2018 BLACK LIST - WENDI

The life story of Rupert Murdoch's second wife. 

Written by Amy Wang.

The story.... 

We open on the ubiquitous hook - this scene lets us know the life story that's about to unfold is that of the second wife of media tycoon - Rupert Murdoch. The hook is that Wendi is about to announce something important she and Rupert are going to do together. 

As far as hooks go, it's not the greatest. Sure, there's a sense that something really big is about to happen... but it's so short and ambiguous that you don't really know what it's about to be. You also don't really care. 

That whole thing about caring becomes a major problem for this script. Not to say I didn't enjoy this script, but I always read with my producers hat on - meaning - I ask myself as I'm reading - would I pay money to see this? Or - is there a large demographic of people out there who would pay money to see this film? 

Ultimately - my answer is no. 

For a hook opening to work you need to put the hero in a dire situation - preferably one of life or death. But first you need to make us like that hero. This is something this script did not do well throughout - the whole - make me care about our hero thingy. You know, kind of important. 

But I digress... back to the story...  

The story plays out exactly as you would imagine it would. 

Wendi is born into a poor family in China. She's precocious and far more intelligent than her contemporaries. She races ahead in school and longs for the first world comforts of America. In particular she falls in love with fridges. 

Weird, I know, but it kind of works, when you think back to the late 70's in China and how even a Fridge was a rare luxury item. 

Ironic now, that China is the worlds largest manufacturer and exporter of domestic appliances, but back then there was a severe shortage of fridges leading Wendi to love her some fancy fridge.

Wendi likes a dude at her school, and even though she crushes it academically, apparently big brains is not enough to get this guy interested. Mei ends up hooking up with him. Wendi gets pissed and here begins a rivalry between the two.

Spoiler alert - Wendi goes on to marry Rupert Murdoch and become a stupidly wealthy millionaire - so - you know - Wendi wins in that regard.

But does she win at life?

This screenplay tells us no. Wendi did not win at life.

Wendi meets Jake, an American travelling businessman who happens to be dealing in Wendi's fetish - fridges. 

Wendi, being the audacious go-getter that she is manages to become Jake's translator. She crushes a business deal that very likely would have gone south had she not been there, then proceeds to seduce Jake - even though he's married! Shock horror!

This pretty much sums up Wendi. She is determined to succeed no matter who she crushes along the way. This infiltration into Jake's marriage is only the first of many relationships she is willing to manipulate to get her way. 

Did I mention she has an affair with British prime mister Tony Blair so she can coerce Tony into lifting import taxes on Chinese products? - No? Well, according to this script, she does. 

Jump forward in time and Wendi manages to get Jake to bring her to America. She lives with Jake and his wife and in a somewhat awkward three-way situation the the wife doesn't want.

After a while Jake divorces his wife, then marries Wendi. 

Wendi gets a job interning at Rupert Murdoch's Chinese TV company - forces a meeting with Rupert, impresses him, becomes his personal translator, continues to impress him, then gets him to divorce his wife and marry her. 

The story then follows her life until she divorces Rupert. 

Somewhere in the middle there she forces Rupert to allow her to become a director of MySpace - and her terrible marketing campaign leads to a 93% reduction in share price. 

She has two children by Rupert - but manages to alienate herself from them also. She completely ignores her family and at one point she punches a homeless person. 

That's when we find out that the opening hook was Wendi gearing up to tell the world that she and Rupert are divorcing. 

This script really was a mixed bag. There are many good things going on here and there are a lot of bad things happening. 

The biggest problem with this story is EMPATHY. Or rather a massive lack of it. 

Even in the opening of the script, before Wendi has become a soulless evil person there's no active positive empathy for her. What's that you say? Please explain active positive empathy... 

Ok... 

Active positive empathy is when your hero ACTIVELY goes out of their way to do GOOD things for other people. 

This is the strongest form of empathy. This is something that Wendi never does. I can not recall one beat where Wendi did something kind for another person that she did not stand to directly benefit from.  

There is a shit-tonne of passive positive empathy. That's when bad stuff happens to the hero and we feel sorry for them. Loads of bad stuff happens to Wendi, but that's not enough to make your audience fall in love with your hero. 

But that's the thing with this script - Wendi isn't a nice person. She's calculated, determined and willing to crush anyone to get what she wants. 

That makes this a hard film to get behind. When you have a hero that isn't likeable in any way it's really difficult to root for them.

After a time I kept reading more from morbid fascination rather than because I really wanted to see how this wonderful person's life unfolds. 

According to this script - Wendi is a self serving megalomanic. 

Pacing is another thing that this script fails at.

It comes in at 127 pages long. 

I've said it before and I'll say it again - if your script comes in longer than 100 pages your running long. If your script comes in at 110 pages you're running really long. If your script comes in over 120 pages - you've got a first draft that needs to be edited back. 

One screenwriting maxim that I talk about a lot is START LATE FINISH EARLY.

It's pretty obvious what that means. It means - don't over stay your welcome. Just like a visitor over the holidays that says they'll just be crashing at yours for a night or two and end up staying for two weeks.

You need to know how welcome every one of your scenes are. 

Ask yourself - why do I need this scene? Once you've identified the core of your scene, start the scene as close to that beat, then when you've executed that beat - end the scene. Get the hell out of there. 

Don't hang around belabouring your point, and don't repeat your point. Just end the scene and move on. 

This would be the break out script for the writer Amy Wang. She has no produced feature credits on IMDB and her most recent short film is 29 minutes long. 

This is a very common mistake of beginner screen writers. They often overwrite. 

The exact same story could have been told here in 100 pages. It would be an easy trim and you wouldn't have to lose any beats of the story. All you'd lose would be lingering scenes that were unnecessary. 

The big question that all producers ask is - will this script make money? 

The answer is - no. 

This is an Indy film. It would do really well on the festival circuit, but there's nothing high concept here - it literally follows the life of the woman who becomes Rupert Murdoch's second wife. Are her achievements impressive - yes - are they impressive enough to warrant spending millions of dollars re-enacting and turning into a film? 

I don't believe so. 

If you wanted to make this on a million dollars you might see your money back - but an investment of anything more than that would be a risky venture. 

THE TAKE AWAY

#1 - make me love your hero. Don't make me kind of like them. Don't think that just because you wrote this character to life that I'm automatically going to love them. You have to make your hero do acts of kindness towards others. That's what hooks an audience. ACTIVE POSITIVE EMPATHY. 

#2 - Don't be that annoying guest over the holidays. Don't over stay your welcome. Write concise scenes that make your point then end. 

#3 - before writing a script - ask yourself - If you were an investor - would you put money into making your film? - Really - really? Would you? If the answer is no - then move on. Find another idea that would excite an investor into handing over their hard earned cash to make your film. 

OVERALL RATING - 6/10 

FRAT BOY GENIUS - 2018 BLACKLIST

A disgruntled employee of Snapchat tells the rise of her former Stanford classmate, Evan Spiegel - creator of Snap Chat.

Written by Elissa Karasik.

This script came in at the top of the 2018 blacklist. 

It was a very interesting and fun read. 

THE STORY...

Interestingly, this story is narrated and told by one of the least prominent of the characters. Imagine if Social Network was told by a random employee that wasn't very close to Mark or any of the other co-founders... 

It seems like a bold and risky move but there is rhyme and reason for the choice.

Lilly is employee number 33 at Snap-Chat. The story opens at the NYSE where Snap Chat has a public valuation of $33 billion. Making Micheal Evans worth $3.3 billion. 

Lilly is the only one here that's not happy about the immense success of Snap Chat. She's that kid at the birthday party that just has to cry no matter how much fun everyone is having. 

But maybe she's right to be upset. As we're going to find out, if it wasn't for her genius idea Snap Chat wouldn't have become worth half of what it did. 

Here we're left with a cliff hanger of sorts... the question becomes - what did Lilly do that was soooo genius to save Snap Chat and help make it worth so much money?

Read on to find out... 

After the ubiquitous 'hook' that is required of all good films - we jump back in time to Stanford University in 2011. Here we meet Evans and Lilly studying hard, trying to come up with the next big app. 

Michael comes from a serious money background... his parents are wealthy, but not Michael Jackson level wealthy, no, this poor chap has to put up with driving $75k cars, instead of $200k cars. It's tough for some, you know, the things the sub-mega-rich have to put up with can be really hard sometimes. 

Michael is all front, he's not a good coder like Zuckerberg, in fact, he's the opposite of Zuckerberg in every way. He's the cool guy, the party maker, he's one that runs the coolest frat house on campus throwing all the wildest parties. 

But it's not enough for him. Like all good megalomaniacs, he wants to rule the world by creating the coolest app that everyone uses... 

There's a lot of infighting between Lilly and Evans at school. Evans doesn't put any effort in while Lilly works her butt off. And as we all know already... it's Evans who becomes incredibly successful.

There's a certain irony to that. 

In a way, Evans is a lot like Steve Jobs. Someone who has ideas and uses other people's skills to bring them to life. 

There becomes the age-old debate of creation... is it the architect that's deserved of the praise for envisioning the building or is it the workers who actually did the hard work and laid the bricks who deserve the credit?

Just to clarify, the bricks are lines of code in this screamingly obvious metaphor. 

The building is the App. 

The story moves forward as you would expect it too.

Evans isn't doing well at school until he has this holy-shit idea about a photo app that deletes the photos after ten seconds. 

Why is that so cool? It means there is no permanent record. In an age of the permanent record that is a unique and powerful thing. 

At first, he's ridiculed because that's what happens when anyone comes along with a new great idea. Our minds are set to make fun of those who break the norm. 

Evans goes off with his coding team to live with his dad for the summer. 

Here we find the ubiquitous failing relationship between father and son. 

Evan's father becomes the first investor in Snap Chat.

There is also the infighting between Evans and his original team. Some doing more work than the others. 

Everything plays out just the way you would expect it too. 

The app launches - under the less cool name of - Picaboo - only to crash and not do well at all.

Finally, a meeting with Evans' Stanford professor tells Evans that he's targeting the wrong age group. Instead of targeting young adults - target tweens.

BOOM!

The app takes off. 

Goes viral. 

They expand, expand, expand, they get angel investors, everything is going super duper... then, of course, there has to be a spanner in the works otherwise the story would be too easy.

Evans doesn't want to use the traditional method of direct or pop-up advertising that FaceBook et al use. 

He doesn't want to data-mine users info either. So the next question becomes - how the hell do you monetize the app????

This is where Lilly really comes into the story. 

Lilly comes up with a way to maintain the integrity of the app AND make a shit-tonne of cash. 

What's her great idea??? I won't ruin it for you, even though you already know. 

This script was a great fun read, but there was a sense of familiarity to it. 

I think there are two saving graces to it. 

the first being that it's told from Lilly's POV. Sort of. It starts with Lilly, and she becomes our narrator all the way through. 

By doing this it gave the whole Millionaire to Billionaire (as appose to rags to riches) story a fresher take. 

Also, the witty writing style added a spice to the reading that added to the story.

One thing I've noticed recently is the importance of tone. 

yesterday's script was written with as much fun and joy as Schindler's list - but that worked really well for that script as it was a piece about the horrors of WW2.

This script had a lot of dark humor and sarcasm throughout, but it worked as this story is about a millionaire creating an App and becoming a billionaire. 

So I liked the read.... but does that mean I think this script would make money?

In short - if executed well then I believe yes. 

This film could be shot for less than $20m. If you really wanted to you could shoot this film using the Blum House business model of $5m. 

You don't need name actors to carry this film. The CONCEPT here is the pull. 

Everyone knows the iconic snap chat ghost chilla. 

Snap Chat currently has 210 million daily active users. 

If you shot this film for $5m - then you're pretty much guaranteed to make money. Get some TV level famous actors to play the leads and you're set. 

I imagine this film wouldn't have the same impact that Social Network had - but you're sure to make at least $50m off a script and story like this. 

This script is set in the present-day, which makes shooting very easy. Yesterday's script was set in WW2 Germany. That makes shooting that script incredibly expensive. 

You need to keep in mind that this is what producers think about when reading scripts. 

Good producers don't ask themselves if they enjoyed the script.

They ask themselves, can I make money out of this script? If the answer to that is overwhelming yes, then odds are the script will get made.

Think your concept through. Think - will my story make money? How likely is it that my script will make money? 

Things that make a movie more expensive to make are...

1) Period.

2) Special effects.

3) A story that would require a BIG NAME actor to get people to go and watch it.

If you can write a story that is high concept and doesn't use any of these then you're script is already in a good spot.

Another thing that came to mind as I read was that this story -- like Jobs, Like Social Network -- all have unlikeable heroes. 

Jobs, Zuckerberg and Evans are all pretty much assholes.

Now, normally that would scream script death. 

But here - it works.

Why? - Simple - humans love success. We love to see success. 

Imagine if Snap Chat had failed and withered into nothing. Where would that leave this script? Nowhere. 

No one wants to see a story about an asshole who doesn't succeed. It's almost as though humans forgive people's personality defects so long as they become incredibly successful and wealthy. 

This script gets an overall 7/10.

It's well written, would very likely make money, could be shot on a relatively low budget and has an inbuilt market. 

If you can get a hold of the script, it's well worth the read. 

THE TAKEAWAY:

#1 - crate high concept - no special effects, no period and a story that doesn't need a big name actor to carry it and odds are your script will get good reads and ultimately get made.

#2 - The asshole hero - viewers will forgive a hero their personality defects if they are incredibly successful. This makes for an interesting kind of anti-hero. 




    

2017 BLACK LIST 01 - RUIN

Logline: A nameless ex-Nazi captain who navigates the ruins of post-WWII Germany determined to atone for his crimes during the war by hunting down the surviving members of his former SS Death Squad.

Ruin came top of the 2017 Black List. 

It was written by Matthew K Firpo and Ryan Firpo. 

IMDBPRO has Margot Robbie attached to play the supporting role of Elsa and Matthias Schoenaerts to play the lead role of The Captain.

THE STORY:

Set in Germany six months after the end of WW2, we meet The Captain, a former SS officer who is on a mission to exterminate the remaining members of his SS unit. We join him at the moment that he kills one, then purposefully wounds another from a sniper's position. 

The Captain interrogates the wounded SS officer, he's looking for the head of their unit, a man called Richter but the wounded man refuses to give up any information about Richter's whereabouts.

The Captain later discovers a radio broadcasting unit, a place where die-hard Nazi's try to resurrect the Third Reich by broadcasting on a pirate radio frequency across Germany. The Captain attacks two men operating this outpost of the radio station, his vicious interrogation of the men reveals there is a refugee camp nearby where lives a Jewish woman that Richter had 'chosen' to be his sex slave. 

The Captain has a new goal, to find this woman in hope of learning Richter's whereabouts. But the radio was on and broadcasting the entire interrogation, which means that anyone listening knows the importance of the woman and where The Captain is heading.

It's a race to get to the woman first.

At the refugee camp, The Captain battles another die heard Nazi and just manages to save the woman - ELSA - together they escape. 

It turns out that Elsa had a baby by Richter, but Richter took it from her at birth. Elsa is determined to accompany The Captain on his mission to find and kill Richter. 

With their mutual goal established the story unfolds from here. The two go on a spree of revenge killing hunting their way closer to Richter. 

The question becomes, will Elsa find her daughter and what will happen if they discover Richter? 

INITIAL THOUGHTS:

This is a very powerful script. While the writing is a little heavy and the reading was slower than normal, the story is very powerful, executed with taste. 

The last WW2 movie I watched was the Brad Pitt film - Fury. 

Fury was almost a celebration of war. It was definitely a celebration of 'heroism'. 

This film is the opposite. It reflects upon the horrors of war. It is much closer in tone to Schindler's List than to the film Fury. 

CONCEPT

The concept here is good. It is a revenge film - but it is a tasteful revenge film. It is also a very simple story. Two main characters, The Captain and Elsa, and their mission to hunt down and kill Richter. 

What made this story unique is that the hero is also a villain. We learn early on that The Captain is a former SS officer. He is responsible for the murder of hundreds if not thousands of innocent souls. 

This adds a bittersweetness to the story. You understand the motivation for his revenge killing spree and you respect him for that but at the same time, you hate him as you know that he has committed atrocities no man or woman could ever be forgiven for. 

CONCEPT TIP: If the lead character here had been Jewish, or an American officer gong on a revenge killing spree this story wouldn't have gotten half the attention it did. It only takes one little change to a story, one little skew from the norm to elevate your story from the rest. Take the time to consider all the possible permutations of who your lead characters are. Could your story be more unique if your hero was a different gender or a different nationality? Don't get married to your characters, treat them like any other aspect of your script - changeable and expendable in search of the betterment of your overall story. 

GOAL/S AND URGENCY:

This script has a very clearly defined and motivated main goal. Find and kill Richter. That is the main overarching goal. Now, one main goal is not enough to hold an entire story together. You need smaller goals that link together like dominos to reach your main end goal.

This script does that very well. At the end of the first sequence there is a new micro goal established - get to the camp to find the girl - Elsa. There is also a ticking clock established, The Captain must get to the camp and find Elsa before one of the other SS officers does. When The Captain finds Elsa, there is a new goal established, and after that goal, there's another and another. 

The story becomes a series of very clearly defined goals, each one with varying degrees of urgency. 

GOAL AND URGENCY TIP: Clearly defined goals clarify your story. They make sure that your audience knows what the main charters are doing. When your audience isn't sure what your main characters are trying to achieve their attention wanders and they become quickly bored. 

FORM:

The writing here was well done. It was a little heavy to read, the dialogue to description ration was about 20/80. When a script relies on description over dialogue to tell the story it makes the read a little denser, but that was done with purpose here. 

The story is only 95 pages long, so it doesn't overstay its welcome. Very often when I read a war film it comes in at around 120 pages. When your script is running 120 pages long it's usually because you have extraneous writing.

I didn't notice one spelling or grammar mistake in this script. This is another thing that separates the professionals from the amateurs. Most unproduced writers have many spelling and grammatical mistakes in their scripts. There's no excuse to have a solitary form error in your script. 

FORM TIP: Take your current script. Is it 100 pages or less? If not, trim, trim, trim. Then go through your script until it has no spelling or grammar mistakes. 

CHARACTERS AND DIALOGUE:

The Captain was well defined. He felt three dimensional. The choice not to make him a verbose man played well to his personality. Had the writers chosen to make him a talkative character it wouldn't have worked. He is a man with a heavy burden of guilt on his conscience. He is trying to atone for his ills but at the same time is aware there is no act of kindness grand enough to erase the horrors of what he has committed. 

The dialogue here walks a great line - it balances the divide of understated without coming across as contrived. 

WW2 films often have characters who wax-lyrical about the horrors of war. It is better to show the audience the horrors of war than have a character state the obvious. 

CHARACTER AND DIALOGUE TIP: 

When writing dialogue you need to try and separate yourself - the writer - from the character. Ask yourself - if this dialogue coming from ME (the writer) or is it coming from my character? It is often very hard to separate the two, but being aware of the difference is the first step towards writing character-honest dialogue. 

START LATE FINISH EARLY:

This simply means: find the core of your scene and start as close to that core as you can, then as soon as you have executed that beat, finish the scene. 

This script does this well. There wasn't one scene I felt that lingered unnecessarily. 

STRUCTURE:

I didn't analyze the structure here according to the Hero's Journey. It seemed redundant to do that. The well-established micro-goals created enough of a sense of structure to carry this film. 

Had the writers tried to insert an obvious character flaw into Elsa and The Captain that they had to overcome by the end of the film - it would have undermined the tone and nature of the story. 

STRUCTURE TIP:

Structure is very important, structure is the frame work around which the skin of your story hangs. If you have written your story without any kind of forethought for structure, odds are your story will feel disjointed and wandering. If you have a story that you love the concept of, but it just doesn't seem to read the way you want it too, odds are your structure is off. Go back to page 1 and do a complete re-write this time focusing on structure first.

OVERALL:

This is a very successful screenplay. It has Margot Robbie attached and the director of Assassin's Creed, Justin Kurzel.

The main problem I see with this film would be the scope of the budget required to shoot it. This film would require at least $50m to shoot. To make your money back on a $50m film you need to pull $150m at the box office. 

Is this a film that could pull $150m at the box office? 

No. 

For this film to be a financial success, it would need to be shot at no more than $25 million. But when your production budget drops, so too does your production quality. 

For this reason, I don't think this film will get made in the near future. I hope I'm wrong as I'd love to see it made, but I feel the cost to profit ratio on this film is low. 

 

BLACK LIST 2018 - BAG-MAN

This script landed at number 15 on the 2018 Black-List.

The story follows ATTICS ARCHER. He's a bag-man for Auburn University football team. He's responsible for 'convincing' the most promising new athletes graduating from High School to sign up at Auburn.

His methods are nefarious at best. He is a master manipulator. Capable of coercing anyone and every one to his will.

The story starts with him manipulating a young star quarterback (Ricky Patterson) into signing with Auburn. Ricky is the number one prospect in the country, he had already promised to sign with Alabama university, but Atticus leaks an email thread between the star QB's father and a manager, which is a suspendable offense at this stage of the QB's career.

Ricky has no choice but to sign with Auburn.

Just when it looks like Atticus is about to quit the world of being an NCAA bag-man, he sees footage of a new star athlete defensive linesman. This guy is huge, powerful, fast, agile, he steamrolls whoever is stupid enough to come up against him.

Atticus has promised his wife that he will quit his career and concentrate on their retirement - after he has landed this last white whale.

The NCAA sends a low-level paper pusher (Thomas Kendrick) to investigate how it came to be that Ricky Patterson signed with Auburn at the last minute.

Thomas is an ex-pro-baller who lives for a battle on or off the field. He's a dog with a bone and his investigation unravels Atticus's world. He learns of the bribes and the underhand dealings, he learns of the way that Atticus operates, that he has no moral compass, no line in the sand that he will not cross.

The story becomes a battle between Atticus and Thomas, where there can be only one winner.

I loved this script. This has to be one of my favorites from the 2018 blacklist.

There's so much that this screenplay does well.

WHAT THIS SCRIPT DOES RIGHT...

The number one thing this script nails are REAL LIFE CHARACTERS.

There were a hell of a lot of main players in this script and every one of them shone brightly. Every one of them was extremely well written.

I normally advise people to steer clear of writing an ensemble film as they tend not to do well at the box office. Ensemble films (being a film with more than one main character) do well in TV format, not film format.

While there are a lot of characters here - the story is still very centrally focused on Atticus. The entire story is focused on Atticus' dealings and the trouble that he gets into. 

Here's the first writing tip from this screenplay - if you are writing a story with multiple points of view, make sure that the story is centered around ONE MAIN CHARACTER. 

Every character here was focused on what Atticus was doing. There really is only one storyline here. Having only one storyline keeps your story focused. 

I recall doing coverage on another screenplay recently where there was the main storyline, then there was a secondary storyline that was the romance. The thing is, there was no real connection between storyline A and storyline B.

A better-written story would have had the love interest be a part of the A storyline. But instead it was completely separate - and consequently, the story felt disjointed. Like it had two different focuses. 

The second major thing we can learn from this screenplay is the importance of developing each character fully. 

A major mistake I see in a lot of screenplays is that the main character is very well written and developed, with great nuance and back story. But then every other supporting character is poorly written. 

Writing a successful screenplay is all about creating a believable world. When ALL your characters have backstory, and nuance, and unique personality traits, then your story will feel three dimensional. 

The best thing to do is to avoid cliches. Make sure that you're not writing in tropes. What's a trope? It's the high school jock, it's the hot annoying bitchy girl, it's the drunk, it's the Emo kid in school, it's the high powered wall street executive. 

Anytime you create a character try to write the opposite of cliche. Why can't the hot girl at school be really clever, really interesting, why can't the hot girl be the outcast for some interesting reason? Why can't the high school jock not want to play sports? Take the cliche and flip it on its head. 

It's interesting writing the summary of this story. Some story summaries are really easy to write and others are difficult. I found summarising this screenplay more difficult than others as there are so many layers. 

You'll hear this in LA often - producers want a screenplay that has LAYERS. 

Layers come about when your story feels well woven. When you have multiple storylines all flowing together. 

MAKE SURE EVERY SCENE COUNTS. 

A great test I often suggest for your screenplay is to see just how relevant every scene is. 

Go through your script and delete a random scene. Now, read the screenplay. If the story still makes perfect sense, then odds are you didn't need that scene. 

I'm currently reading a new script at the moment that I'll review soon - but this new script suffers badly from unnecessary scenes. I'm sure that almost every other scene could be deleted and the story would still make sense.

That was not the case in Bag-Man. Almost every scene was relevant to another scene. I call them sister scenes. 

You write a scene early on in your script that sets up a pay-off that will come later on. Without the setup, the pay off wouldn't make sense. 


FLAW

This screenplay nails the flaw perfectly. Atticus is a man obsessed. His obsession is the next great recruit. His life would be pointless if he isn't wheeling and dealing and manipulating people. 

His obsession is his downfall. 

This script makes reference to Moby Dick. It is an accurate metaphor. In Moby Dick, Ahab is obsessed with capturing a giant white whale. It is his obsession that is his undoing. 

The same happens here. Atticus is obsessed to the point of self detriment. It's not until he has hit rock bottom that he comes to see the errors of his ways and then makes amends and tries to do something about it. 

This is the essence of flaw and structure in storytelling. 

Give your hero a flaw - give them a personality trait that pulls them down. Make sure that the flaw is relatable. 

An unreliable flaw will mean your audience isn't connecting with your story. 

Atticus' flaw is obsession. It doesn't matter what the obsession is for or about, it is the human nature of pursuing something with neglect to everything else in your life that is a relatable flaw here. 

Start small and work your way up. At first, Atticus' dealings don't seem that bad. Sure, he's manipulating people, but it seems like ultimately the end justifies the means. 

But as the story progresses, and as Atticus faces the prospect of losing control we soon learn that he has no moral compass what so ever and is willing to do anything to achieve his goal. 

When writing a screenplay I always try to show the hero's flaw in every scene. Constantly remind your audience that your hero is flawed, show us that they have this detrimental personality trait that is causing problems in their life and show us their struggle with trying to overcome that flaw. 

This is the essence of good storytelling and Bag-Man nails it.