriously because, of course it’s not a real ghost. But Frank keeps seeing the ghost, who he names “Ernest,” and keeps recording it, putting more and more videos online until people can’t deny anymore that it’s a real ghost!
The good vibes don’t last long, though, because Frank is a big fat jerk. He yells at the ghost, tries to scare the ghost, throws things at the ghost, mocks the ghost, and, of course, laughs at the ghost. Melanie is not a fan of the way her husband is treating Ernest. She believes it’s because he hates his work and needs an outlet for his anger.
Then, one day, Ernest disappears. And Kevin does also. The millions of people who watch Frank’s videos pour through them and spot all these background conversations where Kevin and Ernest were secretly chatting with each other. The two have run off together. When the police catch up with them, Kevin tells the world that Ernest was murdered by his uncle and justice must be done!
But the FBI puts Ernest behind bars for the crime of kidnapping. A bummed out Kevin goes on Jimmy Kimmel to make a case for the government to release Ernest. But Kimmel has a surprise. It’s Ernest! Who’s just been released. They verified the murder. And although the uncle who killed Ernest died 20 years ago, Ernest finally has peace. Which means he can disappear into the next realm. Kevin asks if they’ll ever see each other again. Ernest says, without question.
I always love speculating on how a project got purchased. It’s important to study these things if you’re a writer because you want to understand what things buyers are interested in. At first, this seemed too zany to fall into any obvious sale category.
But a couple of things stuck out to me.
First of all, any idea with a ghost in it has the potential to be marketable. If this were a movie about a family that found a normal person living in their house, it’s not nearly as marketable, right? (Although, as I typed that, I realized that could be a pretty interesting movie in its own right) I bring this up because I read so many scripts that don’t have a clear element for a studio to market the movie around. You need that if you want to get people excited about your screenplay.
On top of that, the idea is fresh. I’ve never seen a movie before about a ghost going viral on Youtube. I’m not the biggest fan of the idea. But, objectively, it’s a fresh idea in so much as we haven’t seen it before. So now you’ve got two things working in your favor.
Finally, there’s actually some interesting character stuff going on in this story. The dad clearly has issues. He’s torturing a ghost, laughing about it, and putting it up on Youtube. Wherever there’s interesting character stuff, there are actors who want to play those parts. Between the dad and the ghost, there’s some juicy stuff to play around with here.
The problem is that there isn’t a clear movie structure to this story. I’m guessing that’s why nothing’s happened with it since 2017. It’s kind of hard to see where the movie is.
You can’t tell the movie through Frank’s eyes. He’s too much of an asshole. I suspect that the story will be told from Kevin’s POV, even though he’s a background character for most of the short story. He’s the one who wants to connect with Ernest. You’d probably also move them leaving to earlier in the screenplay. That’s the big “journey” that jumpstarts the narrative so it can’t show up 60% of the way into the story. I’m thinking it should happen at the beginning of Act 2.
And then you would need to clarify why they’re going on this journey, which the short story does a lousy job of explaining. You have to explain that Ernest is trying to solve his murder. In which case you CANNOT under ANY CIRCUMSTANCES have his killer already be dead. There’s no dramatic value in that choice whatsoever. It’s way more interesting if the guy who killed him is still alive and Ernest (with Kevin’s help) is going to confront him.
Speaking of the murder, I kept asking why it took half the story for Ernest to mention he was murdered. Why didn’t that come up earlier? Even if he didn’t want to bring it up, the tens of millions of people studying Ernest on the internet would’ve known his entire life story within ten minutes of him going viral. They would’ve figured out he was murdered, which would’ve necessitated us to explore the murder plot. Here, it feels like something that came up as an afterthought. Oh yeah, and I was murdered.
This is the kind of story that needs somebody really weird to tell it. A Charlie Kaufman type. Maybe even the director from yesterday’s wonderfully weird movie, Anders Thomas Jensen. Christopher Landen is a good director who understands the balance between horror and comedy. But I’m not sure that’s what this is about. This movie wants to make some deeper statements about humanity and Ernest has some, dare I say, Edward Scissorhands qualities to him that will require a deft touch. If Landen can nail it, though, he’s going to jump to the next level as a director.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Who you choose as your main character has a huge impact on the story. Here, you can choose between Frank, a dude who’s having a mid-life crisis and taking it out on the ghost who lives in his house, or Kevin, who’s much more grounded, much more sympathetic, and therefore makes a cleaner protagonist. They were just talking about this issue for the development process of Jungle Cruise. That movie had been in development for a couple of decades. The way they finally cracked the story, according to the producer, was to shift the protagonist role away from The Rock’s captain character and make Emily Blunt’s scientist character the hero. By doing this, it freed up The Rock’s character to be more fun and goofy, similar to what they did with Jack Sparrow in the Pirates movies. If the movie being told in your current draft feels boring, ask yourself, “What would the movie look like through the eyes of [Second Biggest Character] or [Third Biggest Character]?” Ya never know. Your boring movie could instantly come alive. Go ahead, do it right now. I dare ya.
