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I reviewed a writer-director Black List script titled, Carousel, just as I was finishing the Disney Plus Star Wars series, “Skeleton Crew.” What do a character study about divorce in Cleveland and a group of kids who travel the galaxy battling space pirates have in common?
One key thing.
To provide ample context, Skeleton Crew was a better show than the last four seasons of Star Wars content. Of course, that’s like saying you’re the brightest lamp in a room full of candles. Lucasfilm phoned in Mandalorian Season 3. Ahsoka appealed to kiddies who liked Star Wars cartoons. Andor was well-written but didn’t feel like Star Wars at all. And The Acolyte was so tone-deaf to its potential divisiveness that it went sour like a bad batch of witch’s brew.
At least Skeleton Crew was fun.
However, in the end, it was never “recommendable” due to its lack of scope. It was about a tiny group of people on a tiny adventure.
Which brings me back to Carousel. Carousel had some great dialogue. It had some strong character development. But you know what it didn’t have? IT DIDN’T HAVE STAKES. Just like these Star Wars shows, it didn’t give us a big enough reason to care.
Now, of course, “stakes” are relative. The stakes of The Brutalist aren’t going to be as big as the stakes in Avengers.
But, ya see, when it comes to Star Wars, a universe where evil Emperors blow up entire planets, something feels off when the stakes of a show are “kids getting back home.” Those stakes are fine for say… The Goonies. But Star Wars takes place in a much bigger universe than The Goonies. So the stakes have to reflect that.
This is the primary issue with all these Star Wars shows. They’re built around mid-level stakes. So they never feel important. The argument Lucasfilm might throw back at me is that I need to change my expectations because these shows are about character development. I’m sorry but Star Wars is not a character-development-first franchise. It is a spectacle-first franchise. And nothing you can do with these shows is going to change that.
In general, as a screenwriter, you want to maximize the stakes relative to the story you’re telling. I can’t remember a single instance where a writer said, “I think we should lower the stakes here” and the story turned out better for it.
Sticking with Star Wars, George Nolfi has been hired as Screenwriter #478 on the Rey Skywalker movie. Also, that Sean Levy (of Deadpool & Wolverine fame) Star Wars movie, which everyone assumed was dead is, somehow, still alive! In fact, Ryan Gosling is attached to star.
I am here to tell you not to take either of these announcements at face value. I can pretty much guarantee that neither of the movies is going to happen. So, why are they still in development? An old Hollywood trick, that’s how. Lucasfilm receives money from Disney. They’re not allowed to just sit on that money. They must spend it. This requires Kennedy to develop projects regardless of whether they’re going to happen or not.
I don’t feel bad for the screenwriters who come onto these projects. They’re going to get paid a lot of money to write a draft, even though they know no one will ever see it. I don’t feel bad for Daisy Ridley. She doesn’t have to do a thing until cameras start rolling so her time is not being impeded upon.
But I feel bad for director Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, whose entire career is on pause while she works on a movie that’s never going to happen. They’re never going to greenlight a movie by a director whose most popular film grossed less than 5 million dollars at the box office. It makes zero sense from a business standpoint. So, any pretense that they’re going to make this movie is a joke. In the meantime, Obaid-Chinoy is stuck in a prison. And this is what annoys me so much about Disney. They’re so terrified to fire someone – especially someone like Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, who helps Lucasfilm promote representation – that they’d rather string her along to save face. She’s going to be attached to this fake-movie until she’s 60.
Star Wars has only a single successful property left, which is The Mandalorian. And I do think that movie is going to be good. I predict it will be an All-Star team-up of some sort. Don’t be surprised if Luke Skywalker is involved.
But that movie has to figure out a way to navigate the problem that’s haunting all these Star Wars projects. WHAT ARE THE STAKES??? If they are sky-high, the movie will shine. If they are not, it’s going to feel like a Fast and Furious spin-off. You go to the theater, you have an okay time, and you forget what you saw before you arrive back at your house. That’s not Star Wars. Star Wars is supposed to be timeless. If Mandalorian is a “tasty but empty calories” snack, I don’t know if there will ever be another Star Wars film again. I really don’t. Because what Star Wars movie could you possibly make, after that, that would get anyone excited?
Now that I’ve bummed you out with my Star Wars rant, what do you say we gab about something good?
My favorite show right now is Severance.
Average writing keeps you engaged. Decent writing makes you think. Good writing makes you feel. And great writing does all three.
Severance does all three. Particularly that second one.
Mark, the main character, lost his wife. Which is why he severed himself. Being “severed” means you divide your life in two. Half of you goes to work, forgetting all memories on the outside. The other half stays on the outside, forgetting all memories at work.
This seems like a smart move for Mark. He’s consumed by the pain of losing his wife so it would make sense to live half your life not having to think about her. But what about the half that doesn’t go to work? They’re still stuck in hell.
The more you watch Severence, the more questions like that pop up. How would one cope with a life where work never ends? Yes, the second your work day is over, your new work day begins. That sounds like hell to me. So, you’re wondering, why did these guys choose to do this to their other selves? The most logical answer is selfishness. You sacrifice this “other” version of yourself so you can live a life of leisure and never have to work again. That sounds to me like the definition of evil.
I haven’t thought this deeply about a show since Lost. It feels cool to know that I can recapture that feeling with a more sophisticated version of that show.
There are a lot of writing lessons to take from Severence but the two biggest, for me, are, 1) High concept television can work. 2) Deliver on the promise of the premise.
For a while there, a ton of high concept TV shows were dying on the vine, forcing networks and streamers to shift to boring but battle-tested IP. But, if you look at the reason those shows, like “La Brea” and “See” didn’t work, it’s because they were shoddily crafted. You could tell that not enough time was put into the development of the series and the mythology. From cliched characters to lazy plot developments, nothing felt thought-through.
If you haven’t heard about the history of Severence, Ben Stiller and the writer worked tirelessly developing the show FOR YEARS. That’s because Stiller knew it was a complex show that wasn’t going to work without an acute attention to detail. As a result, when it came time to shoot, they were ready. The show was confident, sure of itself, and determined to deliver on the promise of its premise. It wasn’t like all these weak shows where you can sense the writers are trying to figure out the show as they go along (ever remember that show “Heroes” – Exhibit #1!).
Do the work. It’s the most basic screenwriting advice you’re ever going to get but it’s also the best. Do the work. Put in the time. Give it your best shot. And then all you can do is let the chips fall where they may.
NEXT SHOWDOWN
I hope you had as much fun as I did with the first showdown of the year – Logline Showdown. It was so fun, we’re going to do a comedy focused second Logline Showdown this Friday. So make sure you tune in. Remember, I did this with a larger plan in mind. Each month, the showdowns will grow into something further down the line in the writing process. So, this first showdown was about choosing an idea. The second showdown, which will take place on Friday, February 28th, is going to be for your first page. So, that’s our next showdown, people: FIRST PAGE SHOWDOWN. You can start submitting… RIGHT NOW. And if you want to check out the rest of the showdowns on Scriptshadow this year, head on over to this link.
What: First Page Showdown
When: Friday, February 28
Deadline: Thursday, February 27, 10pm Pacific Time
Submit: A script title, a genre, and your first page
Where: carsonreeves3@gmail.com
AROUND TOWN
Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey – Guess what, guys? This is going to be the closest thing you get to a Christopher Nolan Star Wars film. How do we know this? Because The Odyssey is a classic Hero’s Journey tale. And we all know that George Lucas obsessively used The Hero’s Journey to craft Star Wars. There are some differences. This story isn’t about leaving home. It’s about coming home. But it’s still got all those classic Hero’s Journey beats. If you haven’t read The Odyssey, it’s about Odysseus trying to get home after the Trojan War and encountering a bunch of obstacles along the way, like the Cyclops and the deadly sirens. Once he gets home, he has to disguise himself as a beggar to take back his kingdom before, finally, convincing his wife that he’s really Odysseus. Another notable detail about The Odyssey is that it’s a pretty clean story. A character journeys from Point A to Point B. Because of that, there shouldn’t be a lot of exposition required. Which is Nolan’s Achilles heel. He spends half of his movies explaining things, which always stifles the narrative momentum. With such a clear goal, we should get a clean exciting story here. And I’m excited. :)
White Lotus Trailer 3rd Season – Let’s get something out of the way. White Lotus is not a “trailer” show. It’s unabashedly character-driven, which doesn’t present well in trailer form. This is a situation where we’re not going to know if that character stuff is working until we’re in the trenches with these characters. And it’s a tall order for Mike White, my favorite writer in all of Hollywood. I still don’t know how he pulled off such a great second season of White Lotus with so little time. I’m never surprised by all the terrible second seasons I’ve seen on TV. Because I know how hard it is, as a screenwriter, to write good stuff quickly. And writers spend, probably, 1/10th the amount of time writing their second season as their first. But, somehow, Mike White wrote an Emmy-worthy season in a tenth of the time. Can he do that again? I don’t know but my instinct is skepticism. Cause the hardest thing in screenwriting is coming up with strong characters. And Mike White doesn’t get to carry any of the great characters he’s written from the old seasons into the new ones (except for a couple). So that means he’s starting all over again. If he pulls this off, it will be one of the greatest writing feats in Hollywood history. I’m not exaggerating. If you want to read my week of White Lotus screenwriting lessons, you can do so here.
Superman Trailer – Superhero movies are baaaaaaaaack! Maybe that’s an exaggeration but this trailer was great. James Gunn is one of the few writers who can balance the grandiosity of superhero films with the heart of character-driven films. We see that right away in this trailer. We do not focus on some cliche shot of Superman and Lois Lane. No, we show Superman on death’s doorstep. And if that isn’t emotional enough, man’s best friend comes along to save him! Opening Day ticket purchase moment right there. That’s all I needed. What I’m impressed by with Gunn is that he takes the emotion right up to the melodramatic line but he never crosses it. He only takes you to the brink. And that’s a huge reason why his films succeed. The emotion is offered but never forced. That, and he’s got that unique voice. He can be emotional, he can be weird, he takes risks. All of these things are what result in a boss-ass superhero film as opposed to Kraven The Hunter.
28 Years Later Trailer – The original 28 Days Later contained a highly risky creative choice. It asked the question: What if zombies were fast? Now, changing the rules of classic monsters has been a go-to throughout history. It’s one of the easiest ways to differentiate your take on the subject matter from the past. But the reason this was so daring was because of the zombie movie’s greatest attribute: since zombies are slow, you can draw out a lot more suspense. You can’t draw out suspense if a zombie sprints at your character, reaching him in 2 seconds. But, 28 Weeks Later counteracted that by making its zombies terrifying. These things looked like they wanted to rip every sinewy muscle from your body until you were just bones. That and it approached its situation from a more realistic place. This felt more like how a zombie apocalypse could go down in real life. 28 Weeks Later was a solid sequel. But I’m not sure anyone was pining for a 28 trilogy. And when I look at this trailer, I see something dark and beautiful. But I also see something depressing and inaccessible. There’s got to be a way in for the reader/viewer. We’ve got to attach to someone and feel that, if they survive, we survive. This trailer does not give us that. Which is why I’m not sure I want to see it. Point blank, it looks too depressing. That’s not why I go to see horror movies. I go to horror movies to be scared. To tap into that feeling of fear. But also to have fun. I think this movie is going to be good. How could it not be with Alex Garland and Danny Boyle guiding it? But I think it’s going to alienate a lot of people. At least based on this trailer.
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Screenplay Review – Test Drive
Genre – Action/Thriller
Premise – A down-on-his-luck car salesman takes a mysterious stranger on a test drive– which turns into a dangerous and unsettling crime spree across the rain-soaked streets of Los Angeles.
About – This made the top 10 of the Black List. Matt Venne has actually been writing for over a decade. He almost exclusively writes horror so this seems to be his attempt to transition to a new genre.
Writer – Matt Venne
Details – 96 pages
Fight Club meets The Game?
The one thing I’ll say about this year’s Black List is that it was concept-friendly. Almost every logline has a high concept or “high concept adjacent” slant to it. That’s something we haven’t had in a good 7 years with the Black List. Most of these scripts could actually be movies.
Imagine that!
And today’s script definitely leans into that high-concept theme.
Cooper Reed is a car salesman at one of the worst dealerships in Los Angeles. Still, he’s somehow managed to sell the second highest number of cars this month. In fact, he only needs one more sale to become salesman of the month. Which comes with a bonus. A bonus he desperately needs to cover the mortgage and expenses of his new child.
Unfortunately, it’s the worst day of the year for selling cars, as the rains are coming down hard in Los Angeles. But just when it seems Cooper is screwed, a mysterious cool dude named Jim Ryder shows up (Old Soul. Cool Motherfucker. Weird Witchy Energy). Jim says he wants to buy a car. All he needs is a quick test drive.
Cooper hops in the car with Jim, not believing his luck. Strangely, though, Jim doesn’t seem that interested in the car. He seems interested in Cooper. He wants to know everything about Cooper, especially what his dreams were before he became a car salesman. Cooper, eager to get the sale, explains that he wanted to be a writer, like his father, who committed suicide earlier this year. The death has been especially tough on Cooper.
Just as Cooper is settling into this share session, Jim has him stop across the street from a bank and says ‘hold on.’ Jim then goes into the bank and ROBS IT! WTF! He jumps back in the car and Cooper becomes an inadvertent getaway driver. Jim then informs Cooper that he has two more banks to rob. And Cooper’s going to help him.
The FBI immediately gets involved, with two agents jumping into action, following Jim around, and trying to figure out the big mystery of the case: Does Cooper actually have a passenger with him? Could it be that Cooper’s father’s suicide has so broken him, that he’s invented Jim? And might this invented Jim have a more nefarious mission? To have Cooper end up just like his father?
This script is sort of like the girl you meet at the bar who’s dressed like Billie Eilish but by the time the night is over, she’s revealed herself to be Celine Dion. I don’t know if that’s the best analogy but the point is, this started off as one script and became a completely different one.
And it caught me by surprise, to be honest.
Cause I was ready to write this one off.
(Spoilers) The moment in this script that got me happened around the midpoint. We get this line, which comes from Cooper’s wife talking to the cops: “It was a real shock for all of us. Nobody more so than for Cooper. Started suffering these horrible bouts of anxiety. Really severe panic attacks. Even experienced a few “hallucinatory events” – which I had no idea could happen in times of extreme mental strain. Eventually got him on some psych meds. Which helped.”
Notice how “hallucinatory events” is spotlighted. I read that and I thought, “oh boy. It’s a Fight Club ending. Cooper and Jim are the same person.”
But then, instead of boring us for the next 50 pages then giving us the twist ending we all saw coming, Venne leans into the question of, “Are Jim and Cooper the same person?” almost right away. Then, in the end (spoiler), it turns out Jim is a real person. It was almost like a reverse-twist.
When I read something like that, I know the writer has put a lot of thought into his script. Because 95 out of 100 writers would’ve gone with the easier “Fight Club” twist. A screenwriter who understands that that’s a letdown and that he needs to go deeper, is a good screenwriter.
And what’s cool about Test Drive is that it still gives us a twist. It’s not an earth-shattering twist. It’s a twist organically born out of the character development Venne’s been setting up all script and therefore more emotionally satisfying. (Spoiler). Here, we learn that Jim was a student of Cooper’s father. He came here because Cooper was on the same path as his dad and Jim wanted to stop it.
That’s what surprised me about this script. It started out as this, almost straight comedy about this wily guy taking a car salesman on a test drive from hell. But the deeper into the script we go, the more we learn about Cooper’s father, who committed suicide, and the script really leans into that reality.
What I mean by that is, a lot of writers will write in character stuff because it checks a box. They might even write that our hero’s father died recently, just like this script. But you can tell the writer doesn’t really care about that death or how it affects our hero. They’re just checking the box they’re supposed to check that makes their character “deeper.”
Instead, you should be doing it like Venne. If you’re going to include something that would have a major impact on your hero’s life, you have to commit to the reality of that. You can’t just say it’s there and hope readers feel sad. No, you have to integrate it into the story, like Cooper’s father’s death is integrated here.
Usually, I give scripts with strong character development good marks. Unfortunately, there was one aspect of this script that was so annoying, it counteracted all that great character development.
The philosophizing.
Oh my god the philosophizing. It’s everywhere!
I don’t want to inundate this review with some of these endless philosophical monologues so I’ll provide you with the shortest Jim monologue in the script: “Truth be told, everyone is “You” and everyone is “I” and everyone is “Me” – that’s our name. We all share that. Especially at the subatomic level where there are literally no separations. No distinctions. Everything One. Including “You” and “Me” and -“
There’s a whole script full of that.
It’s not all that bad but here’s the thing – if you’re going to make something a “thing” in your script, whether that thing is “snappy dialogue” or “killer set pieces” or “quirky characters” or “a twisty-turny narrative” — whatever it is that you’re going to feature in your screenplay – that aspect of the script needs to be great.
Cause if 90 pages of your script is snappy dialogue and you’re only mildly good at snappy dialogue, your script won’t work.
The philosophizing here bounced back and forth between average and decent. It never reached, “Wow, this philosophy is completely making me rethink everything I know about life,” which is what good philosophy should do.
And if you want a good example of that, go watch the original Fight Club. There’s a scene in there that I still think about today, which is when Tyler Durden puts the gun to the guy’s head and tells him to go live the life he’s always wanted to live. It’s not exactly philosophical. But it’s one person getting another person to change their life. That is ALWAYS going to affect the audience more than a character rambling about Buddhism for five minutes.
So that was unfortunate.
As for the rest of the script, Jim is, no-doubt, a character that actors are going to want to play. Even if I didn’t like his philosophy, he’s modeled after Tylder Durden and what actor doesn’t want to play this generation’s version of Tyler Durden?
The set pieces were okay but there was one really good chase scene with their car zipping around the Los Angeles Metro underground, dodging trains left and right. That was fun.
And the script gets better as it goes on. Which is a great asset for a script to have since most scripts get worse as they continue. For that reason, this hangs on for a ‘worth the read.’
Script Link: Test Drive
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Today’s writer is a reminder that, whatever the genre of the script is you break in with, that is the genre you’ll be asked to write going forward. And the more of those you write, the harder it will be to break away from that identity. Venne has made a solid career out of writing horror films. But he clearly wanted to branch out. So he wrote this. Will it be enough to get him a job writing in this new genre? Depends on if the movie is made and if it does well. The point is: make sure, whatever you’re writing, you LOVE that genre. Cause it will become your career.
