One of the projects I’m developing as a producer is a tennis movie. For those who read the site regularly, you know I’m a big tennis fan, so it’s only natural that I’d have a tennis movie on my slate. We can go into the specifics of how marketable a tennis movie is at a later date. But for now, we’ll stay on topic.
In researching other tennis movies, most of which have been failures, I came across this 1995 tennis movie called, “The Break.” The Break is a really bad movie. It’s about a former tennis player turned teaching pro who mentors a young prodigy during his first year on the tour. You can experience some of the movie yourself here, although I wouldn’t recommend it.
The Break has a lot of script problems. The main character – the coach – is too on-the-nose. The plot, which involves gambling for some reason, is overwritten. And the tone is all over the place. One second it wants you to take it dead serious. The next it wants you to treat it like a Farrely Brothers comedy. Watching the film is a frustrating reminder of how easy it is to make a terrible movie.
As I continued my research, I looked to other successful sports movies to see how they did it right. Eventually, I was reacquainted with Bull Durham. Bull Durham is an interesting film. It’s quintessential late 80s/early 90s and already feels pretty dated when you go back and watch it. But one thing is clear. The movie works. That’s all you’re asking for as a writer, director, or producer. Does the movie work? And Bull Durham works really well.
But that’s not what I was focused on. What I was focused on was the fact that, as I watched Bull Durham, I realized that The Break was a total ripoff of the film. Everything from the sports angle, to the mentor stuff, to the [attempted] tonal balance between drama and comedy. Heck, the main character in The Break even copied Kevin Costner’s 5 o’clock shadow and Bon Jovi haircut.
The difference between the two films was that Bull Durham was just better. Everything about it worked better. Most importantly, the writing itself. It was more sophisticated, less cliche, took more chances, had better jokes, understood character dynamics better, conveyed the eccentricities of its sport better. It was better in every way.
That experience reminded me of one of the biggest mistakes screenwriters make: They are slaves to the moment. In fact, I would say that every screenwriter IN HISTORY has made this mistake at least once. And most of them continue to make it. We allow the generation of our ideas to be influenced by whatever the latest fads are. As such, we come up with stuff that can be categorized as “just like everything else out right now.” There’s actually a term for this. And I’m going to give you that term in a moment. But before we get to it, let’s discuss the two types of idea generation philosophies you want to be using.
WHAT’S OLD IS NEW AGAIN
This is one of the best ways to create fresh ideas. You take something that hasn’t been around for a while – a situation, a character, a setting, a concept – and then you bring it into the present, preferably with a spin. This is what Star Wars famously did. Westerns were becoming old hat. So Lucas created a space-western. We saw it with one of 2019’s biggest pictures, Joker. That was basically a reimagining of the 1982 movie, The King of Comedy. Todd Phillips found his spin by putting a famous DC comics character in it. Same for 2017’s Get Out. That was “Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner” with a modern horror twist. “What’s Old is New Again” is a great way to generate ideas.
WHAT’S NEW IS NEW AGAIN
“What’s New is New Again” is another good way to generate ideas. This is when come up with a truly new and fresh idea. Something that hasn’t been done before. Because you’re competing against a century of movies, going this route can be challenging. “New is New Again” ideas often involve new technology. Newer ideologies. New stories in the media. New cultural shifts. I would argue that The Matrix was a “What’s New is New Again” idea. Some people may say we’ve done versions of The Matrix before but I’d push back on that and say the large majority of it was something fresh. Ditto Jurassic Park. We’d never seen a dinosaur island idea before. A lot of Black Mirror episodes feel “new is new” to me.
WHAT’S NEW IS OLD AGAIN
This is what I was referring to with “The Break” versus “Bull Durham.” And it’s the mistake most writers make when coming up with an idea. They see the latest hit movie in the theater or they track which movies are doing well at the box office and they come up with an idea that’s similar to them. For example, if someone saw Tenet, they might come up with an idea about heading backwards in time against the grain of everyone else moving forwards in time. It certainly FEELS like a new idea due to the fresh “new” feeling you got while watching Tenet. But six months later when you begin sending the script out, everyone’s going to say “This is just like Tenet.”
Yes, you want to understand what’s trending in the industry. But you must be careful about being too influenced by the current slate of popular movies. Unless you get in at the very beginning of the trend, by the time you send out the script, it’ll be old hat. A lot of people called Bird Box a ripoff of A Quiet Place. Instead of not being able to make a noise, you’re not able to look at things. But the reason Bird Box still did well on Netflix was because it was well into development by the time A Quiet Place came out. So they were able to get it out there immediately, when a “sensory” horror movie still felt fresh. If you, the unknown screenwriter, started writing a “Quiet Place” clone immediately after the movie came out, you’re already racing against time. Every single day, your idea gets more stale. It’s not a pleasant place to be.
There’s a final category that’s not worth getting into since it’s obvious. But I’ll mention it anyway. “What’s Old is Old Again.” This is when you take an old movie and basically write the exact same movie. You’re not bringing anything new to it. Writers sometimes make the mistake of believing an “old is old again” is actually a “old is new again” situation. They believe they’ve created a fresh twist but the twist is too subtle, or not enough to make the idea feel new. So you want to watch out for that. Ask yourself if you’re TRULY bringing something new to the old idea. But I think this category speaks for itself. Don’t do it.
You should be focusing on the two best ways of coming up with an idea – “old is new again” and “new is new again.” They’re more likely to garner a response (assuming that your idea is actually good, lol).
With that said, I don’t want to scare you. Coming up with ideas is hard enough and here I’m saying, “Do this and don’t do that or you’re screwed!!” I concede that there’s a fifth option. And that’s when you come up with an idea that just “feels right.” It may violate some of the things I’ve warned you about here. But the idea excites you for some reason. On Tuesday I reviewed a script called “Towers” about a family man who wants to build a club on the top of his company’s building and later gets into drag-racing. I’m not sure what category that idea falls into but something about it excited the writer and that ended up getting him a lot of attention. So there is an element of following your gut here. Use these categories I’ve discussed above as a guide, not as gospel.
Good luck! :)
