Earlier today, Pia Cook, a talented writer who I’ve known for a long time, sent me a logline through my logline evaluation service (just $25! – carsonreeves1@gmail.com). As a reminder, send me your ideas BEFORE you write them so I can tell you if they’re worth writing or not. That’s what Pia did. And here’s the logline she sent me:
Working Title: June East
Genre: Comedy
Logline: After a near-fatal accident, a chunky divorcee beat cop, wakes up convinced she’s Mae West, and armed with new confidence becomes the city’s only hope to catch a monstrous serial killer.
I told Pia that the logline had potential but I was worried it was too old-fashioned. The industry likes fresh ideas, ideas that lean into new subject matter and trendy topics because you can mine a lot of new material from them. For example, a month ago I reviewed a script about a guy who stalks a Youtube celebrity and tries to infiltrate his crew. The social media angle gave the classic stalker genre a fresh angle.
While it’s possible to mine fresh ideas from the past, a woman who bumps her head and starts acting like a 1920s movie star didn’t generate the kind of excitement a big modern idea usually gives me.
Then, as I was writing up my analysis, I re-read the logline and, momentarily, thought of the cop as a man. Out of nowhere, I started laughing. Not only was the idea of a man thinking he was Mae West funny, but I noticed that the idea, which seemed dated just moments ago, all of a sudden felt fresh. With all of the discussion around gender malleability lately, this idea immediately became current.
Not to mention, when I thought of a woman thinking she was Mae West, I merely smiled. But when I thought of a man doing it, I laughed.
I sat on this mutation of Pia’s original concept for a long time. Should I recommend to her that she switch gears? Or is my version of the idea nothing more than a 4-minute Saturday Night Live sketch? Would people really be able to sit through 2 hours of a man thinking he was Mae West?
The question got me thinking on a more macro scale. What I’ve noticed after reading so many loglines through the years is that most screenwriters gravitate towards the safe idea. For example, take 2020’s sci-fi flick, Underwater. A deep-sea team based on the ocean floor encounters a monster. This is basically “Alien” but underwater. You’ve changed the location but everything else is identical. The concept sure feels like a movie. And yet, there’s something lacking.
Still, we see safe concepts like this do well all the time. Another recent example is the film, “Nobody,” which became a minor hit. It’s a mini-Taken built around a suburban dad. Been there, done that, and yet the film, by most measurements, was a success.
However, here’s the issue. You’re not one of the chosen few who have direct access to people who can put movies together. You’re just someone generating ideas on a laptop. So the rules are going to be different for you. A logline for “Nobody” is going to be too generic to generate any reads. Hence you have to think more aggressively.
Which brings me back to June East. Writing this script with a female lead is the safer play. Without question. But writing it with a male lead has the bigger upside. That’ because it’s more unexpected, it’s weirder, it’s riskier. All of those things increase the chances of it leaving an impression. That’s what you’re trying to do with a logline. You’re trying to leave an impression so that the potential reader can’t help but request the script.
I’m bringing this up because I feel like we’re all stuck in this bubble where we’re regurgitating familiar concepts from our past with only minor adjustments, and thinking that’s enough. Yes, we’re providing a proven movie formula. But we’re doing it inside the most bland boring package possible. And we make this mistake over and over again.
I don’t know what “Male Mae West” looks like after the Fun-and-Games section of the screenplay. I don’t know if the joke gets old within ten pages. I do know, however, that if these two loglines – one with the woman and one with the man – landed on my desk, I’d check out the male one before the female one. Cause it’s more unique.
So what does “risky” look like? How does one go about creating a “risky” concept? I think the most obvious way is to find a common formula and do something truly unexpected with one of the main elements. “Taken” for example. We all know the formula of a tough guy trying to save his daughter/wife/son/family. A recent risky twist on that formula is “Pig.” A guy goes into the local Portland underworld to rescue his pig.
We know this risk worked because everyone who heard this idea said, “Wait a minute, what??” And they searched it out to see if it was true. That’s when you know you’ve done something fresh and risky. People are talking about it. People are interested enough in it to seek it out.
Another example is JoJo Rabbit. Here, Taika takes several risks. He made a World War 2 film (the most common setting for a movie in history) but instead of focusing on adults, he focused on children. That hasn’t been done much. He then took another risk by focusing on the Hitler Youth Program. Most writers would’ve focused on Jewish kids. And then he took the biggest risk of all. He made our main character’s best friend Hitler.
All of this resulted in a movie that was unlike any movie we’d seen. That’s the power of a risky concept. Whether it works or not, it results in double-takes. People have to know more.
Unfortunately, they don’t all end up this way. Anybody remember The Happening, M. Night’s infamous horror film about killer wind? That was a huuuuuuge risk. You turned house plants into evil killers. Nobody had done that before. Well, guess what? Nobody will do it again because it was a dumb idea. But it was risky. You can’t deny that.
Complicating the equation further, non-risky ideas can still pay off big. Take Free Guy. That’s one of the most mainstream ideas of the decade. There’s nothing in it that’s risky or trying to push boundaries in the genre. It’s a gentle yet fun execution of a standard Hollywood idea. And it ended up being the surprise hit of the summer. Had you tried to doing something risky with it, like have Ryan Reynolds realize that because it’s a video game and therefore nothing’s real, he can mass murder everyone inside of it – we would not be talking about Free Guy as a massive box office hit.
Which brings us back to the question, which route is better? Risky concept or Safe concept? Here’s the way I see it. As an unknown screenwriter, you must take risks. However, you shouldn’t take risks just to take them. They have to make sense in some way. So whenever you’re coming up with script ideas, part of your process should be to ask yourself, “Is this a risky idea?” Or, if it’s not, “Can I do something riskier with this idea?” If you find angles that are riskier that make sense, consider them. Because I’ll tell you this. The writers who languish in obscurity for decades tend to be the ones who keep going back to that safe well of mainstream movie ideas and not doing enough with them. They try something a teensy bit different, like a romantic comedy set in Idaho instead of New York, but they never take that risk that’s truly going to make their ideas stand out.
I hope you enjoyed this latest foray into the always fun topic of concepts. I’ll remind you once again – I’m preparing everyone for the Fabulous First Act Contest. We start writing our first acts March 1. And I want you to have the best possible concept so that your script has a legitimate shot at winning. Feel free to share your concepts in the comments section where our esteemed group of longtime Scriptshadow readers will happily provide feedback for you.
