Warning: I'm going to be discussing everything about Star Wars: The Last Jedi here. Consider this your Spoiler Alert.
As one of the authors of THE MAKING OF STAR WARS: EPISODE VIII, I was curious to see how much of the film Brian Michael Scully and I correctly guessed now that the film is in release. Turns out we nailed it, all of it. Don't bother to check, just take my word for it.
I'm led to believe that most boys growing up tended to dream about being Han Solo more than they did Luke. Han was the cool guy, the hot shot pilot who got the girl and always had a witty line to say. His cocky aloofness was apparently far more appealing than Luke's pureheart earnestness.
I was one of the kids who wanted to be Luke Skywalker.
After a film's worth of build-up we finally get to know the modern version of Luke Skywalker in writer/director Rian Johnson's THE LAST JEDI as Rey arrives at the first Jedi Temple to ask for his help. Arm outstretched, she delivers his lightsaber, his father's lightsaber. Luke takes it, studies it for a moment... and then chucks it over his shoulder.
This is not going to go the way we think.
There are a lot of plot threads winding through THE LAST JEDI (too many, to be honest), but the most consequential and controversial is the Luke/Rey thread, as the young would-be Jedi learns what drove Luke into exile and why he's none too eager to come out of it. After Rey ignores his first few admonishments to go away, he tells her, "I came here to die."
I don't think that claim entirely holds up under scrutiny, but I'll come back to that in a moment.
We already knew that Luke disappeared after Kylo Ren went bad, killed all of his students and destroyed Luke's Jedi Academy. What we didn't know was the confrontation that set this off. Luke visited the young Ben Solo as he slept and looked into his mind. He discovered that the darkness in him was greater than he feared, too great to be stopped at that point. In a moment of impulse, he ignited his lightsaber, ready to end his threat now. It was a reaction he almost immediately reconsidered, but Ben awoke, saw this and attacked Luke. By the time Luke woke up, his students were dead.
So Luke's guilt is three-fold:
1) He feels he should have caught Ben's turn to the Dark Side sooner.
2) He shouldn't have momentarily considered killing him.
3) He shouldn't have FAILED to kill him.
And yes, 2 and 3 set off a logic feedback loop. That's part of the issue.
Also, let's consider the fact that Luke was the guy who still believed there was enough good still in conflict with Darth Vader that he could be salvaged. How dark must Kylo Ren's soul be for Luke to think even for a second that he was beyond saving?
I suspect that when Luke went looking for the first Jedi Temple, it was with the intent of using that ancient knowledge to figure out where he went wrong so badly that he allowed the rise of another Vader. He needed to understand what he could do differently to keep his students safe from the Dark Side. Clearly, what he learned about the Jedi and the Force was that this susceptibility was less of a bug than a feature. That would have to be what drove him to see the Jedi legacy as one of failure, and one that the galaxy would be better off without.
It's not the future we envisioned for Luke when we left him in RETURN OF THE JEDI. Having defeated the Emperor and redeemed his father, his Jedi ascension came with the promise that he would be the one to restore the Jedi without making the mistakes of the past. This was only further reinforced by the prequels, which deliberately showed the old Jedi as stiff and formal, almost rigidly constrained by their own dogma. Luke was to be a new breed, possibly more spiritual and less orthodox.
Luke represented the hope of a new post-war generation, ready to move past the mistakes of its parents and ready to begin a new golden age. Only now, another fascist faction has risen, democracy has been destroyed and all the mistakes that older generation were supposed to have put in the past are now the responsibility of the younger generation to fix anew.
Oh, wait. NOW I totally relate to what sent Luke out to that island. And if I was Rey, I'd be all over him like, "Are you kidding me, dude! Get off your ass and fix this mess you made! It can't be ALL on the next generation!"
I actually understand the reaction from fans who feel that THE LAST JEDI undermines Luke's entire story. The original six films paint a picture of an archaic Jedi Order that needed to evolve in order to survive. Luke was the redemption of all of that, to the degree that it's the entire point of the six-film arc. TLJ tells us, "Yeah, that's not true at all."
I'll be honest. I'm still processing that. The movie doesn't let Luke off the hook by having Rey open his eyes to the good of the Jedi. A surprise visit from Yoda serves only to reinforce Luke's perspective that the Jedi cannot go on as they used to. It's very easy to take from this film the idea that the galaxy would be no worse off than if Luke Skywalker had never been born.
It's hard to watch Luke become a cautionary tale of his own, but Mark Hamill plays the broken Jedi Master perfectly. In his early scenes, Luke seems to have gone a bit loopy in isolation and even when he gives in to offer Rey insight into the Force, he's far from the serene mentor we might have hoped he be. (In one interesting bit of potential foreshadowing, he notes with fear that she didn't even hesitate about diving into a reserve of Dark Side power. Is there darkness in Rey? Or will she learn it's possible to wield the Dark Side without being corrupted by it?)
While it's taking apart our expectations of Jedi Master Luke Skywalker, THE LAST JEDI works to subvert our assumptions of what a STAR WARS film should be. In a shocking late film twist, Supreme Leader Snoke meets his end during a confrontation between Rey and Kylo Ren, when Ren betrays his master and murders him. Snoke seemed poised to fill the void left by the Emperor and so long as he lived, there was reasonable hope for Kylo Ren's redemption. In one of the film's most delicious ironies, Ren kills his dark master and THAT is the thing that conclusively shows he's too far gone to be saved.
This means we go into the final chapter with the First Order led by a dangerously unstable man-baby. Twice in the final battle he's shown to be unhinged, as when he orders all ships to pursue the Millennium Falcon and then later when he has every gun trained on Luke Skywalker. The First Order isn't in for the most considered leadership and it almost makes one wonder if Ren's eventual downfall will come as the result of a coup.
And to be clear, I never thought Snoke was going to be revealed to have some secret connection to past characters or anything of that sort. I'm glad he didn't turn out to be some kind of Emperor clone or anything else that would have made this universe smaller. Some fans may be upset he got taken off the board so early... I'm ecstatic!
By the same token, the film resolves the mystery of Rey's parents in the only way that would have really made sense - they were nobodies who sold her for booze money and who are buried out in the desert. As someone tired of the "Chosen One" trope and "small universe syndrome" I'm thrilled she didn't turn out to be a former student of Luke's who had her memory wiped, or a secret daughter of Han and Leia, or Luke's daughter, or any other theory that fans built up over the last two years. She's no one, and that gives her more impact than any lineage they could have tied her to.
Not everything works here. As much as I like Finn his entire subplot does little but go in circles. He and Rose have a fun rapport, but by the time their story's resolved it ends up changing nothing about the main narrative. Benicio del Toro brings an interesting energy to his part, and the diversion lets Rian Johnson get in an interesting layer about war profiteers in the STAR WARS universe, but in a movie that's two and a half hours long, this extra baggage brings down the pace a bit.
Leia's storyline is a little more interesting, as the First Order pursues the Resistance, Leia's capital ship finds itself in a slow speed chase. One attack kills most of the leadership and leaves Leia in a coma, prompting her replacement (played by Laura Dern) to clash with Poe. This story is a little more engaging, mostly because it provokes some growth in Poe. It also pays off in one of the most stunning visuals of the new trilogy when the enemy flagship is taken out. I've seen nitpicks of the "science" here, but STAR WARS is the last franchise you should try to bring any kind of science realism to.
Carrie Fisher's final appearance as Leia is as emotional as you'd expect. In one wonderful sequence she appears to have been killed after being sucked into space, only for her Force abilities to manifest long enough for her to propel herself back to the ship. I still feel it was a major missed opportunity to apparently not have Leia explore her Force abilities at all in the intervening years, but this one moment mitigated that slightly. (And, had Carrie lived, possibly could have set up an advancement of that storyline in Episode IX.)
Adam Driver continues to do incredible work as Kylo Ren. We're basically getting the Anakin arc done right this time, and that plays well against our expectations. We keep expecting the redemptive moment even as the film tells us twice that this only can end with his death. I'm looking forward to seeing him go full-on megalomaniac in the third film, and especially how that'll force Daisy Ridley to raise her game even more to match him.
It's remarkable how much the new characters have already taken over this franchise. Chewie, R2-D2 and C-3PO are all present but even more in the background than THE FORCE AWAKENS would have led us to expect. Chewie gets some of the film's better moments, though, including his interactions with the Porg creatures on Luke's island and a late-movie moment where he flies to the rescue. As dark as this film gets, all it took is the Falcon riding in, Rey in the gunner's chair, and the Falcon theme from the first film blaring for me to feel like I was 8 again.
(The only thing that could have topped it would have been if - when Ren orders all ships after the Falcon - Luke's X-Wing had flown to the rescue and taken ALL of them out. And yes, I wouldn't have objected to a little more fan service in the vein of "Luke Skywalker, Jedi badass.")
All of this leads to something I was sure we'd see by the end of this trilogy, if not this movie: the death of Luke Skywalker. After using the Force to project his image across the galaxy to confront Kylo Ren and give the Resistance a chance to flee, Luke looks across the ocean at twin setting suns, reacts with wonder to something he sees, and vanishes into the Force like Obi-Wan and Yoda before him.
It's a beautiful image, one that brings us full circle with the young dreamer who stared over the horizon 40 years ago as one of John Williams's most affecting scores played. Luke departs this world believing that nothing he devoted his life to truly mattered, that it will be up to Rey to learn from his mistakes and become the new hope he was believed to be. He leaves knowing that there's nothing he can do to save Kylo Ren from himself.
It's a terrible thing for that dreamer to be faced with - a galaxy made worse despite his own best intentions. And yet, despite that, we're told that he was at peace as he went. The trauma that drove him into exile was so profound that he cut himself off from the Force. I'm going to presume that was the reason that Yoda never made a Force Ghost visit until now. Is there still room for Luke to be wrong about what he asserted to Rey? Did his life, despite its failures, still have purpose?
I like to think so, and I'll chose to believe that when he reengaged with the Force, this time with his new insight that it didn't belong to just the Jedi, he gained a deeper understanding of his place in all of this. There was no guilt, no regret to anchor him any longer, and that was the peace that he united with as he became one with the Force.
THE LAST JEDI eschews many conventions and remainders of the past, to the point many fans have seen it as hostile to THE FORCE AWAKENS and the original films. "Let the past die," Kylo Ren says, "Kill it if you have to." We need not assume that because the franchise is moving beyond its beginnings that it's fully denouncing them. I admit, the most reasonable reading of Luke's story allows for that interpretation.
But this is not the last word on STAR WARS, and even though this is no longer his story, I will be surprised if EPISODE IX doesn't bring at least one visit from Luke, and in a way that unifies all the trilogies and shows us that no matter how derisively Luke refers to himself as a "legend," that title is well-earned.
Showing posts with label Brian Scully. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Brian Scully. Show all posts
Monday, December 18, 2017
Wednesday, May 18, 2016
The writers of the spec script THE MAKING OF STAR WARS: EPISODE VIII revealed!
In recent years, May the 4th has come to be recognized as an unofficial Star Wars holiday, as in "May the Fourth be with you." The practical result of this is that for the entire day, most geek sites turn into complete advertisements for Star Wars, whether they're posting new Star Wars-related news or reblogging old content it seems no story is too small so long as it's Jedi-related.
This most recent holiday saw the release of an unusual spec script: The Making of Star Wars: Episode VIII. If you are part of the online circle known as Screenwriting Twitter, you probably saw some discussion about this, spawned by this tweet:
A writer drafted their own spec script about the making of a Star Wars movie that hasn't even finished filming yet, then made it available on the internet via both the Black List and an open download, making certain to put it out on May the 4th. It was clearly an attention-seeking tweet from Making Episode VIII, and in reacting to it by telling everyone, "Don't do this," Mr. Sweeney was clearly giving the author exactly what he wanted. How do I know this?
Because I am "Making Episode VIII."
The script the account was shilling was authored by me and my friend Brian Scully. The whole gag was my idea, and it actually started as an April Fools joke. The last few years, the internet has been a horrible place on April 1st. As one observer noted, it's like people think doing something like "Your mother was just killed! April Fool!" counts as a clever prank. I wanted to do something that was fun, but that wasn't necessarily ruined if people didn't think of it as "real."
In the wake of THE FORCE AWAKENS, I also saw how some sites were so hungry for Star Wars discussion that they'd repost seemingly every scrap of Star Wars content out there. More than one site was regularly building stories around fan theories that originated on Reddit! It felt like nothing was too ridiculous to be spotlit and that was when I hatched my plan.
The final thing that motivated this prank was when I saw several geek sites devote space to the totally nothing story of a guy trying to crowdfund the cost of billboards to promote his WAYNE'S WORLD 3 spec script. I've blogged about my part in spreading that story before. If you Google "wayne's world 3 gofundme" you can see exactly how far this story spread, branching out from a tweet from Geoff LaTulippe after I tipped him off to this campaign. I go into more details in my older post, but for me, the spreading of this story was just a sad comment how a completely irrelevant story got spread just so the phrase "WAYNE'S WORLD 3" could provoke some clicks.
In a way, I guess I wanted to prove how easily an empty-content story could be spread, even if it was clearly some kind of troll or goof. It seemed completely doable that we could get at least a few of these sites to post about The Making of Star Wars: Episode VIII.
I sent an email to Brian Scully with the pitch: I'd seen a growing genre on the Black List in recent years - scripts about the "making of" famous films. It seemed ripe for parody, and merging it with my April Fool's idea gave me the notion to do a script about the making of Star Wars: Episode VIII. Because of the ridiculousness of such a script, I insisted that if nothing else, we needed to have fun writing it.
At this point, there were less than two months before April Fools. I pitched to Brian that we would not break out the plot or work from any kind of outline. Instead, we could take turns writing each day. I would write at least three pages, then send it to him and he'd have a day to think about it and get me back at least three pages of his own.
I'd done this sort of "write the other guy into a corner" approach back when I was running a TV show in college, and though I'm a meticulous outliner usually, a few years back I wrote a comedy script entirely by coming up with the high concept hook and just going where the story took me. I found it to be a refreshing exercise because each day started with "What's the most obvious choice? Great - now let's do the opposite of that and see where it takes us." Obviously, that was just for the vomit draft, and I later went back and refined the script.
But Scully and I were both coming off of several very dark feature scripts, so this seemed like a wacky palate cleanser for both of us. Before I go any further, I want to stress how FUN the writing of this script was. Every time my inbox revealed new pages from Scully it was like getting a gift. I couldn't wait to see where he'd taken the story and figure out how to pick things up. It was the most creatively reinvigorating thing I'd done in years. It felt like a great low-stakes way to warm up the writing muscles before getting back in the game on a real spec.
In practice, we ended up not sticking to the trading-pages-every-day thing. Real life got in the way, and soon it was clear we should bump our deadline from April 1st to May the 4th. Even then, as weeks slipped by and Scully and I found our time consumed by day jobs and other projects, we started writing in longer, less-frequent bursts. So when you read the script, don't assume that the writing changes hands every three pages because that's not at all accurate.
We occasionally traded a few emails about future directions, but most of it was on the order of "I've got an idea for Mark, so if you want to set this up..." or "Here's what George Lucas should be up to." Some of my favorite bits in the script came up on the fly, though. Fairly frequently, we not only would advance the script, but go back and rewrite earlier pages as well. There are a couple scenes that are clearly just me or just Scully, but also a lot that are a hybrid of our efforts.
While we made our deadline and turned out a script that - while a bit loose - still is a lot of fun to read, we were only partly successful in our bid. It was easy enough to get Screenwriting Twitter to talk about it, chastising this attention-seeking as unprofessional, all while giving this trolling the attention we wanted. Seeing friends say "Don't do this," all while spreading word of the stunt, it reminded me of my resolve in recent years to not give undue attention to people pulling these stunts. Having said that, I know it's VERY temping when faced with an annoying clueless newbie to make a spectacle out of their lack of tact.
Alas, the conversation on Twitter never broke out in a way that inspired any of the geek journalists to write about it, even in a "laugh at the idiot" sort of spirit that motivated their WAYNE'S WORLD 3 stories. In that sense, my main objective failed I guess I have to give them props for not being completely without integrity, especially since I specifically targeted people who I thought would be easy marks, given that they were the first to post about WAYNE'S WORLD 3. I suppose we could have planned a more elaborate rollout and fake website, ala BALLS OUT, but that seemed like the point where we were going too far and putting too much effort into it. The actual writing was fun. Making a website? That would have been work.
But even if that didn't work as well as we hoped, Scully and I both had fun writing it and seeing the reaction from people who did venture into the script. It got me using some writing muscles that I hadn't flexed in a while, and has made me more energized to dive into new scripts. Maybe we don't give enough credit to just allowing ourselves to be silly sometimes. The next time you're stuck while writing, maybe try something like this... though it probably is more efficient to just write a short film rather than a full-length screenplay.
There doesn't seem to be any reason to maintain the subterfuge anymore, and if you're interested in seeing the result of our insanity, you can find the script online here, and also on The Black List here.
This most recent holiday saw the release of an unusual spec script: The Making of Star Wars: Episode VIII. If you are part of the online circle known as Screenwriting Twitter, you probably saw some discussion about this, spawned by this tweet:
Guys... Don't do this. It's unprofessional and it's not going to get your script read. pic.twitter.com/pyTX4QTzjj— Mike Sweeney (@Courier12) May 3, 2016
A writer drafted their own spec script about the making of a Star Wars movie that hasn't even finished filming yet, then made it available on the internet via both the Black List and an open download, making certain to put it out on May the 4th. It was clearly an attention-seeking tweet from Making Episode VIII, and in reacting to it by telling everyone, "Don't do this," Mr. Sweeney was clearly giving the author exactly what he wanted. How do I know this?
Because I am "Making Episode VIII."
The script the account was shilling was authored by me and my friend Brian Scully. The whole gag was my idea, and it actually started as an April Fools joke. The last few years, the internet has been a horrible place on April 1st. As one observer noted, it's like people think doing something like "Your mother was just killed! April Fool!" counts as a clever prank. I wanted to do something that was fun, but that wasn't necessarily ruined if people didn't think of it as "real."
In the wake of THE FORCE AWAKENS, I also saw how some sites were so hungry for Star Wars discussion that they'd repost seemingly every scrap of Star Wars content out there. More than one site was regularly building stories around fan theories that originated on Reddit! It felt like nothing was too ridiculous to be spotlit and that was when I hatched my plan.
The final thing that motivated this prank was when I saw several geek sites devote space to the totally nothing story of a guy trying to crowdfund the cost of billboards to promote his WAYNE'S WORLD 3 spec script. I've blogged about my part in spreading that story before. If you Google "wayne's world 3 gofundme" you can see exactly how far this story spread, branching out from a tweet from Geoff LaTulippe after I tipped him off to this campaign. I go into more details in my older post, but for me, the spreading of this story was just a sad comment how a completely irrelevant story got spread just so the phrase "WAYNE'S WORLD 3" could provoke some clicks.
In a way, I guess I wanted to prove how easily an empty-content story could be spread, even if it was clearly some kind of troll or goof. It seemed completely doable that we could get at least a few of these sites to post about The Making of Star Wars: Episode VIII.
I sent an email to Brian Scully with the pitch: I'd seen a growing genre on the Black List in recent years - scripts about the "making of" famous films. It seemed ripe for parody, and merging it with my April Fool's idea gave me the notion to do a script about the making of Star Wars: Episode VIII. Because of the ridiculousness of such a script, I insisted that if nothing else, we needed to have fun writing it.
At this point, there were less than two months before April Fools. I pitched to Brian that we would not break out the plot or work from any kind of outline. Instead, we could take turns writing each day. I would write at least three pages, then send it to him and he'd have a day to think about it and get me back at least three pages of his own.
I'd done this sort of "write the other guy into a corner" approach back when I was running a TV show in college, and though I'm a meticulous outliner usually, a few years back I wrote a comedy script entirely by coming up with the high concept hook and just going where the story took me. I found it to be a refreshing exercise because each day started with "What's the most obvious choice? Great - now let's do the opposite of that and see where it takes us." Obviously, that was just for the vomit draft, and I later went back and refined the script.
But Scully and I were both coming off of several very dark feature scripts, so this seemed like a wacky palate cleanser for both of us. Before I go any further, I want to stress how FUN the writing of this script was. Every time my inbox revealed new pages from Scully it was like getting a gift. I couldn't wait to see where he'd taken the story and figure out how to pick things up. It was the most creatively reinvigorating thing I'd done in years. It felt like a great low-stakes way to warm up the writing muscles before getting back in the game on a real spec.
In practice, we ended up not sticking to the trading-pages-every-day thing. Real life got in the way, and soon it was clear we should bump our deadline from April 1st to May the 4th. Even then, as weeks slipped by and Scully and I found our time consumed by day jobs and other projects, we started writing in longer, less-frequent bursts. So when you read the script, don't assume that the writing changes hands every three pages because that's not at all accurate.
We occasionally traded a few emails about future directions, but most of it was on the order of "I've got an idea for Mark, so if you want to set this up..." or "Here's what George Lucas should be up to." Some of my favorite bits in the script came up on the fly, though. Fairly frequently, we not only would advance the script, but go back and rewrite earlier pages as well. There are a couple scenes that are clearly just me or just Scully, but also a lot that are a hybrid of our efforts.
While we made our deadline and turned out a script that - while a bit loose - still is a lot of fun to read, we were only partly successful in our bid. It was easy enough to get Screenwriting Twitter to talk about it, chastising this attention-seeking as unprofessional, all while giving this trolling the attention we wanted. Seeing friends say "Don't do this," all while spreading word of the stunt, it reminded me of my resolve in recent years to not give undue attention to people pulling these stunts. Having said that, I know it's VERY temping when faced with an annoying clueless newbie to make a spectacle out of their lack of tact.
Alas, the conversation on Twitter never broke out in a way that inspired any of the geek journalists to write about it, even in a "laugh at the idiot" sort of spirit that motivated their WAYNE'S WORLD 3 stories. In that sense, my main objective failed I guess I have to give them props for not being completely without integrity, especially since I specifically targeted people who I thought would be easy marks, given that they were the first to post about WAYNE'S WORLD 3. I suppose we could have planned a more elaborate rollout and fake website, ala BALLS OUT, but that seemed like the point where we were going too far and putting too much effort into it. The actual writing was fun. Making a website? That would have been work.
But even if that didn't work as well as we hoped, Scully and I both had fun writing it and seeing the reaction from people who did venture into the script. It got me using some writing muscles that I hadn't flexed in a while, and has made me more energized to dive into new scripts. Maybe we don't give enough credit to just allowing ourselves to be silly sometimes. The next time you're stuck while writing, maybe try something like this... though it probably is more efficient to just write a short film rather than a full-length screenplay.
There doesn't seem to be any reason to maintain the subterfuge anymore, and if you're interested in seeing the result of our insanity, you can find the script online here, and also on The Black List here.
Thursday, January 29, 2015
This blog turns six! - There's still much more work to do
Today this blog is six years old. Honestly, I'm kind of surprised it's lasted this long and that so many of you fine people still drop by to read every new post. It's funny to think that when I started it, I wondered if I'd have enough material to keep me going six months.
Some of you have possibly noticed that the blog output has slowed a bit. That's largely due to the fact that I've exhausted a lot of the common topics and questions I could cover related to screenwriting. I've been able to compensate for that over the last few months as it's Oscar Movie season and I've had a full buffet of great movies to discuss.
The other big sea change is that it's become more and more common for people to use Twitter as an output for their musings and advice. I still like the idea of a permanent archive on the blog, partly because it allows new readers to discover those nuggets long after the fact. Even so, I know I've had plenty of times where I've tossed off a good rant on twitter and found that got it enough out of my system that I didn't feel the need to come back here and flesh it out. I'm trying to be better about that.
Ah, Twitter. I really can't believe that I still have yet to plateau in terms of followers. As I write this I have over 27,700 followers and the last time I checked, only a few percent of those were deemed "fake." It's flattering to see evidence that people are still discovering me and interested in what I have to say.
I bring this up because even more than through this blog, I've made a lot of great friends and contacts through Twitter over the last six years. It's absolutely been one of the best things I could have done for my career. I've made some good friends, including fellow aspiring writers, actors, and working writers - including a showrunner or two. I definitely recommend trying to build your own social network. It takes time but if you use Twitter right, you might find a few doors opening up for you.
As it's Awards Season, it feels appropriate to conclude this look back with a few thank yous. There's not enough space here to acknowledge everyone whom I've met and become friends with due to this blog, but there are a few in particular I want to call out.
I did my best to put this list in random order, but I have to start with Scott Myers. About five months into the life of this blog, Scott was the one who really put me on the map when he featured me and gave me a very generous plug on the only must-read screenwriting blog, Go Into The Story. For almost five years, my relationship with Scott was completely through emails and tweets. I met him just over a year ago and it was a genuine delight to find he was everything you'd expect. Scott is the screenwriting professor I wish I'd had in college, running the sort of blog I could only dream of reading when I was taking my first steps into screenwriting. As I implore you often, please visit Go Into The Story regularly.
Hollywood has a reputation for having a lot of assholes. Some of that is earned, but my first-hand experience has been that there are a significant number of sincerely giving people. Over the years, a very high percentage of the working writers I have met have been some of the kindest, most helpful people out there. There's this myth that working writers are out to screw over aspirings. I've never seen any evidence of this, and the people I'm about to name-check are the furthest from that:
Eric Heisserer was one of the first working writers whom I got to know through Twitter, following his reaction to a tweet about the NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET reboot. He later consented to an interview about the film and also authored a guest post about the life of a script in the studio development process. Even today, that post stands as my third-most-popular post of all time. On a one-on-one level, Eric has also been giving enough of his time to read some of my work and offer help where he could. He didn't do it so I'd blog about it, he's just that kind of person. Publicly he's very giving in offering the occasional screenwriting knowledge drops on Twitter, and I encourage you to follow him for his regular insights.
If you just know John Gary from Twitter, you probably have this image of him as the cranky pessimist who's the first one to say why the latest screenwriting development is a half-empty glass. But you'll have to look hard to find a more passionate advocate for writers, and someone more determined to make sure that naive aspirings aren't taken advantage of by charlatans and scams. He also regularly takes on what he calls The Hope Machine - the parent of the pie-in-the-sky fantasies that writers have about how easy it'll be to gain fame and forture from their writing. John doesn't tell you want you want to hear - he says what you NEED to hear. Like me he's seen the business from the inside as both a reader and a writer, and you would ignore the wisdom from that experience at your peril.
Along the same lines, I consider Geoff LaTulippe a must-follow. You can never accuse Geoff of not speaking his mind and while his blunt and aggressive nature sometimes gets him into trouble, he's very open to answering questions from aspiring writers on Twitter, on his podcast Broken Projector and on his personal website. If memory serves, Geoff might have been the first pro writer to reach out to me with an offer to read my script, and I know that's a courtesy he's extended to a few, perhaps many, others.
Justin Marks is a working writer who I first came to know via Twitter. We seem to approach things from a similar point of view and it's rare that there's a significant gulf in our opinions. (Justin once quipped that "we could pilot a Jaeger together.") I finally met him last year and it was a relief to learn that our rapport extended to our face-to-face interaction. Justin's got two big projects in the future: The Jon Favreau-directed Jungle Book movie coming in 2016 and the sequel to Top Gun, still unscheduled as far as I know. He's another one whose tweets can be a good insight into the business, so give him a follow.
F. Scott Frazier was one of the first writers to reach out to me to meet in person, and I'm glad I dropped the mask to do so. Scott tends to do his good deeds without advertising them, but I know he's gone out of his way to be a mentor to some writers. Like many others I know, he definitely believes in paying it forward, and frankly, he's prolific enough that it would be understandable if he didn't want to take the time to do so. I'd be remiss if I didn't plug my interview with him.
When people come to me asking for a coverage referral, I point them at Amanda Pendolino and ONLY Amanda Pendolino. Like me, Amanda's gotten a number of years as a script reader under her belt while trying to build her own career. She gives really sharp notes, and in a manner that always feels constructive. I recently gave her a script that I'm pretty sure wasn't her cup of tea, but she made a passionate, persuasive case for her opinions without making me feel like I'd been eviscerated. That's rare. On top of that, she's a great writer who deserves to be on staff somewhere. I know if I was a showrunner, she'd be one of my early draft picks.
Speaking of showrunners, Jeff Lieber is another favorite twitter-buddy. Currently one of the showrunners on NCIS: New Orleans, Jeff is one of the creators of Lost, as well as the creator of Miami Medical and was a showrunner on Necessary Roughness. He's used those assignments and others as fodder for his Showrunner Rules, which he regularly doles out on Twitter. You can find the whole archive here and his feed is always a valuable read.
The people I've named already are all great writers, but one writer whose work just knocked me on my ass was Brian Scully. I gave a spotlight post to his brilliant script MERCIFUL last year and soon after that, Brian landed management with Verve. I'm currently in the weeds on a very dark script of my own and I can honestly say that MERCIFUL has been like that rabbit they use to get the greyhounds to do laps around the track. I've read plenty of scripts that have inspired me and taught me, but MERCIFUL is one that really pushed me to be better and to not be scared to take chances.
Through my association with Go Into The Story, I also came to know Nate Winslow. Scott Myers calls him "future super producer Nate Winslow" and not without good reason. Nate is a savvy guy who's worked on a number of film projects, most recently at Defender Entertainment. If someone's smart, they'll snap him up to be their Creative Executive because he's got a great eye for projects. There are some people who you can just tell when you meet them that they have what it takes to make their own good fortune. With Nate, I know it's only a matter of time before he puts together a project and becomes one of those guys everyone is trying to get their scripts to. He's another one who keeps me motivated, if only so I don't feel like I'm standing still next to him.
And last, but certainly far from least, I consider myself fortunate to have gotten to know Black List founder Franklin Leonard. I take a very dim view of most services that ask screenwriters to pay for them. I don't typically trust coverage companies because you can't really trust who's reading those scripts, and it's rare to find such a company where the person in charge has a significant amount of credibility to put on the line. When Franklin told me he was expanding the Black List's mission to including hosting and review services for aspiring writers, I was skeptical. After he laid it out for me, I became a believer. A few half-wits have accused my endorsement of the site of being the back-scratch that was redeemed by payola. I can assure you I have no official affiliation with the site, nor have I ever taken any sort of money, bribery or whatever you want to call it. I endorse the Black List because I believe in it and in what Franklin Leonard is trying to do.
I've been fortunate to meet many successful people. I've worked for a number of industry pros who were very good at their jobs and have been able to produce films for most of their adult lives. I want to tell you what sets Franklin Leonard apart from them. Those men and women are very adept players within the existing system. Franklin Leonard is a guy with the will and the forethought to change the system. The Black List is constantly evolving and expanding, carving out partnerships with management companies, studios and producers. More than that, Franklin is possibly one of the most above-board and intelligent people I've met out here. There's nothing phony about him, and if we had more Franklin Leonards, that wouldn't be a terrible thing for our industry.
Franklin is smart enough he could probably be very successful just playing the game as it is. Instead he's forging his own path. I'm glad that writers - both aspiring and professional - have such a driven advocate. I know he's going to continue to push to make the Black List better. I once said to him that he must be proud of everything The Black List has become and his reply was, "There's still much more work to do."
Those who succeed are often those who are rarely satisfied.
These people I have named all have a few things in common. In one way or another they have all provided support and inspiration, and I've been lucky to get to know them. And there are still plenty more whom I don't have the space to name here. I also would never have met ANY of them, had I not started this blog six years ago and stuck with it even when I was getting only 50 hits a day the first few months. I would be a poorer individual for not knowing them.
If you have good fortune, pay it forward. When you deal with others, know there's little to be gained from being a dick. When you reach a goal, start formulating the next one, pushing yourself even harder than you did before. Most of all, don't let yourself become too satisfied with whatever you accomplish.
Thank you all for six great years. There's still much more work to do.
Some of you have possibly noticed that the blog output has slowed a bit. That's largely due to the fact that I've exhausted a lot of the common topics and questions I could cover related to screenwriting. I've been able to compensate for that over the last few months as it's Oscar Movie season and I've had a full buffet of great movies to discuss.
The other big sea change is that it's become more and more common for people to use Twitter as an output for their musings and advice. I still like the idea of a permanent archive on the blog, partly because it allows new readers to discover those nuggets long after the fact. Even so, I know I've had plenty of times where I've tossed off a good rant on twitter and found that got it enough out of my system that I didn't feel the need to come back here and flesh it out. I'm trying to be better about that.
Ah, Twitter. I really can't believe that I still have yet to plateau in terms of followers. As I write this I have over 27,700 followers and the last time I checked, only a few percent of those were deemed "fake." It's flattering to see evidence that people are still discovering me and interested in what I have to say.
I bring this up because even more than through this blog, I've made a lot of great friends and contacts through Twitter over the last six years. It's absolutely been one of the best things I could have done for my career. I've made some good friends, including fellow aspiring writers, actors, and working writers - including a showrunner or two. I definitely recommend trying to build your own social network. It takes time but if you use Twitter right, you might find a few doors opening up for you.
As it's Awards Season, it feels appropriate to conclude this look back with a few thank yous. There's not enough space here to acknowledge everyone whom I've met and become friends with due to this blog, but there are a few in particular I want to call out.
I did my best to put this list in random order, but I have to start with Scott Myers. About five months into the life of this blog, Scott was the one who really put me on the map when he featured me and gave me a very generous plug on the only must-read screenwriting blog, Go Into The Story. For almost five years, my relationship with Scott was completely through emails and tweets. I met him just over a year ago and it was a genuine delight to find he was everything you'd expect. Scott is the screenwriting professor I wish I'd had in college, running the sort of blog I could only dream of reading when I was taking my first steps into screenwriting. As I implore you often, please visit Go Into The Story regularly.
Hollywood has a reputation for having a lot of assholes. Some of that is earned, but my first-hand experience has been that there are a significant number of sincerely giving people. Over the years, a very high percentage of the working writers I have met have been some of the kindest, most helpful people out there. There's this myth that working writers are out to screw over aspirings. I've never seen any evidence of this, and the people I'm about to name-check are the furthest from that:
Eric Heisserer was one of the first working writers whom I got to know through Twitter, following his reaction to a tweet about the NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET reboot. He later consented to an interview about the film and also authored a guest post about the life of a script in the studio development process. Even today, that post stands as my third-most-popular post of all time. On a one-on-one level, Eric has also been giving enough of his time to read some of my work and offer help where he could. He didn't do it so I'd blog about it, he's just that kind of person. Publicly he's very giving in offering the occasional screenwriting knowledge drops on Twitter, and I encourage you to follow him for his regular insights.
If you just know John Gary from Twitter, you probably have this image of him as the cranky pessimist who's the first one to say why the latest screenwriting development is a half-empty glass. But you'll have to look hard to find a more passionate advocate for writers, and someone more determined to make sure that naive aspirings aren't taken advantage of by charlatans and scams. He also regularly takes on what he calls The Hope Machine - the parent of the pie-in-the-sky fantasies that writers have about how easy it'll be to gain fame and forture from their writing. John doesn't tell you want you want to hear - he says what you NEED to hear. Like me he's seen the business from the inside as both a reader and a writer, and you would ignore the wisdom from that experience at your peril.
Along the same lines, I consider Geoff LaTulippe a must-follow. You can never accuse Geoff of not speaking his mind and while his blunt and aggressive nature sometimes gets him into trouble, he's very open to answering questions from aspiring writers on Twitter, on his podcast Broken Projector and on his personal website. If memory serves, Geoff might have been the first pro writer to reach out to me with an offer to read my script, and I know that's a courtesy he's extended to a few, perhaps many, others.
Justin Marks is a working writer who I first came to know via Twitter. We seem to approach things from a similar point of view and it's rare that there's a significant gulf in our opinions. (Justin once quipped that "we could pilot a Jaeger together.") I finally met him last year and it was a relief to learn that our rapport extended to our face-to-face interaction. Justin's got two big projects in the future: The Jon Favreau-directed Jungle Book movie coming in 2016 and the sequel to Top Gun, still unscheduled as far as I know. He's another one whose tweets can be a good insight into the business, so give him a follow.
F. Scott Frazier was one of the first writers to reach out to me to meet in person, and I'm glad I dropped the mask to do so. Scott tends to do his good deeds without advertising them, but I know he's gone out of his way to be a mentor to some writers. Like many others I know, he definitely believes in paying it forward, and frankly, he's prolific enough that it would be understandable if he didn't want to take the time to do so. I'd be remiss if I didn't plug my interview with him.
When people come to me asking for a coverage referral, I point them at Amanda Pendolino and ONLY Amanda Pendolino. Like me, Amanda's gotten a number of years as a script reader under her belt while trying to build her own career. She gives really sharp notes, and in a manner that always feels constructive. I recently gave her a script that I'm pretty sure wasn't her cup of tea, but she made a passionate, persuasive case for her opinions without making me feel like I'd been eviscerated. That's rare. On top of that, she's a great writer who deserves to be on staff somewhere. I know if I was a showrunner, she'd be one of my early draft picks.
Speaking of showrunners, Jeff Lieber is another favorite twitter-buddy. Currently one of the showrunners on NCIS: New Orleans, Jeff is one of the creators of Lost, as well as the creator of Miami Medical and was a showrunner on Necessary Roughness. He's used those assignments and others as fodder for his Showrunner Rules, which he regularly doles out on Twitter. You can find the whole archive here and his feed is always a valuable read.
The people I've named already are all great writers, but one writer whose work just knocked me on my ass was Brian Scully. I gave a spotlight post to his brilliant script MERCIFUL last year and soon after that, Brian landed management with Verve. I'm currently in the weeds on a very dark script of my own and I can honestly say that MERCIFUL has been like that rabbit they use to get the greyhounds to do laps around the track. I've read plenty of scripts that have inspired me and taught me, but MERCIFUL is one that really pushed me to be better and to not be scared to take chances.
Through my association with Go Into The Story, I also came to know Nate Winslow. Scott Myers calls him "future super producer Nate Winslow" and not without good reason. Nate is a savvy guy who's worked on a number of film projects, most recently at Defender Entertainment. If someone's smart, they'll snap him up to be their Creative Executive because he's got a great eye for projects. There are some people who you can just tell when you meet them that they have what it takes to make their own good fortune. With Nate, I know it's only a matter of time before he puts together a project and becomes one of those guys everyone is trying to get their scripts to. He's another one who keeps me motivated, if only so I don't feel like I'm standing still next to him.
And last, but certainly far from least, I consider myself fortunate to have gotten to know Black List founder Franklin Leonard. I take a very dim view of most services that ask screenwriters to pay for them. I don't typically trust coverage companies because you can't really trust who's reading those scripts, and it's rare to find such a company where the person in charge has a significant amount of credibility to put on the line. When Franklin told me he was expanding the Black List's mission to including hosting and review services for aspiring writers, I was skeptical. After he laid it out for me, I became a believer. A few half-wits have accused my endorsement of the site of being the back-scratch that was redeemed by payola. I can assure you I have no official affiliation with the site, nor have I ever taken any sort of money, bribery or whatever you want to call it. I endorse the Black List because I believe in it and in what Franklin Leonard is trying to do.
I've been fortunate to meet many successful people. I've worked for a number of industry pros who were very good at their jobs and have been able to produce films for most of their adult lives. I want to tell you what sets Franklin Leonard apart from them. Those men and women are very adept players within the existing system. Franklin Leonard is a guy with the will and the forethought to change the system. The Black List is constantly evolving and expanding, carving out partnerships with management companies, studios and producers. More than that, Franklin is possibly one of the most above-board and intelligent people I've met out here. There's nothing phony about him, and if we had more Franklin Leonards, that wouldn't be a terrible thing for our industry.
Franklin is smart enough he could probably be very successful just playing the game as it is. Instead he's forging his own path. I'm glad that writers - both aspiring and professional - have such a driven advocate. I know he's going to continue to push to make the Black List better. I once said to him that he must be proud of everything The Black List has become and his reply was, "There's still much more work to do."
Those who succeed are often those who are rarely satisfied.
These people I have named all have a few things in common. In one way or another they have all provided support and inspiration, and I've been lucky to get to know them. And there are still plenty more whom I don't have the space to name here. I also would never have met ANY of them, had I not started this blog six years ago and stuck with it even when I was getting only 50 hits a day the first few months. I would be a poorer individual for not knowing them.
If you have good fortune, pay it forward. When you deal with others, know there's little to be gained from being a dick. When you reach a goal, start formulating the next one, pushing yourself even harder than you did before. Most of all, don't let yourself become too satisfied with whatever you accomplish.
Thank you all for six great years. There's still much more work to do.
Thursday, August 7, 2014
Read Brian Scully's MERCIFUL on The Black List. I gave it a 10!
Update: I should have mentioned this - Brian Scully is repped by Kathy
Muraviov at the Muraviov Company. Industry pros who aren't members of the Black List should be able to get a copy through her.
I almost never give out a RECOMMEND when I do coverage. Usually there's at least some cause for caution. Even the most impressive scripts might find themselves hit with the more face-saving "CONSIDER" rating just to avoid being seen as an over-reach.
But last fall, Brian Michael Scully asked me to take a look at his new script MERCIFUL once he had finished a draft. I'd been a fan of Scully's writing since his earlier spec COUNTERPOINT and having gotten to know him since then, I knew he was a smart guy. COUNTERPOINT was very good, a solid Consider if not a Strong Consider, so I knew I'd be reading something interesting at least.
I wasn't prepared for it to be exemplary. It was one of those scripts where I found myself insanely jealous of the writing. He took chances. It was dark and grim, but never losing sight of its emotion and humanity. I'm used to reading friends' scripts and either nitpicking or writing up notes that are basically "This is how I might deal with this issue."
He had the balls to write a post-apocalyptic story centering on a woman in her 40s and it worked so well for the story, I couldn't bear to give the standard note of, "Is there any way this could be a man in his 20s or 30s?"
The Logline: A mother risks life and limb in a cross-country journey across a hostile post-apocalyptic America to find her daughter.
I feel like any attempt at coverage is going to be inadequate, so I'm just going to reprint the email I sent to Brian last year after I read it.
I have to say that if this is your first draft, it's gotta be one of the strongest first drafts I've ever read. You do an amazing job of creating a complete world here. From the opening onward I really can sense the texture in the setting, even as you (wisely) keep some of the specifics of what led to the catastrophe off-screen. Honestly, as effective as I found the flashbacks to be, it occurred to me that they would probably be the first thing to be cut in the name of keeping the budget down. (I don't want to put on my "Development" hat on too much here, but it DID occur to me that a film with a 40 year-old woman protagonist would be a lot easier sell without the expensive meteorite scenes. On the other hand, I really like the writing of those scenes, so don't make any cuts until someone with money says "We need to lose this.")
One thing that really impressed me is how visual the writing is. There are long stretches of this script that are essentially "silent." This is not "radio with faces" as Joss Whedon would say. You've got a very strong template here for a director to come in and play (oh, there I go again.) More than that, you've got a lot of fantastic scenes here like [REDACTED]'s death. Hell, that whole sequence of events from the start up to [REDACTED]'s death could almost be a short film in its own right.
Here's the biggest compliment I can give: there were multiple instances where you delivered a scene I didn't see coming at all. One of the earliest examples: that scene with the old man. I figured he'd just let her go on her way in peace. I didn't expect him to press the attack after she confronted him and I certainly didn't think we'd see our heroine kill an old man. In terms of function, that moment reminded me a lot of the end of Act One in TAKEN, where Liam's only link to the kidnappers runs smack into a bus and we're left to wonder, "Oh shit! What now?"
p. 40 - everything leading up to this confrontation is incredibly tense and the payoff doesn't disappoint.
The Amy/Sheena stuff is handled pretty well throughout, but one of the early standouts is the scene where they watch the guys with the guns execute the wandering group. Sheena's impulse is to help, while the more hardened Amy knows that it won't do any good and they'd just end up dead themselves. Sequences like this go a long way to making this world feel dangerous and unlike our own and it's really interesting to see that Amy is somewhat resigned to it, merely doing what she can to stay alive. Without dwelling on it too much, I like the bonding between them, particularly the gun lesson and the later discussion where Sheena rattles off all the things she won't get to experience.
p. 73 - it's incredibly hard to write a monologue like that and have it work on the page. Somehow you pulled it off. I'm not even forced to guess "Well, I'm sure it'll work when the actor says it." It works HERE.
p. 76 - Like I said on twitter, I think the brutality here is the one instance where you go too far.
The whole rockslide thing is horrifying, but even more of a gut punch is the handsqueeze on the next page as [REDACTED] dies. Fuck you, you bastard. You killed her.
The third act is a bit of a shift from the others, but I like the long scenes showing off the desolation in Philadelphia. Also, with all the bleakness earlier, by now we're concerned that you might lead us to a dark ending where [REDACTED].
I think the challenge of the last 15 pages or so is that you're dealing in a story that can't really have a truly happy ending. The world is hellish and surviving is a victory in and of itself. I think you're right to structure it so that we get our closure from [major plot points REDACTED]. The last raid give us a shot of adrenaline before the final quiet and I think that's written rather effectively. (I read a lot of action scenes and this felt more brutal than most of them, despite being on a smaller scale.)
Look, I don't have any major notes. I thought that on a second pass something would leap out at me, but I honestly found it easy to accept the story on its own terms. It's a great piece of writing.
I don't often give 10s on the Black List site. This was one of them. You can find the script here. Industry pros with download permission, I implore you to check it out.
I was so blown away by Brian's writing that I was concerned I'd be embarrassing myself when I gave him my own spec TOBY IS NOW FOLLOWING YOU to read. I don't know if I ever felt as relieved or elated when I opened a later email from him to find him utterly raving about TOBY. Good reviews are nice, but good reviews from people whose writing you respect? That'll put you over the moon.
I almost never give out a RECOMMEND when I do coverage. Usually there's at least some cause for caution. Even the most impressive scripts might find themselves hit with the more face-saving "CONSIDER" rating just to avoid being seen as an over-reach.
But last fall, Brian Michael Scully asked me to take a look at his new script MERCIFUL once he had finished a draft. I'd been a fan of Scully's writing since his earlier spec COUNTERPOINT and having gotten to know him since then, I knew he was a smart guy. COUNTERPOINT was very good, a solid Consider if not a Strong Consider, so I knew I'd be reading something interesting at least.
I wasn't prepared for it to be exemplary. It was one of those scripts where I found myself insanely jealous of the writing. He took chances. It was dark and grim, but never losing sight of its emotion and humanity. I'm used to reading friends' scripts and either nitpicking or writing up notes that are basically "This is how I might deal with this issue."
He had the balls to write a post-apocalyptic story centering on a woman in her 40s and it worked so well for the story, I couldn't bear to give the standard note of, "Is there any way this could be a man in his 20s or 30s?"
The Logline: A mother risks life and limb in a cross-country journey across a hostile post-apocalyptic America to find her daughter.
I feel like any attempt at coverage is going to be inadequate, so I'm just going to reprint the email I sent to Brian last year after I read it.
I have to say that if this is your first draft, it's gotta be one of the strongest first drafts I've ever read. You do an amazing job of creating a complete world here. From the opening onward I really can sense the texture in the setting, even as you (wisely) keep some of the specifics of what led to the catastrophe off-screen. Honestly, as effective as I found the flashbacks to be, it occurred to me that they would probably be the first thing to be cut in the name of keeping the budget down. (I don't want to put on my "Development" hat on too much here, but it DID occur to me that a film with a 40 year-old woman protagonist would be a lot easier sell without the expensive meteorite scenes. On the other hand, I really like the writing of those scenes, so don't make any cuts until someone with money says "We need to lose this.")
One thing that really impressed me is how visual the writing is. There are long stretches of this script that are essentially "silent." This is not "radio with faces" as Joss Whedon would say. You've got a very strong template here for a director to come in and play (oh, there I go again.) More than that, you've got a lot of fantastic scenes here like [REDACTED]'s death. Hell, that whole sequence of events from the start up to [REDACTED]'s death could almost be a short film in its own right.
Here's the biggest compliment I can give: there were multiple instances where you delivered a scene I didn't see coming at all. One of the earliest examples: that scene with the old man. I figured he'd just let her go on her way in peace. I didn't expect him to press the attack after she confronted him and I certainly didn't think we'd see our heroine kill an old man. In terms of function, that moment reminded me a lot of the end of Act One in TAKEN, where Liam's only link to the kidnappers runs smack into a bus and we're left to wonder, "Oh shit! What now?"
p. 40 - everything leading up to this confrontation is incredibly tense and the payoff doesn't disappoint.
The Amy/Sheena stuff is handled pretty well throughout, but one of the early standouts is the scene where they watch the guys with the guns execute the wandering group. Sheena's impulse is to help, while the more hardened Amy knows that it won't do any good and they'd just end up dead themselves. Sequences like this go a long way to making this world feel dangerous and unlike our own and it's really interesting to see that Amy is somewhat resigned to it, merely doing what she can to stay alive. Without dwelling on it too much, I like the bonding between them, particularly the gun lesson and the later discussion where Sheena rattles off all the things she won't get to experience.
p. 73 - it's incredibly hard to write a monologue like that and have it work on the page. Somehow you pulled it off. I'm not even forced to guess "Well, I'm sure it'll work when the actor says it." It works HERE.
p. 76 - Like I said on twitter, I think the brutality here is the one instance where you go too far.
The whole rockslide thing is horrifying, but even more of a gut punch is the handsqueeze on the next page as [REDACTED] dies. Fuck you, you bastard. You killed her.
The third act is a bit of a shift from the others, but I like the long scenes showing off the desolation in Philadelphia. Also, with all the bleakness earlier, by now we're concerned that you might lead us to a dark ending where [REDACTED].
I think the challenge of the last 15 pages or so is that you're dealing in a story that can't really have a truly happy ending. The world is hellish and surviving is a victory in and of itself. I think you're right to structure it so that we get our closure from [major plot points REDACTED]. The last raid give us a shot of adrenaline before the final quiet and I think that's written rather effectively. (I read a lot of action scenes and this felt more brutal than most of them, despite being on a smaller scale.)
Look, I don't have any major notes. I thought that on a second pass something would leap out at me, but I honestly found it easy to accept the story on its own terms. It's a great piece of writing.
I don't often give 10s on the Black List site. This was one of them. You can find the script here. Industry pros with download permission, I implore you to check it out.
I was so blown away by Brian's writing that I was concerned I'd be embarrassing myself when I gave him my own spec TOBY IS NOW FOLLOWING YOU to read. I don't know if I ever felt as relieved or elated when I opened a later email from him to find him utterly raving about TOBY. Good reviews are nice, but good reviews from people whose writing you respect? That'll put you over the moon.
Tuesday, December 10, 2013
Brian Scully's review of my script TOBY IS NOW FOLLOWING YOU
As I explained in yesterday's post, I'm not purchasing a review from the Black List readers, in part because the timing means that the value of the review might be questionable. However, I've invited some of my trusted industry associates to offer their opinions on the script, starting today with Brian Scully.
I first met Brian via Twitter a couple years ago. I admit, after a few conversations, I followed him mostly because I thought he was the Brian Scully who wrote for The Simpsons, and after I'd discovered the truth it was too awkward to unfollow. Fortunately he turned out to be a pretty cool guy, and a rather talented writer. In fact, he started writing "professionally" at 14 when Star Trek: Voyager, and later Star Trek: Enterprise, gave him a standing invitation to pitch to them after submitting a spec to them.
Scully's script, COUNTERPOINT, a romantic thriller/drama, was recently optioned with financing currently being raised. It also was on last year's Hit List. It's a really solid script, but it's nothing compared to his current spec, MERCIFUL, an action-thriller that is one of the best scripts I've read all year.
I was in awe multiple times while reading MERCIFUL, which is the story of a woman traveling across the post-apocalyptic remains of the country to reach the daughter she hasn't seen since the start of the chaos. The script is full of evocative, visceral writing. There are longer-than-usual stretches of silence, which really lets the visuals tell the story. I told Brian after I read it that perhaps the biggest compliment I could give was that he genuinely surprised me.
So when it came time to give my script to people who were going to push me, Brian was at the top of the list. The first few reviews came in and were very positive. You give a script to writers, you're going to get plenty of notes and suggestions because that's what writers do - but most people were really into it. However, I had one reader whose notes ran counter to that, and so I was pondering if perhaps the script needed an overhaul that the others were seeing.
It was in this context that Brian emailed me his notes. He went in depth, not just talking about the broad premise and characters, but having notes about specific pages and scenes. Often he was writing stream-of-consciousness, describing his reaction to an event as it played out. And let me tell you - he GOT it. I don't think I've ever seen someone so completely understand what I was going for in a script. Every emotion he experienced, every reaction he had, was precisely what I was trying to achieve. And by this point, I knew that Brian knew what made a great script because he'd written one himself.
That review gave me a lot of confidence that there WAS an audience for what I was writing and that I shouldn't second-guess my instincts. So because of that, I can think of no one better suited to tell industry members why they should download TOBY IS NOW FOLLOWING YOU on The Black List site. Take it away, Brian...
We all love GROUNDHOG DAY, right? Everyone should, and if you don’t, you’re fired from life. Well, think for a moment about Bill Murray spending countless days following the same routine to glean even the tiniest new piece of personal information about Andie MacDowell as he attempts to seduce her, and with each new day and each new piece of info he’s “armed” with, he gets closer and closer to what he wants.
…Have you ever considered how genuinely creepy that is? Ever stop to think that this efforts in slowly accumulating knowledge about her life in order to appeal to her more effectively is really, really disturbing? He’s earnest about wanting to know her better, he wants the two of them to click, so could his efforts really be so bad? Is it just an overreaction?
Welcome to just a hint of what’s explored so effectively in TOBY IS NOW FOLLOWING YOU. It’s one of the most compelling dramatic thrillers I’ve read in a long while. The idea of our digital footprints, how detailed they are and how actual privacy has become a distant memory, is explored here from all angles, through numerous characters, but especially our rich and complex lead, Toby, and the woman with whom he’s become infatuated, Nina.
What this script does is lead you gently to the top of what becomes a very slippery slope, letting you see why Toby is a legitimate hero (flawed as he is) and unworthy of scorn… and then the script gives that last nudge so you can start sliding down the slope. Over the course of a brisk and taut 90 pages, as personal lines begin to blur, the true horror of the film builds unrelentingly as Toby loses himself further and further in his obsession.
But, Toby is no psychopath. He’s not some deranged criminal. He’s not a predator seeking to harm. There’s no malice. Toby is a legitimately earnest, heartfelt and charming guy who could fit very comfortably in even the safest of romantic comedies. And that is PRECISELY why this script becomes so damn haunting and unsettling — because Toby is not a monster. And yet, his actions become monstrous. By the time you finish reading this script, a terrifying realization dawns on you — Toby, by being so incredibly human and well-drawn throughout, could be your neighbor. He could be your best friend. Oh god, he could be your significant other. Oh god… he could be YOU and you’ve never even realized it.
TOBY IS NOW FOLLOWING YOU is such a good thriller because it holds the mirror up to us and lets us see just how slippery that slope is with our own behavior in this digital age, how easily we may find ourselves crossing those lines in life, and how little we realize it. With our lives becoming more keyworded and searchable by the minute, and the myth of privacy becoming more and and more understood, there is no better time for a strong story to hit home about the world we live in, and TOBY IS NOW FOLLOWING YOU is that story.
Industry members of the Black List site can find TOBY IS NOW FOLLOWING YOU here.
Brian Scully is currently repped by Kathy Muraviov at The Muraviov Company. You can find him on Twitter at @brianscully
I first met Brian via Twitter a couple years ago. I admit, after a few conversations, I followed him mostly because I thought he was the Brian Scully who wrote for The Simpsons, and after I'd discovered the truth it was too awkward to unfollow. Fortunately he turned out to be a pretty cool guy, and a rather talented writer. In fact, he started writing "professionally" at 14 when Star Trek: Voyager, and later Star Trek: Enterprise, gave him a standing invitation to pitch to them after submitting a spec to them.
Scully's script, COUNTERPOINT, a romantic thriller/drama, was recently optioned with financing currently being raised. It also was on last year's Hit List. It's a really solid script, but it's nothing compared to his current spec, MERCIFUL, an action-thriller that is one of the best scripts I've read all year.
I was in awe multiple times while reading MERCIFUL, which is the story of a woman traveling across the post-apocalyptic remains of the country to reach the daughter she hasn't seen since the start of the chaos. The script is full of evocative, visceral writing. There are longer-than-usual stretches of silence, which really lets the visuals tell the story. I told Brian after I read it that perhaps the biggest compliment I could give was that he genuinely surprised me.
So when it came time to give my script to people who were going to push me, Brian was at the top of the list. The first few reviews came in and were very positive. You give a script to writers, you're going to get plenty of notes and suggestions because that's what writers do - but most people were really into it. However, I had one reader whose notes ran counter to that, and so I was pondering if perhaps the script needed an overhaul that the others were seeing.
It was in this context that Brian emailed me his notes. He went in depth, not just talking about the broad premise and characters, but having notes about specific pages and scenes. Often he was writing stream-of-consciousness, describing his reaction to an event as it played out. And let me tell you - he GOT it. I don't think I've ever seen someone so completely understand what I was going for in a script. Every emotion he experienced, every reaction he had, was precisely what I was trying to achieve. And by this point, I knew that Brian knew what made a great script because he'd written one himself.
That review gave me a lot of confidence that there WAS an audience for what I was writing and that I shouldn't second-guess my instincts. So because of that, I can think of no one better suited to tell industry members why they should download TOBY IS NOW FOLLOWING YOU on The Black List site. Take it away, Brian...
We all love GROUNDHOG DAY, right? Everyone should, and if you don’t, you’re fired from life. Well, think for a moment about Bill Murray spending countless days following the same routine to glean even the tiniest new piece of personal information about Andie MacDowell as he attempts to seduce her, and with each new day and each new piece of info he’s “armed” with, he gets closer and closer to what he wants.
…Have you ever considered how genuinely creepy that is? Ever stop to think that this efforts in slowly accumulating knowledge about her life in order to appeal to her more effectively is really, really disturbing? He’s earnest about wanting to know her better, he wants the two of them to click, so could his efforts really be so bad? Is it just an overreaction?
Welcome to just a hint of what’s explored so effectively in TOBY IS NOW FOLLOWING YOU. It’s one of the most compelling dramatic thrillers I’ve read in a long while. The idea of our digital footprints, how detailed they are and how actual privacy has become a distant memory, is explored here from all angles, through numerous characters, but especially our rich and complex lead, Toby, and the woman with whom he’s become infatuated, Nina.
What this script does is lead you gently to the top of what becomes a very slippery slope, letting you see why Toby is a legitimate hero (flawed as he is) and unworthy of scorn… and then the script gives that last nudge so you can start sliding down the slope. Over the course of a brisk and taut 90 pages, as personal lines begin to blur, the true horror of the film builds unrelentingly as Toby loses himself further and further in his obsession.
But, Toby is no psychopath. He’s not some deranged criminal. He’s not a predator seeking to harm. There’s no malice. Toby is a legitimately earnest, heartfelt and charming guy who could fit very comfortably in even the safest of romantic comedies. And that is PRECISELY why this script becomes so damn haunting and unsettling — because Toby is not a monster. And yet, his actions become monstrous. By the time you finish reading this script, a terrifying realization dawns on you — Toby, by being so incredibly human and well-drawn throughout, could be your neighbor. He could be your best friend. Oh god, he could be your significant other. Oh god… he could be YOU and you’ve never even realized it.
TOBY IS NOW FOLLOWING YOU is such a good thriller because it holds the mirror up to us and lets us see just how slippery that slope is with our own behavior in this digital age, how easily we may find ourselves crossing those lines in life, and how little we realize it. With our lives becoming more keyworded and searchable by the minute, and the myth of privacy becoming more and and more understood, there is no better time for a strong story to hit home about the world we live in, and TOBY IS NOW FOLLOWING YOU is that story.
Industry members of the Black List site can find TOBY IS NOW FOLLOWING YOU here.
Brian Scully is currently repped by Kathy Muraviov at The Muraviov Company. You can find him on Twitter at @brianscully
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