Enter the Slaughterhouse
Welcome to the new Slaughterhouse Review feature on Scriptshadow. I don’t know if this will become a recurring thing or not. I can’t imagine many screenwriters would want to be a part of it. The idea is that I give a review where I don’t hold back in the hopes that the writer truly understands where their writing needs to improve. We’re going to start this feature off with a review of a scene submission for Scene Showdown. This is one of the scenes that DIDN’T make the cut. Let’s find out why.
Title: Ghosted
Genre: Comedy Series
Writer: Brandon Crist
Setup: This is the opening scene of the pilot.
I read this scene four times. Once as a submission last week, then three more times before this review. On the second read, I re-acquainted myself with the material. On the third read, I tried to understand several aspects of the scene that confused me. And on the fourth read, I tried to identify the overarching reason the scene didn’t work for me.
It took me a while to figure it out. But then I realized that one simple adjustment would’ve vastly improved the scene. I will share that with you at the end of this review. But first, it’s time for some slaughterhousing. If you’re sensitive to violence, look away now.
I knew I wasn’t going to like this scene within the first few paragraphs. You get a feeling for these things when you’re reading. And I could just tell this wasn’t going to be my jam.
When it comes to comedy, the writing should be VERY DIFFERENT from every other genre. All readers care about is laughing. So you want to keep the writing EXTREMELY sparse. Unless something is critical to the comedy, don’t tell us about it.
“The lamp on the messy desk illuminates a pink rhinestoned skull.” Why do I need to know this? How is this going to make things funnier? I would go so far as to tell comedy writers never to write a paragraph over 2 lines long.
Next, we have the “Sexyback” ringtone. Look, it well may be the case that the character of Morgan is of the age that, when she was younger, “Sexyback” was a hit, and she’s always loved it, and that’s why it’s her ringtone.
But in the absence of any other information, it feels like a dated choice. I’m no spring chicken myself but I know that referencing Sabrina Carpenter, Chappel Roan, or Post Malone is going to make the writing feel a lot more current.
Moving on to the emergence of the blue hand. The second I read this, I deflated. My thought was: “Here we go again. Another dead person waking up as a ghost.”
Sometimes I don’t think writers TRULY COMPREHEND how many other people are writing scripts. If you’re not original, you are writing the same sorts of things as everyone else. I read a million scripts where someone wakes up as a ghost realizing they’re dead. And it’s always the same. They’re confused. They’re trying to find their bearings. It’s all very obvious.
That’s not to say you can’t write someone waking up dead. But you have to find a fresh way to do it! If you just give us the bargain bin version of waking up as a ghost, it’s going to put people to sleep.
We then get the Aidy Bryant casting suggestion. I think Aidy’s great but she’s not exactly a household name. I don’t think that most people will have heard of her.
Don’t use words like “ensemble.” I didn’t understand what that meant the first time I read this. Just say her clothes! Don’t confuse us! This is a comedy! We should never ever ever ever ever ever EVER be confused when reading a comedy script. If the reader is even confused ONCE when reading a comedy script, that comedy script is a failure. Because you should be making things INSANELY EASY to understand. I’m talking write like a 3rd grader.
The cleavage bounce joke doesn’t work because she’s just seen that her body is translucent and blue. I don’t see someone congratulating their cleavage in that moment. I suppose the argument could be “that’s the joke.” She’s a ghost and yet she still loves her tits. But I didn’t find it funny.
We eventually get to the bedroom where we get this paragraph: “The glowing lamp catches Morgan’s attention. With a morbid curiosity, she approaches to read what’s scrawled on a sheet of looseleaf.” And then her reaction: “Pills and poetry. How charming. His loss. His loss.”
This is a small thing but this needed one more beat in order to be 100% clear. Tell us that there’s a poem written on the pages! Don’t say, “she looks at what’s written” and then hear her say “Pills and poetry.” It wasn’t automatically clear that she’d written a poem. In fact, I wasn’t clear on the poem until she talked about writing it later in the scene. Just quickly describe that there’s a poem written on the page!
Same deal with her dead body. You write: “On the floor, her feet. Her real feet. Her body. She sees it lying there still, dead. She turns away. She pulls a strand of hair behind her ear, not really knowing where to look.” I didn’t know, initially, that she saw her dead body. You say, “On the floor, her feet. Her real feet.” I thought you were referring to her checking out her full ghost body for the first time. Just be clear!
Writers forget how much information the reader has to pull in when they first read a screenplay. Every moment is new information to them. This process of ingesting information taxes the brain. So it’s common, if something’s even mildly vague, for the reader to miss it. Whereas, later in the script, when we know all the characters and have a good sense of the plot, we’re better equipped to handle the nuanced moments. So, early on, be clear about things. Especially in a comedy where it doesn’t matter as much if you’re on the nose. So don’t back into a sentence about her dead body. Tell us it is her dead body! “She looks down and sees her dead body.”
Next we have Cynthia Erivo coming in. I don’t like this actress at all. I’ve hated her ever since she ruined The Outsider. So I was immediately put off by the casting suggestion. It’s the gamble you take when you suggest actors for roles. As you can see here, I like Aidy Bryant but don’t like Cynthia Erivo. Yet I only needed to dislike one to turn on the material.
Then she says this line, “One sec, babes! Gotta piss like Seabiscuit.” And that’s when I was done with the scene. I kept reading but I knew, after that line, that there was literally nothing this scene could do to win me back. I just think back to that time in 2012-2015 where, for whatever reason, probably because “Girls” was a big show, that every other ‘strong woman’ scene had a woman urinating in a bathroom while on the phone talking to another character. I don’t want to see that. I could show a guy taking a shit while on the phone in every other scene if I wanted to but that doesn’t mean that I should.
“She holds up her manicured finger. Her bracelets jingle as she waves her hand, processing what’s happening before her.” I have no idea what this paragraph is highligthing. She’s holding up a finger? Why? She’s waving her hand. Why? I don’t understand the gestures at all.
We then go to the bathroom where, despite the fact that her friend is a ghost, Charli continues to talk to her. I suppose this is the joke? The friend is acting in the opposite manner of how one would act when seeing that their friend is a ghost. But I’m not laughing because it’s hard to gauge the comedy tone here. I don’t know how broad this is supposed to be. If it’s Napolean Dynamite absurdity or David Brent in The Office type humor.
MORGAN: “Really takes the piss doesn’t it?” Charli nods with her mouth clenched. MORGAN: “Did I use that right?” So I guess this means Morgan is American and Charli is British? Not sure how I was supposed to know that before this joke.
We then segue to this completely unbelievable “emergency” whereby Morgan is concerned that Charli will be charged with her murder if she doesn’t act quickly. Not a single reader will believe that Charli is in any danger at all here so that doesn’t make sense. And then that’s the end of the scene.
Okay, so, what’s the big change we could make to this scene that would instantly improve it? You need to treat Morgan separately from the circumstances that surround her. In other words: GIVE HER SOMETHING TO DO! The big weakness in this scene is that Morgan has nothing to do. Once you give her something to do, you create conflict, and now you have a scene.
It could be something simple – she has to get to work. Brandon even hints at this with the Boss Bitch call. But he doesn’t do anything with it. DO SOMETHING WITH IT. Make this the biggest work day of the year for her. She’s got some big presentation or something. And she’s only got several minutes to get ready and sprint across town if she’s going to get there on time.
Imagine how much more energy the scene would have. Morgan gets up and rushes to get ready. She notices these weird anomalies but she’s half asleep and ignores them. The jokes have a little more zing to them because there are now consequences to problems that come up. If she can’t change clothes, she’s fucked. So what happens when she can’t grab new clothes?
After doing the best job she can, she rushes to leave, and that’s when Charli shows up. Instead of needing to piss like a racehorse, the jokes are now built around Charli’s shock at Morgan’s appeareance. Morgan is trying to run around her to get to work and Charli’s trying to stop her because she looks terrifying. During that conflict that the two have, Charli’s eyes finally pop as she stares across the room. Morgan turns around to see what she’s looking at, and that’s when she lays eyes on her dead body for the first time.
Would this fix all the problems in the scene? No. But there’s a “lazing-around” quality to the scene now that this would definitely improve. Then there’s clarity, which is an issue in about 10% of the moments in this scene. Like I said, when it comes to comedy, there can be zero clarity issues.
I’m not finding the jokes funny. I do know that jokes are funnier when there’s more pressure. And Morgan’s entire career depending on this presentation would place a lot more pressure on the importance of her getting ready. But I still think we need a lot more thought and creativity put into the jokes. It doesn’t seem to me like we’re trying our hardest in that area.
I want to thank Brandon for so bravely entering his scene in the Slaughterhouse. There are ZERO hard feelings here. But I wanted to take you into the frustration in my mind because this is what readers often feel when they read a scene that isn’t working. And I’m hoping that honesty helps all of us understand how high the bar is. It’s always higher than you think!
