2015 Winner for Best Picture – Spotlight

In what could be considered a mild surprise, Spotlight, a powerful film about The Boston Globe exposing years of sexual abuse by priests and the subsequent cover up by the Catholic Church took home the award for Best Picture of the year. I say it was a surprise because most indications pointed to The Revenant winning, which seemed especially likely once Leonardo DiCaprio unsurprisingly won his first Oscar for Best Actor in a Leading Role and Alejandro Inarrito won Best Director, becoming the third director in the history of the Academy to win that prestigious award two years in a row. So as I watched the ceremony I was relatively certain that further Oscar history would be made by the same director winning consecutive Best Pictures for the first time ever, as well as DiCaprio entering into the Three-Timers club by starring in a third Best Picture winner. However a different kind of Oscar history was made when Michael Keaton became the fourth actor to star in back-to-back Best Picture winners with Spotlight claiming the top prize.

While Star Wars: The Force Awakens was my favorite movie of the year, Spotlight was my favorite of the Best Picture nominees for a few reasons. First off, it had a great screenplay, which was confirmed by the other Oscar that it won for Best Original Screenplay. There are a couple of aspects of the screenplay that I thought were particularly strong, the most important being how well it was structured while also having the structure so seamlessly written into the screenplay that it was difficult to see it. I’ve heard many writers lament the fact that they have to write their screenplays in three acts and how restrictive that is to their creativity. Well, here’s a screenplay that’s actually written in four acts, and the plot points happen so subtly that you don’t notice them, and yet the story clearly changes direction each time. That’s because those plot points are not only changing the direction of the story, but they’re natural components of the story, so as the viewer, you don’t necessarily notice when the adventure begins or when the stakes are raised or when they have their crisis because you’re so engrossed in the story that you’re just experiencing it.

And yet, here it is. The adventure begins when the Spotlight team starts investigating the Church. The stakes are raised when the new editor of the Boston Globe Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber) instructs the Spotlight team to not only focus on the priests, but also the system. The crisis occurs when it seems like they have everything that they need to implicate Cardinal Bernard Law of covering up these abuses, but team leader Walter “Robby” Robertson (Keaton) can’t go with it yet because there isn’t enough to show the systemic issues throughout the institution, causing reporter Mike Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo) to lose his temper, nearly breaking up the team. That moment sends us into the final act where the team does make that connection that leads us to the climax of releasing the story and exposing the Church.

The other aspect of this film that I believe helped carry it to win Best Picture is the acting. Robbie is the main character of the story, but it’s largely an ensemble cast with great performances not only by Keaton and Schreiber and Ruffalo, but also by Rachel McAdams, John Slattery, Brian d’Arcy James and Stanley Tucci, among many others. All of them give stellar performances, and there isn’t a weak link in the bunch. With a dearth of action and little in the way of special effects or other gimmicks to the film making, a film like Spotlight needs to have those types of stellar performances from its actors to carry it. Really, this movie is somewhat of a throwback if you think about it in that it completely relies on quality storytelling and superb acting for its entertainment value, and it delivers on both counts.

However the most important aspect of this film, and I think what ultimately set Spotlight apart from the other films that were nominated this year was the emotional impact that it punched. All of the other films that were nominated for 2015 were all fine films in their own rights and did what they set out to do very well, but I don’t think any of them, with the possible exception of Brooklyn, carried the level of emotion that Spotlight did. Naturally there is going to be an emotional connection to a group of heroes that are trying to protect innocent children as well as provide justice to those who’s innocence was lost, but the way the story was crafted and the way the dramatic arc was developed helped to increase the emotional impact. This starts out as an issue that no one wants to confront except for Baron, who is an outsider to the group. He provides them with the inciting incident to investigate the Church, and each member of the group approaches the assignment with varying degrees of enthusiasm. The emotion of the film sets in when they start interviewing victims and hearing their stories and experiencing their feelings of helplessness when one of the most powerful institutions in the world was silencing them. The emotional impact increases as they discover the breadth of to problem and just how deep and wide it goes. Finally we share a sympathetic moment with Robbie when he confesses that he received information nearly a decade ago that could have helped to expose this crisis years earlier.

What makes that last point so important is that the “system” if you will is the antagonist of this story. There isn’t just on central villain who is preventing them from writing the story. Rather, it is the entire corrupt system of local business, political and law enforcement officials who essentially enabled this behavior by looking the other way for decades. When Robbie confesses that he buried a potentially explosive story on this topic years ago on the back page of the Metro section of the Globe, he can’t help but feel as though he’s a part of the very system that he’s been trying to expose for the past year. This is an especially powerful moment as the others on his team try and convince him that there was no way that he could have known the depth of the issue, especially Ben Bradlee, Jr. (Slattery), Robbie’s supervisor, who probably feels some of the same guilt, but won’t allow himself to admit it as he’s so loaded up with denial. However, Robbie calmly points out that all of the signs were there, even then. They had all of the pieces that they needed, but no one was willing to put them together. Only Baron, the outsider, is able to assure them that no matter what happened in the past, what they’re doing now is making up for it in a big way. That catharsis is another subtle, yet powerful storytelling component that allows Robbie to complete his character arc from a guilt-ridden, self-righteous crusader to a humble man who has brought justice to an unjust place.

The other impressive thing that this film accomplished was that it was able to create tension as well as obstacles for the main characters without having one single, strong antagonist. Normally I am in favor of a story having a central antagonist who is in a position of strength with the ability and desire to keep the hero from getting what he or she wants or needs acting as the main villain in a story. What the filmmakers of Spotlight did was take many elements of the city of Boston and the institution of the Catholic Church, and turn it into one giant “system” that certainly had the power and the desire to prevent Robbie and the others from obtaining the facts that they need to run the story.

As previously mentioned, the villain in this film is the system. What the Spotlight team is trying to take down is the system. That means that not only are they trying to expose Cardinal Law, but they’re also going after all of the enablers who looked the other way while all of this has been going on. This includes many people who are friends with Robbie and have known him for years. Boston is a provincial city, and the locals take great pride in being from there, as well as the fact that their bloodlines go back literally hundreds of years in that town. That attitude, and what Robbie was going up against, was summed up perfectly when Robbie has a drink with Pete Conley, who tells him that he’ll ruin his own reputation, as well as that of the Boston Globe if he tries to destroy the Church over “a few bad apples”. When he sees he’s getting nowhere with Robbie, he points out that Baron made him run with this story, and that Baron will someday just move on, like he did from New York and from Miami. He then asks Robbie, “Where are you going to go?” That provincialism, denial and blind loyalty to the Church all combine to create this corrupt system that acts as the villain in the story, and it works very well.

I believe that Spotlight is a film that is more than the sum of its parts. I realize that I’ve just spent 1500 words espousing how well all of the various parts of the story were crafted, and they were indeed crafted very well. However, the parts by themselves wouldn’t necessarily create a film that would have the scope of a Best Picture winner. The subtlety of the film making keep this from feeling like it’s on the same level as films like Birdman, 12 Years a Slave or Argo. That is until you take a closer looks and realize that those films, while all excellent, told their stories in a different way. There was nothing subtle about the style of storytelling in those films. They were all in your face and intense.With Spotlight, it took time to peel back the layers of the story. It was complex and things were revealed to us over time. Even though the stakes might not have seemed as high at the outset as they were in those other films, they end up being just as high, but with much more sinister undertones. It’s only after all of the parts come together so seamlessly that this film reaches its greatness.

Did the Academy get it right?

Yes, I believe they did. This was a controversial year, as the lack of racial diversity in the nominations took center stage and in the period leading up to the ceremony overshadowed the the films that were nominated. Certainly films like Creed, Straight Outta Compton and Concussion deserved more Oscar love than they received, and a strong case could be made for any or all of those films being at least nominated for Best Picture. I don’t think any of them were better than Spotlight, but they at least deserved to be a part of the conversation. As did, in my opinion, Star Wars: The Force Awakens. I’m not sure why the Academy didn’t see fit to at least nominate it for Best Picture, considering the film’s overwhelming popularity, but the Star Wars franchise has never received much love from the Academy, so this year was really no different. As for the films that were nominated, I actually liked all of them, and loved a couple. The elephant (or bear) in the room is The Revenant. I liked it, but didn’t love it. I thought DiCaprio was great in it, and I felt that Tom Hardy was robbed, because his stellar performance deserved the Best Supporting Actor award. It was a beautiful film, but I had some serious plausibility issues with it, and overall I just didn’t have the emotional connection with the story and characters that I want in a Best Picture winner. I did get that connection in Bridge of Spies, which I loved just a tick less than Spotlight. I felt it was a compelling and engaging story that had me riveted from the beginning. I also loved Mad Max: Fury Road for the roller coaster ride it took us on. If Mad Max was the second most entertaining film of the year, then The Martian was 3rd. It was a fun film with dazzling special effects that was like an entertaining science lesson. It also had some of the most compelling and interesting characters of the year, and they brought performances that rivaled those of Spotlight. It was one of the three most entertaining films of the year, and certainly deserved to be recognized. I liked The Big Short a lot, and wouldn’t have been surprised if it had won. It took a very serious crisis and turned it into an entertaining romp without losing the gravity of the crisis. Room was great and intense, and also very much deserved its nomination. I liked Brooklyn, but didn’t love it. If there’s one film that didn’t deserve it’s nomination, this was probably the one. It took about half the film for the story to start to get really compelling. Once it got going it was terrific, but I can’t look at it as any more than half of a great film. With all of that said, it’s my opinion that Spotlight was the most complete film of the year. Its story was the best crafted, the acting was stronger and the stakes were as high or higher than the other films. It might not be one of the greatest winners in Oscar history, but it was the greatest film of 2015.

February 25, 2016

The Act 2-Act 3 Transition: Three Reasons it Trips People Up

As screenwriters of varying experience and success, we’ve all heard over and over again about 3-Act structure. I’ve written about the importance of structure in this blog many times, and especially how important it is for young and unknown screenwriters to demonstrate that they have a grasp for the structure before anyone will take them seriously as screenwriters. But ultimately, what does it really mean for a screenplay to have good structure? Most academics and books will tell you that Act 1 needs to end somewhere between pgs 25-30, there should be some moment that spits Act 2 in half, and Act 2 should end somewhere around page 90 for a 120-page screenplay. But what does that mean? How do we know when one act ends and another begins?

When I was first starting out at trying to write screenplays, I never had a problem with ending Act 1. Quite simply, the transition between Act 1 and Act 2 is where the adventure begins. We (should) have gotten all of our exposition, and we should have a clear idea of who the hero is and what he or she wants. The second act is all about him or her going for it. Luke is going to rescue Princess Leia (Star Wars). Indiana Jones is going to find the Ark of the Covenant (Raiders of the Lost Ark). Erin Brockovich decides to take on a giant chemical company (Erin Brockovich). Fred Dobbs is going up the mountain to dig for gold (The Treasure of the Sierra Madre). These moments all happened 20-30 minutes into 2-hour films with the first 20-30 minutes spent introducing us to the heroes, showing us what their problems are, and introducing us to the other important characters in the story. The break between Acts 1 and 2 is way more often than not pretty cut and dried.

However, I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve read a script that either has a weak transition from Act 2 to Act 3, or even worse, has no transition at all. The writer merely continues the second act all the way to the end of the story. They often try to have a major moment that changes the direction of the story in order to head towards the climax, but for whatever reason, they simply couldn’t close the deal.

Quite simply, the end of the second act needs to be the moment where the hero loses everything. This is the absolute low point for the hero in the story. She’s been working the entire second act, and usually due to her character flaw, she’s failed to get what she wants and/or needs, and what’s more is that it looks like she never will. Now, is this a hard and fast rule that occurs in every screenplay? Of course it isn’t. However, it does happen often enough that I encourage novice screenwriters to take that approach to the transition from the second act to the third act in order to simplify their process. Also, the transition from the second act to the third act needs to be an event that is traumatic enough to cause the direction of the story to change and force the hero to rethink what they’ve been doing and learn more about themselves and the world than they thought they would.

Obi-wan Kenobi is killed by Darth Vader, robbing Luke of his mentor as well as his confidence that he can learn the Force without him. Belloq kidnaps Marion and steals the Ark from Indiana Jones, presumably to deliver it to Hitler which will make the Nazis invincible. Erin Brockovich’s obsession with bringing justice to the chemical companies has caused her to become alienated from her kids, who were the reason she took this job in the first place. Having gone completely paranoid from his greed, Fred Dobbs tries to kill his partner and steals his share of the gold on their journey to town.

All of these characters were seemingly headed towards success in the second act when either their inner flaws or outer enemies caused them to lose their initial mission, hit rock bottom and forced them to go in a different direction in order to raise themselves up and get the prize. Now then, why do so many writers stumble when attempting to get into the third act? I think there are three reasons.

1. They’ve fallen in love with their hero.

Too many writers fall in love with their heroes as though they were their children. Like any parent, the writer doesn’t want his hero to experience too much (or any) pain as the go along their journeys. They don’t want to make them uncomfortable because they just love them too much. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve come across this issue while reading a script. The writer seems to forget that the best thing for the story is to make the hero as uncomfortable as possible and to put him through as much pain as possible. Think about what Hugh Glass goes through in The Revenant. Although in that film the second act ends when he’s seemingly rescued and brought to the camp, his ordeal apparently over. It’s the exception that proves the rule, however the story certainly heads into a different direction at that moment. But returning to my point, don’t be afraid to put your character through an ordeal. It’s what the audience wants, and more importantly it’s what they need in order to engage with the character.

2. They simply just don’t understand or don’t respect dramatic structure.

I do believe that there is a serious lack of understanding about dramatic structure, and how it works, and why it’s important. I’ve heard many would-be writers lament the 3-Act structure and curse the limitations that they believe it puts on to their creativity. What they don’t understand is that a screenplay is like a building that houses their story, and that the structure is like the building’s foundation. Any building built without a foundation will collapse and any screenplay written without a thought to the story’s structure will suffer the same fate. You want your hero to learn and to grow and the number one way to do that is to have her experience failure at the end of the second act. Without that moment, you’re left with a screenplay that is shallow and hollow.

3. They don’t understand character growth.

Piggy-backing on that last thought, the third act is where your character finally completes his arc as a character. This is impossible to accomplish without a proper arc in the story. That is impossible to accomplish without solid structure and that means in part a clear break between acts two and three. A well-defined character arc is one of the most important components to your story, for without it, your audience will be left wanting more, and not in a good way.

Perhaps you’re trying to tell a story in a different way. Perhaps you’re the type of person who doesn’t want to be weighed down by a bunch of rules and best practices. All I will say to that is that these methods are tried and true and have produced some of the most memorable stories ever committed to celluloid. Of course there have been writers and filmmakers who have broken the rules, but many of them were already well established at the time. As I’ve said many times in this space, you need to be able to demonstrate that you know the rules before you’ll be trusted to break them. Craft a screenplay that is well-structured, including a clear break between acts 2 and 3, and you’ll be well on your way to demonstrating that ability.

At Monument Script Services we pride ourselves on our understanding of story structure. If you’re working on a script and you’re struggling with the break between Acts 2 and 3, or if you’re having any other structural issues, please click the link below to see how we can help improve the foundation of your story.

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January 27, 2016

Dean DuBlois on Screenwriting

Dean DuBlois has directed such memorable animated features as Lilo & Stitch, How To Train Your Dragon and How To Train Your Dragon 2. The following link is to an article he wrote on his process.

http://blog.artella.com/post/138032019011/some-thoughts-on-story-by-dean-deblois-i-was-asked

January 25, 2016

Today’s Movie Quote – Sweet Smell of Success

“I’d hate to take a bite out of you. You’re a cookie filled with arsenic.”

Screenplay by Clifford Odets & Ernest Lehman

January 19, 2016

Theme Comes From Character

What is the spine of your screenplay? What are you trying to say? What is the theme of your story?

Those are questions that can drive even seasoned professional screenwriters crazy. But they are important questions to be able to answer if you want your screenplay to connect with an audience. I’ve often been surprised by how many screenplays I’ve read in which there is no clear theme or spine to the story when it’s so easy to create. Simply, the theme of your story comes from your hero’s inner need. The lesson that your hero needs to learn in order to achieve a satisfactory character arc should be reflected in the theme or the lesson of your story.

What is theme?

To put it as simply as possible, the theme of your script should be derived from whatever point you’re trying to make with the story. Certainly not all stories have a particular message or lesson that the writer is trying to show, but all stories should have some sort of spine where the main character learns something or grows in some way. If you don’t have that as a writer, then you’re not writing anything that’s dramatic, and a lack of drama will lessen the entertainment value of your script and will make it more difficult to reach an audience.

Many times the inner and outer goals of the hero will be two different things. In fact, many of the best stories with the most interesting characters have heroes whose outer want and inner need are in conflict. Usually it’s the inner need that drives where the thematic elements are coming from because that’s where there is the most potential growth for your hero. For example, Will in Good Will Hunting has an outer goal of going through state-mandate therapy in order to stay out of jail so that he can work with a prestigious math professor at M.I.T. He also wants to be free to hang out and drink with his friends. However, his inner need is to be with the love interest, Skylar in order to live a more complete life. He has a subconscious fear of letting people get close to him, so it’s a lot easier for him to hang out with his friends than to emotionally invest in Skylar. It isn’t until his best friend tells him that he wants him to make that leap that he actually does. Thematically speaking, Good Will Hunting is about letting go of your past so that you can embrace your future and reach your full potential. The threat of jail represents Will’s past. Working with the math professor represents one possible future and his relationship with Skylar represents the best of all worlds, and that is what we are hoping for as an audience. We want Will to be able to throw off the shackles of his past so that his future can be better. That desire on the part of the audience comes from the theme of the film, which is also the spine that holds all of the individual story components together and that comes from the inner need of the main character.

Why is theme important?

In much the same way as the Force binds the galaxy together, the Theme binds your story together. I can’t tell you the number of disorganized messes that people have sent to me in the guise of screenplays. The problem is always the same. The writer either hasn’t included any kind of thematic idea, or he or she has included too many thematic ideas and can’t decide which one to go with. The latter problem is actually a worse one to have than the former. A lot of action films or screwball comedies can be lacking in theme. You don’t have to have some overarching lesson, but it is still very important, even in films like those, to give your hero some kind of issue to overcome or lesson to learn in order to give the story a direction. If you don’t currently have that in your script, it can be relatively easy to develop your hero to the point where you can create one. The real disorganization comes when a script has multiple thematic ideas all competing for dominance in the storyline and you have no idea what the story is about. I just recently read a script for a client where this was the case. I made the point to the writer that it was imperative for him to settle on one of these components or the story was going to suffer. What was the main character’s biggest inner hurdle going to be? It almost didn’t matter which one the writer chose, but he at least had to choose one thematic element that would serve as the spine to his story.

Just like a human being cannot walk without a spine, neither can a story be truly dramatic or entertaining without one. What are you trying to say in your screenplay? What do you want the hero to learn? The spine or theme of the story is what will get the audience engaged and get them to care about what’s going on, not only with the story, but with the characters as well.

The most challenging thing about the theme is to get it into the story without it really being there.

Huh? Yes, you read that right. The last thing you want is some line of dialogue where some character tells the hero (and thus the audience) what he needs. It’s even worse if that dialogue comes from the hero. The theme of the story has to be shown to the audience through the action of the story and the actions of the characters. The revelation of the theme must be disseminated through the subtext of the story. I love The Wizard of Oz, but the most awkward moment in the film is at the end when the Scarecrow asks her what she learned, and she basically spells out the lesson of the film. Then, just to pile on, she has to tap her heels together and continually chant, “There’s no place like home” in order to get home. It’s one of the most memorable moments in cinema, but is also the most on-the-nose reveal of a film’s theme that I can think of.

Personally I love films like Casablanca, A Clockwork Orange, and even more modern films like American Beauty or Birdman where the spine of the story is always there, but never directly mentioned. It’s something that you can feel. It gives you an emotional attachment to the story and makes you think about it long after the film has ended. All of those films had well-defined heroes with clear inner and outer needs that quite often were in conflict. The individual lessons of those films, and therefor their spines, came directly from those characters’ needs. We cared about what happened in the story because we cared about what happened to those characters, and from there flowed the dramatic and entertainment value of the story. Even The Wizard of Oz, despite it’s on-the-nose reveal of the theme at the end, has stood the test of time precisely because it’s such a powerful story from a thematic point of view.

What is the theme of your screenplay? Do you have any sense of how you’re trying to get your main character to grow and what her character arc will be? Have you been able to connect that to the thematic elements of your script? Or worse, do you have too many thematic elements bogging down the narrative and preventing the hero from achieving that strong, clear character arc? Monument Script Services can help find those issues and offer up solutions to make it so you can create the spine from which you can build the rest of your story. Click the link below to review the various services we can provide.

http://monumentscripts.com/service/screenplay-coverage/

January 15, 2016

Today’s Movie Quote – My Man Godfrey

“All you need to start an asylum is an empty room and the right kind of people.”

Screenplay by Morrie Ryskind & Eric Hatch

January 6, 2016

My Thoughts on Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Now that Star Wars: The Force Awakens has been out for a few weeks, and I’ve taken some time off around the holidays, I thought I would add to the ever-growing list of masses who feel compelled to wax on the merits and faults of the latest entry into the Star Wars pantheon. Something you will not find in this post are any new theories or thoughts on the multitude of fan theories that continue to clutter up my Facebook and Twitter feeds. This is merely my opinion of the film now that I’ve seen it a couple of times.

First of all, Star Wars: The Force Awakens is a terrifically entertaining film.

We can quibble all we want about how it’s essentially a remake of Episode IV and the lack of originality in the storytelling. The fact remains that most of the people who have seen it have walked out of the theater having felt massively entertained, and when it comes right down to it, that should be the number one goal of any film. Movies have always been primarily about entertainment, and many people, myself included, will be happy to look past holes in the story so long as the film is entertaining. All you need to do is look at the list of all time box office leaders, especially films on that list from the last decade or two, and most of them are films with either a lot of action or a lot of comedy or both. But what they all have is high entertainment value. That doesn’t necessarily make them the best films of all time, but people want to be entertained when they go to the movie theater an they’re more likely to pay money for multiple viewings if seeing the film is a fun and entertaining experience. The Force Awakens fits the bill on both accounts.

Yes, there are some holes in the script.

I have been told that there are a couple of Star Wars novels that provide some back story which may have filled in some holes in the script, but I think that’s too much of a cheat. This series is primarily borne of the films, so that’s where the story points should be provided in my opinion. There is also the possibility that many of the questions that are raised in this film will be answered in the sequels, but leaving things too open ended can obviously leave a bad taste in people’s mouths. For example, one of the biggest complaints I’ve heard is from people feeling that Rey (Daisy Ridley) is a Mary Sue. That’s a female character who inexplicably knows how to fix every problem that befalls her without any realistic way to have all of that knowledge. I will agree that when I was first watching it, I wondered how it was possible that she could just understand BB-8’s language, or how to be an ace pilot of the Millennium Falcon when no one had flown it for years or how she knew precisely how to hard wire Han’s freighter to get the doors to close at just the right moment, or how she’s able to use the Jedi mind trick without any training in order to get the stormtrooper to release her. We’re introduced to her as a desert scavenger, and it doesn’t seem plausible that she could have acquired all of these skills from that lifestyle. Certainly she’s strong with the Force, and we’ll come to know just how strong in the coming installments, but some more explanation on how she had all of this knowledge and skill would have been nice.

There is a lack of originality.

In the first Star Wars we had the Death Star. In Return of the Jedi we had a bigger Death Star that was still under construction. In The Force Awakens we have a giant planet that has a huge laser to destroy other planets and multiple planets at once. Perhaps the problem is that once you have a weapon that can destroy an entire planet, then there’s really nowhere else to go. That apparently is the biggest threat anyone directing a Star Wars movie is able to concoct because it keeps coming back again and again. I am hopeful that in the upcoming episodes they’ll be a bit more creative in how they come up with new challenges for our heroes to face. Also, as has been mentioned by many people, the storyline follows pretty much the same storyline of A New Hope. It isn’t exactly the same, but many of the same beats are there and I think many long-time Star Wars fans found that to be frustrating. It wasn’t a huge problem for me, and it reminded me a little bit of J.J. Abrams reboot of Star Trek, and I think he was going for a similar effect with Star Wars. To me, it came off a little bit of a reboot. However, even though there are plenty of parallels to the original film there are still some unique aspects to the new film that I think when taken in their totality represent a symbolic passing of the torch. We won’t know for sure until we see the next installment, but it is my belief and my hope that Episode VIII will do what The Empire Strikes Back did which was to give us the most original story of the original trilogy.

I like the new characters.

I like where they’re going with Rey, and I think she can rival Luke Skywalker as one of the great heroes in cinema history if they continue to develop her the way they’ve started. I actually like that there is some mystery as to what her origin is, and the fact that Luke’s old lightsaber chose her over Kylo Ren is to me the single most intriguing development of the film. Speaking of Kylo-Ren, I’m a little hot and cold over him. I’m not sure why he wears a mask, other than to be like Darth Vader. He certainly is an evil character, and I like that they’ve added depth to him by making it appear that he’s struggling to stay on the Dark Side. That’s actually quite an original track to take. Usually we see characters struggling against the temptation of evil in order to remain good, especially when it comes to the Force. We’ve been told for the last 37 years that the Dark Side of the Force is the quicker, easier and more tempting way to go, and that once you’ve chosen that path, forever will it dominate your destiny. That is not the case with Kylo-Ren. He seems to have chosen the Dark path, but can’t seem to escape the Light, no matter how much he seems to want to. This is a character who seemingly wants to be evil, but isn’t sure if he has the strength to be so. I haven’t heard anyone make that connection, which is to me the driving force behind the story. Kylo-Ren’s story of wanting to be evil but struggling to achieve complete freedom from the Light Side of the Force is a very unique way to develop this character and it should be very intriguing to watch how it unfolds, especially as it parallels Rey’s Jedi training and development.

I also like the other two main characters of Fin and Poe, the latter of whom seems to be the Han Solo replacement by being this trilogy’s wise-cracking scoundrel. We didn’t get to know him nearly as much in this film, and I hope that subsequent episodes will give us more of him. Opposite that was Fin. Along with Rey, this really seemed to be his episode. It is Fin who gives us the inciting incident by rescuing Poe and then finding BB-8 with Rey. His desire to run away adds depth to his character and gives him the most complete character arc in this film, as he goes from reluctant villain to reluctant hero to committed hero. They also did a great job of giving him depth in his personality and making him (as well as Poe) feel like a real person that the audience could relate to, despite his extraordinary circumstances.

Overall, I loved the film.

Is it a perfect film? Hardly. Is it the best film in the series? Not quite. The Empire Strikes Back remains my favorite with A New Hope close second and The Force Awakens right on its heels. As mentioned above, this is a highly entertaining film, and it’s an emotional one as well. We care about these characters. Many people I know were in tears at the end of it. It hits all of the right beats from an entertainment perspective and it hits all of the right beats from an emotional perspective without being overly sentimental. The bottom line is that I’ve seen this film 3 times so far and each time I’ve been highly entertained. According to the box office numbers I’m not alone.

December 17, 2015

My Top 5 Science Fiction Films of All Time

Perhaps you’ve heard that there’s a little movie coming out this weekend called Star Wars: The Force Awakens. I love the Star Wars series. The first film came out when I was 6-years old. I had all of the toys when I was a kid. I used to have marathon sessions where I would watch all three in succession. I had all three movies memorized and could pull out almost any line of dialogue on command. One year for Christmas, my mother bought me Star Wars Trivial Pursuit, and we had to make a rule when we played that I was only allowed to get 5 correct answers in a row, because there was not one card in that pack that had a question on it that I didn’t know the answer to.

Like most other people, I was disappointed in the prequels. I didn’t hate any of them, and can actually make a small case for why The Phantom Menace is decent. In Attack of the Clones I feel like the sequences where Obi-Wan is figuring out who’s behind the clone army is intriguing and decent story telling, but the love story between Anakin and Padme is absolutely unwatchable. Then all of the drama was out of the story by the time we got to Revenge of the Sith, which rendered it little more than eye candy.

But as I saw one media outlet state when Disney bought Lucasfilm, “George Lucas saves Star Wars by firing George Lucas.” I’m also a Star Trek fan, and I loved what JJ Abrams did with that franchise. In fact I felt his first Star Trek film was the best film of that entire franchise, surpassing even Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan. So since I heard that he was directing the first Star Wars film post-Lucas, I have been optimistic about what the final result will be. I’ll find out once and for all on Sunday.

That said, I am one of those who does not consider Star Wars to be pure Science Fiction, but rather a somewhat separate genre of Science Fantasy. There isn’t really a lot of science in Star Wars. The only real reason it’s referred to as Science Fiction is because it takes place in space and on other planets, and there are space ships and lasers. But when you really look at the series and the thematic elements that it uses and the motifs that give the story its depth, it’s much closer to fantasy than sci-fi. Even our good friends at IMDB regard Star Wars as Action-Adventure-Fantasy. So that is why there will be no mention of Star Wars on this list of my favorite Science Fiction films of all time.

5. Close Encounters of the Third Kind

This film is as dramatic a science fiction film as I’ve ever seen, and really it doesn’t become a sci-fi picture until the third act. However, there are elements of extra-terrestrial activity throughout the film, even if we as audience members are not fully aware of what’s happening until then. Close Encounters has a compelling story, a sympathetic protagonist and a web of intrigue that keeps the story interesting from start to finish. It’s one of Steven Spielberg’s earliest films, and remains one of his best.

4. The Terminator/Terminator 2: Judgment Day

I put these on as one because I have a hard time separating them. Even though the second film came out 8 years after the original, and its special effects were leaps and bounds better, it really is a continuation of one fluid story and picks up where the first one left off. Plus, it’s harder to get more sci-fi than a time traveling cyborg who is sent back in time to kill the mother of the leader of the resistance against intelligent machines before he’s born. It’s an amazing premise that was very cutting edge for its time, and for the most part director James Cameron did a great job of living within the rules that he set up for himself and staked his claim as one of the great action/sci-fi directors of his generation.

3. Alien

“In space, no one can hear you scream.” That is perhaps one of the greatest and most recognizable log lines in the history of cinema. Ridley Scott combined Science Fiction with Horror to create one of the most terrifying and suspenseful films of all time. Trapped in a space ship with a carnivorous/parasitic alien, a group of space travelers trying to get back to Earth have to fight for survival within the confines of the craft that could end up being their coffin.

2. Blade Runner

This time Ridley Scott combined Science Fiction with Film Noir with equally stunning results. This is a dark film and very deep thematically. This film ponders what it’s really like to be “human” and who really deserves to be called that with a band of replicants trying to avoid detection and get revenge for their very creation. Harrison Ford created one of his signature roles in this film, which was a complete departure from the roguish, sarcastic and funny Han Solo and Indiana Jones. Rick Deckard was a hard-boiled, no-nonsense cop who trusted no one.

1. 2001: A Space Odyssey

I know, I know. You’re sarcastically thinking, “Oh, how original.” Well, have you seen this film recently? Better yet, have you ever seen it projected on a big screen? Any judgment on this film must be reserved unless you’ve seen it projected in a theater. I have been lucky enough to see it that way, and it is a completely different experience than seeing it on TV, even a modern over-sized flat screen. 2001 is a superb film, also about humanity and its direction towards either salvation or destruction and the narrow divergence between those two destinations.

December 9, 2015

3 Reasons to Get Professional Coverage for Your Screenplay Before the End of the Year

The Holiday Season is upon us and is in full swing. Holiday parties at friends’ homes and at offices rob us of time as well as the money that we need ot use for all of those white elephant gifts that we have to buy. For most people at this time of year, if it doesn’t have anything to do with the Holidays, it isn’t getting done.

This is also the best time of year for film buffs, as the best films of the year are often released in December. You might have heard that there’s a new Star Wars movie coming out in less than two weeks, and most of the films that will contend for Oscars are getting at least a limited release right around now as well. So actually, if it doesn’t involve the Holidays, and it doesn’t involve going to the movies, it isn’t happening.

However, if you’re a screenwriter working on a script, right now is the ideal time to get your script covered by a professional service and there are 3 reasons why that is the case.

Timing is everything.

It’s the holiday season for studio executives and agents as well, so right now is a terrible time to submit a script to studios and agencies. In fact, it’s likely that no one will even think about looking at your script until after the first of the year, so it will be sitting in a pile with nothing happening to it and you not improving it. Then, when everyone is back at the start of the new year, they’re going to be greeted by a glut of new scripts, and yours will be just another one in the pile. However, if you use this time wisely by getting a professional reader to evaluate your screenplay and then use the time between now and January to address the notes, you will have a much stronger screenplay to submit in the New Year and have a much better chance of making your script stand out in what is sure to be a crowded market.

It gives you a breather.

Writing a script can be an exhausting endeavor and completing a screenplay adds more stress on top your holiday anxiety. Handing a script off to a Reader for an evaluation takes the pressure off of you, if at least for a few days, to not be constantly noodling at it with no clear indication if the work you’re doing is making the script any better or worse. Let an unbiased set of eyes take a look at it and give you an honest answer. Plus services like Monument Scripts often offer up suggestions as to in which direction it would make sense to take the story. I understand that it can be stressful to have someone else read your material, but you shouldn’t be nervous about how a reader will respond. Any reader worth his or her salt will not belittle your writing ability or insult you in any way. What they will do is provide you with an honest assessment of your work, and something like that can be very liberating for you as a writer as well as for your creative process. There’s something very refreshing and almost cleansing about knowing where exactly you stand as well as getting some guidance on how to move forward.

Getting coverage is an essential step in your writing process.

This is true no matter what the time of year, but especially so just after the holidays when the piles of submitted materials are at their highest point. The more professional writers that I speak with, the more I hear the same thing. Get your script read by a professional Reader. Have that coverage as a part of the package that you send to executives and agents. It not only shows them that you have such confidence in your work that you’ve already had it evaluated, but it allows them to look at the coverage first to determine if it’s something that they’ll be interested in considering in the first place. Having that coverage already as a part of your package will help your script stand apart from other writers who submitted only the screenplay. In those cases the executives have to have their own studio readers and/or assistants evaluate it, and that can take weeks, depending on how big the pile is. And as I mentioned before, at the beginning of the year, it will be quite high. Having your own coverage ready for them will give you a leg up on the competition.

Yes, getting a script covered is an added expense during an already expensive time of the year. However screenplay coverage should be looked at as an investment. You’re investing in yourself because no matter what the reader says, you’re going to be presented with an opportunity to improve your script. That will present you with an opportunity to become a better writer, and that will keep your aspirations moving forward and prevent them from stagnating. As a writer, you should always be looking for ways to improve your craft, and using a professional screenplay reading service is one tool that you have to make that possible.

Please click here to see the services that Monument Scripts offers and how we can help you improve your screenplay in time for the New Year.

December 4, 2015

PIXAR: The Home of the Road Movie

I saw Disney/PIXAR’s The Good Dinosaur earlier this week and it reaffirmed a problem that I’ve been having with PIXAR’s films for the past several years. PIXAR is now the home of the road movie. Avid followers of this blog will know that I am not a fan of the Road Movie. I find that they tend to be episodic and are often less than the sum of their parts. The reason for that is that Road Movies generally involve a long trip with a series of challenges along the way. Those challenges are usually unrelated to each other, are equally challenging to each other (no rising degree of difficulty to increase the level of drama as the story progresses) and are quite often self-contained mini-stories within the broader narrative of what ever the hero’s main goal is or where she is trying to go.

The best example of this phenomenon is Disney’s Alice in Wonderland (1951). Taken individually, the scenes from that film are highly entertaining and work very well as shorts, but there is little that binds them together other than Alice’s desire to find the white rabbit and these fantastical characters in an equally fantastical world serving as obstacles. First Alice has to get by the door knob, then she has to deal with the Dodo before being blocked by Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dumb who tell her the story of the Walrus and the Carpenter. She then has to deal with the hookah smoking caterpillar before meeting the Cheshire Cat who tells her to go see the Mad Hatter. On and on it goes until she finds the Queen of Hearts who wants to chop off her head before the Cheshire Cat shows her that she’s just dreaming and merely needs to wake up. The point is this. You could take the order of those scenes and change them around to almost any order that you like, save for the last scene with the Queen of Hearts, and you’d still have the exact same story. I love the individual scenes because they’re all highly entertaining. I can’t watch the film in its entirety because it’s not a cohesive story. It’s a whole bunch of sub-stories that serve a higher but very thin narrative.

You’re now asking me, “What does that have to do with PIXAR?” Well, I’ll tell you. The same problems can be found in Finding Nemo, Up, Inside Out, and The Good Dinosaur. The first time I started thinking about any of this was the first time that I saw Finding Nemo when it first came out in the theater. I worked for Disney Feature Animation at the time (full disclosure: I currently work for DreamWorks Animation), and quite a few people opined to me that they felt it was the best feature that PIXAR had done to that point. My first thought at hearing that was to reply, “Then you either haven’t seen Toy Story 2, or you’ve just forgotten about it.” I somehow missed it on Finding Nemo, and couldn’t figure out why at first. I agreed that it was the most beautiful movie PIXAR had made to that point. The characters were engaging, and there were funny moments and heartfelt moments a-plenty. I remember thinking at the time that the great white shark Bruce was a terrific character and I would have liked it better if he had been a constant antagonist rather than just an early challenge in one scene. Then it hit me. There was no spine in Finding Nemo. Marlin had a series of challenges that he had to face in order to grow as a character and find his son, but there was nothing other than that to connect any of these challenges together.

Road Movies are a chain of events that link one after the other, and I prefer a story that is a spider web of interconnected ideas.

In fact, I have always felt that the B-story in Finding Nemo, of Nemo having to escape the fish tank before the Dentist’s deadly niece arrives is a much more intricate and interesting and entertaining story than Marlin trying to find him. Each scene builds on what previously happened and builds into what’s coming next in that portion of the story, which is much more dramatic and has a rising tension along with a ticking clock to add suspense. I would have liked the film a lot better had that been the A-story.

As heretic as it may be to say, Up and Inside Out had a lot of the same issues.

This leads me to The Good Dinosaur, which basically followed the same structure as Inside Out with the main character getting pulled away from his home and having to venture through a strange Special World in order to get home to his Ordinary World, which will no longer be the same now that he’s had these experiences. Arlo is a small, weak and cowardly dinosaur who wants to make his mark like the rest of his family of big, strong dinosaur farmers has done. After failing to kill a critter (or small human child that he later names Spot) that’s been stealing their corn, Arlo and his father set off after it to finish the job. However a storm comes, causing the river to swell, and Arlo’s father is swept away and killed. They need to get the corn harvested before the snow comes, and Arlo works hard to try and pick up the slack, but he falls into the river and is swept miles down stream. The first thing that Arlo sees when he comes to is the critter that he blames for his father’s death, but after a series of awkward encounters, the two form a bond and Arlo starts to follow the river home.

To this point the film has been merely boring. Once the journey starts, it becomes an episodic mess where Arlo and Spot go from being chased by pterodactyl-like dinosaurs to befriending T-Rex-like dinosaurs to dealing with no fewer than 3 storms. I actually want to take issue with the T-Rex scene in particular. Arlo’s character arc goes from cowardly and weak to brave and strong. He actually finds his strength and bravery in the sequences with the T-Rex’s and at that point we’re only half way through the film. The problem with this is that traditionally the second act ends with the hero’s character flaw causing him or her to lose everything. The problem is that by the end of the second act of The Good Dinosaur Arlo has already overcome his flaw, and the end of the second act and the entire third act feel contrived.

I understand that there were story issues and that the film was delayed by a year and that they had to rush to even get the film done in time to make its current release date. I’ve worked on films in similar situations, and they rarely turn out well. The Good Dinosaur suffered due to that situation. Not only are the second and third acts episodic, but they also suffer from sloppy story telling and inconsistencies. For example, Arlo is not only able to survive the same exact type of river swell that killed his father, but then he and Spot are inexplicably able to survive a spill over a nearby waterfall (that we’ve never seen, BTW, even though it’s in the same area as Arlo’s home), as well as being underwater for another one hundred yards down the river before coming to the surface. Then when Spot is not breathing, Arlo merely blows on his face, causing Spot to spit up water and start breathing again. Look, I’m all for taking creative license and the occasional cheat in order to connect story points or scenes that would otherwise be possible to connect. But in that sequence the film makers were treating us in the audience as though we were stupid. They painted themselves into a corner with a poorly structured, episodic road movie and proceeded to get out of it in as easy a way as possible. This is quite possibly my least favorite PIXAR film.

I would also like to say something about the art direction before I finish. The backgrounds and environments in this film looked amazing. They used USGS data to create hyper-realistic environments and they’re absolutely beautiful and stunning to look at. Unfortunately the characters are too cartoony for those environments, and there’s a disconnect there. It’s like that scene from an old episode of The Simpsons where Homer gets transported to a live-action world. When Homer is in The Simpsons’ world he looks normal. In our world he looks alien and like a cartoon. PIXAR put caricatured, and cartoony characters in this very realistic looking world, and the result was jarring and distracting. Perhaps a better story and more engaging characters would have helped, but the combination of all of that actually lessened the quality of the film.