One of my favorite directors hops on a thought-provoking concept with shades of Charlie Kaufman!
Genre: Sci-Fi/Drama
Premise: After dying, a man is re-born into his life, reliving it from the start, unable to do anything but observe. Except for one difference – he saves a woman’s life who changes everything.
About: Did someone say that short stories are the new specs? Oh yeah, I SAID THAT. Cause these things sell like iced lemonade in Death Valley. And it’s not just horror stories. In this case, we’ve got a science-fiction short. This package came together when Ben Stiller signed on. The original story was published on Slate and was part of series of short stories about how technology and science will change our lives. The writer, David Iserson, has written on Mr. Robot, Mad Men, and New Girl.
Writer: David Iserson
Details: 4600 words (roughly one-fourth of a screenplay)
Link to short story: This, But Again
******************************************************
THE NEXT LOGLINE SHOWDOWN IS THIS FRIDAY, APRIL 21!!!!!
I will pick the five best loglines to compete on the site.
What: Title, Genre, Logline
Rules: Your script must be written
When: Send submissions by April 20th, Thursday, by 10PM pacific time
Where: carsonreeves3@gmail.com
******************************************************
Okay, onto the review…
I’m always here for whatever Ben Stiller is up to.
He picks interesting subject matter as a director. From Severance to Escape at Dannemora to The Secret Life of Walter Mitty to Tropic Thunder. Whatever he does, I know I, at least, have to check it out.
Marcus dies in 2076 at the age of 87.
He wakes up in his mother’s womb. Marcus knew something like this would be coming because, back in the 2060s, scientists discovered that we were living in a simulation. Therefore, he knew that there was probably some sort of afterlife. Although he didn’t know it meant living your life over again.
Marcus quickly discovers that he’s an exception. Everybody else is ignorant to the fact that they’re reliving their lives. But because of some glitch in the code, Marcus is aware that he’s doing this again.
Unfortunately, he can’t change anything. He can only observe, like a passenger in a car. Which kind of sucks. Although it takes away a lot of anxiety and fear, since you already know what’s going to happen.
One day, in Life #2, he’s standing behind a girl, Sara, in college, at a street corner. In his previous life, Sara would voluntarily walk out into the road, get hit by a car, and die instantly. This time, however, Marcus uses every ounce of energy to do something to stop her. And he’s somehow able to utter, “Don’t.”
And she doesn’t. In this new life, Sara lives. Marcus had been obsessed with Sara from afar in college so he’d like nothing more than to get to know her. But, again, Marcus is a passenger. He can’t change things. The only time he’s able to change anything is when Sara speaks to him first. Then, he can override the autopilot and hang out with her.
They do end up re-meeting years later and, because Sara talks to him, they’re able to hang out together. This is when Marcus tells her what’s happening to him. She’s fascinated by this and wants to know more.
But, even though she likes being around Marcus, she grows frustrated. Marcus’s autopilot keeps taking him back to his original life. He ends up meeting his wife and also having two kids. So he and Sara can’t have a real relationship. They can only be together in fits and spurts.
Sara becomes obsessed with this concept of living a life without fear or anxiety. So she uses a video game coder to decode Marcus and becomes the announcer of the simulation a full 40 years before it was announced in Marcus’s previous lifetime.
Sara starts selling “Marcus” packages where people can live in their body already knowing what’s going to happen. Which a lot of people sign up for. However, as Sara gets older, and meeting with Marcus becomes harder, she questions what it is she wants out of life. Unlike everyone else, Sara is not reliving her life. She never made it past 20. This glitch ends up having a profound impact on her as she prepares for her next life.
Gimme a dramatic Jonah Hill for the part of Marcus!
I definitely see why Stiller signed onto this.
It’s a really weird and compelling story.
One of the best things about science-fiction is that it can change the perspective of otherwise common things so that they now appear new and fresh.
In This, But Again, we’re watching people live their lives and go through all the things they normally do but through a lens that makes it all feel very different.
Take Sara, for example. She wants love like everybody else.
But Sara was supposed to die at 20. That means everybody else in the simulation never ends up with her, as they all met someone else. They had to. Sara wasn’t around. So even though Sara’s around now, nobody can access her. Their autopilot won’t allow them to.
Meanwhile, Marcus wants nothing more than to be with Sara. But he can’t. His autopilot keeps taking him back to his other life.
Normally, all we’d have here is an average love story. We’ve read a million love stories so one more is going to be a bore-fest. But because of the unique circumstances surrounding these two, their love story feels unlike any other love story we’ve encountered.
Good old fashioned storytelling tools also help the story stand out. One of the best things you can do for your story is make things as hard as possible on your hero. Whatever it is they want, make it impossible for them to get. The more impossible it is, the more riveted the reader will be, since we’ll wonder how he’s going to overcome such a gigantic obstacle.
Nobody gets riveted when obstacles are easy. Cause we know that the hero will figure them out.
What’s more impossible than trying to be with someone when your body and mind literally won’t you let you? There’s a moment early in the story where Marcus and Sara go on a date to watch a movie together. And when Sara goes to the bathroom, Marcus’s autopilot takes over and he simply goes back home and rejoins his wife. How do you overcome that?
I’m curious how Stiller is going to film this because the best way to tell this story is exclusively through Marcus’s eyes. His attempts to break through the programming and be with Sara make for the best aspect of the story.
If we’re also covering Sara’s point-of-view in the movie, which we do here in the story, we’re not going to feel as much pain during the times when Sara gets away because we’re going to see Sara ourselves a scene later when we cut to her. One of the stronger components of the story is that desperation to keep Sara around and not having any control over it.
Plus, I’m not totally on board with Sara’s storyline. All the stuff about her creating a giant corporation around living a foreknowledged-life is thought-provoking but it feels like the wrong direction, going that big, since the rest of the story is so intimate. Not only that, but the intimate aspect of it works so well.
I thought this was a top-notch story, though. Beyond everything I just mentioned, there are so many themes here that resonate. We don’t need to be living in a simulation over and over again to feel like we’re on autopilot. We’re constantly in situations where we really want to do something yet some invisible hand prevents us from doing it. This short story showed me what that felt like in a different way. And the next time I want to do something but my mind won’t let me, maybe I’ll push a little harder to override it.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: I’m a big believer that short stories need highly memorable endings. A twist-ending is preferable. But you can also include an ending like this, which is intense and has a huge emotional impact. I say this for short movies as well, the reason being that THERE ARE SO MANY OF THEM. There are endless short stories and short films. So if you don’t leave the audience with your biggest punch, there’s a good chance they’ll forget you. This one definitely leaves you with a gut punch.
