Get your loglines in for the Logline Showdown tonight (Thursday)!!!
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Deadline: Thursday, March 23rd, at 10pm Pacific Time
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I stumbled upon Swingers over the weekend and, of course, had to watch it. What’s crazy about Swingers is that it has a really strange screenplay and, from a purely technical place, is a bad example of how to write. Yet it remains one of my favorite movies ever. That’s what gave me the idea for today’s article. The following movies are responsible for teaching me the ten biggest screenwriting lessons I’ve learned. Let’s get into them!
Swingers – Swingers is a really messy movie. It has a ridiculously long first act. The main character, Mikey, is not very active. He’s just torn up about a recent break-up. After partying it up in LA for a while, his buddy, Trent, convinces him to go to Vegas. They go to Vegas, have some adventures there, only to come back to Los Angeles and continue partying. The plot was so directionless that the editor threatened to leave the project if Jon Favreau didn’t inject some purpose into the narrative, which Favreau refused to do. Yet it still works.
What I learned: Great characters will make up for a weak plot (but never vice versa). If we like the characters, we will follow them anywhere. No matter how weak the story is, we will still be engaged because we want to see what happens to these people. So, the next time you write a script, double the amount of time you spend on creating characters. Really think about how you’re going to construct characters that the audience will love.
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off – Three friends decide not to go to school one day. Does that sound like a big concept to you? It doesn’t to me. If you pitched this idea to a studio exec in 2023, they’d politely stare back at you before replying, “Is that it?” There just isn’t enough there. Yet it has become one of the most iconic movies in cinema history. Another script in this category is Dazed and Confused. A bunch of junior high and high school students hang out on the last day of the school year. Sound like a movie to you? It doesn’t to me. Yet both movies were great. What’s going on here?
What I learned: Weak concepts can be turbocharged with very tight time frames. This was a huge one for me. I realized that very tight time frames create pressure. Pressure is conflict. Everything that happens takes on a higher significance because time is so precious. If you have a “weak” concept or “bland” subject matter, consider tightening the time frame of your movie. You’ll notice that things immediately become more interesting.
Parasite – I’m cheating a little bit because the movie that really taught me this was Star Wars. But I talk too much about Star Wars as it is (and boy do I got some Star Wars opinions coming up in this latest newsletter – sign up: carsonreeves1@gmail.com). One of the biggest dangers in writing a screenplay is monotony. Repetition. We feel like nothing’s evolving or changing in the story.
What I learned: Both Parasite and Star Wars taught me the power of a big mid-point development, sometimes referred to as “the midpoint twist.” For Star Wars, it’s when they get to their destination, planet Alderran, and the planet is gone. For Parasite it’s when they reveal that there’s a secret basement in the home with another character living there. A strong midpoint plot development (midpoint just means the middle of the screenplay) can not only shake up your story, but it helps the second half of your script feel different from your first half. Which is important because so many scripts die a slow painful death due to the fact that nothing in the story is evolving or changing.
The Hangover – The Hangover isn’t just the last giant theatrical comedy release. It contains a lesson that goes beyond comedy and encapsulates an approach that every screenwriter should be taking when coming up with a concept.
What I learned: Find a less obvious, more unexpected way into a concept. The obvious concept for The Hangover is a bunch of guys go to Vegas for a bachelor party, get into some shenanigans, and comedy ensues. That’s the way into this idea for 99 out of 100 screenwriters. Jon Lucas and Scott Moore found a fresher angle into it. What if you skipped the bachelor party and focused on the next day, with a friend missing and everyone too hungover to remember what happened the night before? Now you’ve got a concept that most writers never have a prayer of coming up with.
Hide and Seek – Hold on hold on hold on. Am I reading this right? Is Carson talking about the 2005 Robert DeNiro Dakota Fanning horror film for an all-time screenwriting lesson? Yes. Yes I am. But not in the way you think. 1999 gave us one of the most famous horror movies of all time, The Sixth Sense. That’s where this lesson begins.
What I learned: A good twist ending is almost impossible to pull off. The amazing twist ending in The Sixth Sense spurred a ton of copycats over the next decade. Every horror film was an attempt to shock you at the end. And they were all REALLY BAD. Hide and Seek has a twist ending that I don’t even remember. I just remember leaving the theater seething that I had paid money for such garbage. But it was just one in many terrible twist endings that I’d watched since the Sixth Sense’s success. I finally realized how difficult it was to write a good twist ending. So the lesson is, don’t write a twist ending unless you are 100% super clearly obviously there’s-no-way-I-can-be-wrong sure you have a whopper of a perfect twist. If there’s even a little bit of doubt in you, your twist ending probably sucks.
Inglorious Basterds – This lesson is, in part, one I learned in Inglorious Basterds, but it’s really a lesson I learned from all of Quentin’s films, cause he does it so well. It stems from the “Milk” scene that opens the script. Or the OD scene in Pulp Fiction. Or the Manson scene in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
What I learned: Scenes can be self-contained mini-stories. A scene is an opportunity to tell a story with a beginning, a middle, and an end. If you can embody this approach, you are unstoppable as a screenwriter because it will be impossible for your scripts to get boring. If readers are getting wrapped up in each individual scene because that scene contains a compelling story, they’ll never be able to put your script down.
Mad Max: Fury Road – People remember this film as one of the most visceral experiences they’ve ever had at the movies. Technically, I shouldn’t be including it, though, since it was constructed without a screenplay. However, there is a GIGANTIC screenwriting lesson in here that is so critical, I can’t not highlight it.
What I learned: The power of urgency. This film is the epitome of urgency. There is no free time. Things need to happen RIGHT NOW. That’s almost always when movies work best – when things need to happen right away. Not next week. Not tomorrow. RIGHT NOW. It gives your script so much energy. You may be thinking, but I’m not writing a big Hollywood movie, Carson. I’m writing something smaller. Okay, stop what you’re doing and go watch the French movie, Full Time, right now. Very small movie that has EVEN MORE URGENCY THAN Mad Max: Fury Road.
Die Hard – Perfect movie? There are about 50 screenwriting lessons you can learn from this film. But the biggest thing I took away from it was, “What a great character.” And I went about trying to figure out why I rooted for this character as much as I did. What I realized? He was insanely active.
What I learned: The more active the main character, the better. Movies love characters who are ACTIVE. Active characters push the story along since they’re always trying to achieve an immediate goal. John McClane is always trying to get somewhere, to take down someone, to get one step closer to defeating the bad guy and saving his wife. The most boring scripts I read are almost always the ones with the least active protagonists.
Titanic – Every night, in my dreams. I see you. I feel you. No amount of hate or ridicule will ever prevent me from promoting the spectacular screenwriting feat that is Titanic. Any movie that’s 3 hours-plus has an incredible challenge in front of it. How do you remain engaging for so long? Especially if you don’t have the spectacle of superheroes fighting each other?
What I learned: The incredible power of dramatic irony. Dramatic irony is when we, the audience, know something our heroes do not. Usually that they’re in danger. The reason we’re willing to hang around for an hour and a half of an, arguably, cheesy love story, is because WE KNOW THE SHIP IS SINKING AND THEY DON’T. That’s why. And that’s the power of dramatic irony. It can be used over the course of an entire movie, like Titanic, within sequences of scenes, or within individual scenes.
Fargo (the movie) – The opening scene of Jerry Lundgaard walking into a bar to set up the kidnapping of his wife with two criminals remains one of the biggest ‘ah-ha’ moments I’ve ever had in screenwriting. Because it could’ve been a straight-forward scene. But, instead, the two criminals are furious with Jerry because he’s late. And that lateness infuses the scene with this anger and disdain, elevating an average dramatic situation it into a tightly wound uncomfortable experience.
What I learned: Add conflict to your scenes! Without conflict, most scenes are just exposition. They are characters exchanging information that pushes the story forward. But if you only do that, there is no drama. You need drama to keep the reader entertained. Enter conflict. Find some sort of unresolved issue and have it play into the scene, either on the surface or under the surface. As long as there is conflict, your scene has a good chance of being entertaining.
