2018 BLACKLIST - SHARON

This script finished at number 70 on the 2018 Blacklist.

Written by Ryan Jaffe. 

logline: Biopic of Sharon Osbourne - wife of Ozzy Osbourne.

THE STORY...

We first meet Sharon in Wimbledon, England, 1970. 

She's socialising at a grand party at her father's house. It's a regular motel crew of artists, musicians, rockers and grim faced mobsters. 

Sharon is exceptional at her role of hostess. The members of The Small Faces play a medley of their hit Get Yourself Together.

Upstairs, we find Don Arden negotiating with the manager of The Small Faces. 

Don wants to take over the management of the group. The manager says no and Don retorts by having his 'Heavies' (English parlance for 'goons') grab the manager by his ankles and hang him over the edge of the balcony. 

Sharon joins her father as this 'negotiation' is taking place. She's not shocked by this scenario at all. Don gives Sharon a cigar and tells her to put it out on the manager's eyeball as he refuses to give up management of The Small Faces. 

Needless to say, the manager finally signs them over to Don. 

This opening scene sets up the main storyline - Sharon's battle with her father - Don. Her struggle to free herself from his tyrannical rule. 

Next, Sharon discovers the English heavy metal band - Black Sabbath - and their lead signer - Ozzy Osbourne - who Sharon will eventually marry. 

At first, Sharon is complicit with her father in running his management of musicians in a dictatorial kind of way that Saddam Hussein might have found unnecessarily violent. 

Very early on Sharon finds herself pregnant. She has an abortion and soon finds out that her father is more interested and concerned about money than he is for the emotional and physical well being of his daughter. 

The day after her abortion, Don asks Sharon to convince her boyfriend to sleep with Freddie Mercury, lead singer of Queen, so he can try to take over their management. 

By chance, Sharon overhears that Black Sabbath are looking for new management. 

In a heartbeat, Sharon packs a bag, flies to America, meets with the lead of the band a guy called Tony - and talks him into letting her be their manager. 

Sharon is very pleased with herself, she's just single handedly taken over the management of one of the world's leading bands!

But as she soon discovers her father Don is not going to let her manage the band in her own right - he wants a cut of their money, and when he says cut, what he really means is ALLLLLL of it. 

The story from here goes where you might expect it to. 

Sharon fights with her father. 

There is infighting in the band. The lead singer Ozzy's partying becomes too much of a liability and he's finally kicked out of the band.

Sharon and Ozzy form an unlikely alliance, and as history will tell us, their bond and team work is powerful and magical and violent and destructive and creative all at the same time. 

The ultimate question becomes, will Sharon ever be able to get out from under her father's shadow and soar with Ozzy?

WILL THIS FILM MAKE MONEY?

While I loved this screenplay and it was exceptionally well written, I'm not sure there's enough of an audience waiting to see this movie.

Having said that, I believe if you angled this story in the right way you could find an audience. At its core, this story is about a woman overcoming and escaping the oppressive and destructive relationship with her father. 

This is a story that is very well worth telling. Also, that this is a story about the rise of Ozzy Osbourne, you have an inbuilt audience - those who love Black Sabbath and Ozzy Osbourne music. 

So, while I'm not certain this film could make money - if you tapped into the demographic of die-hard Ozzy fans and pushed this film as an empowerment piece you might just find enough people excited by this story to turn a profit. 

WHAT IT DID WELL

The world created in this screenplay felt very real. Often screenplays feel manufactured, they feel like a fake story. While being a biopic obviously lends a sense reality, the interactions and the characters really feel like they're alive.  

How can you make your script feel real? How can you make it feel alive?

It comes down to realistic dialogue and three dimensional characters. 

Dialogue is a hard thing to get right. 

One of the worst kinds of dialogue is On The Nose Dialogue. This is when a character says exactly what they're thinking verbatim. 

That might happen in real life sometimes, but mostly people are cryptic. Think about yourself, how often have you felt a certain way but instead of saying exactly how you feel, you expressed yourself in an indirect way? 

This is the nature of all relationships. This is how you make dialogue interesting. 

Next time you're writing dialogue try this process... 

Write your scene in the most boring and literal on the nose way you can imagine. 

Now, when you have done this, go back and re-write every piece of dialogue in an indirect way. Think about how you convey anger instead of saying 'I'm angry'. Think about indirect ways your characters could express that they're feeling lonely instead of just saying, 'I feel lonely.'

Use the On The Nose dialogue as a launching off point to ensure you know what it is your character is trying to convey in that moment, but have them do so in an indirect way.

Another way to make your dialogue more interesting is with Metaphorical dialogue. This is where your character makes a point by way of metaphor. 

Say your character wants to say that life is ever changing and in a constant state of flux. Rather than just saying that verbatim, perhaps they could talk about waves, and how no wave from sea to shore ever stays the same. All waves are constantly merging with other waves, sometimes separating and forming new waves. In this instance your character has used a wave as a metaphor for what they were trying to say about life. 

When your audience gets a chance to think in a film it engages their brain. When their brain is engaged in a meaningful way you will maintain their attention. 

2018 BLACKLIST - SPARK

This script finished at the bottom of the 2018 blacklist. 

Sometimes you read a script that does everything right and it becomes an inspiration. You re-read the script looking at how they executed the various aspects of the screenplay so well. You learn from this - you learn from someone who knows what they're doing.

Sometimes you read a script and it does everything wrong. Even though it does everything wrong I find these scripts inspirational - because just like the script that does everything right, these scripts show us what NOT to do. 

Today's offering, Spark, does many things wrong. 

Let's look at them and see what we can learn. 

First the story. 

Naomi is our hero, we meet her as she's graduating from Stanford. She is African-American and Naomi's family are the "lone black faces in a sea of mostly white."

We then find Naomi at a well to do family home, celebrating her graduation. 

She is met by an array of well wishers who she is reluctant to talk with. 

We next find Naomi living with her new flatmate - Diane. 

They go out for a drink, Naomi meets a hot bearded guy called Ben, takes him home and they have a one night stand.

Naomi has been recruited for a tech firm and she starts her new job. At the new job it is competitive, but Naomi is strong and capable. 

Soon, there's a new employee at the company. You guessed it! It's Ben.

Awkward!

Ben and Naomi discuss it and decide to keep their relationship professional. 

But it doesn't take long until they start sleeping together. 

Getting bored yet?

I am. 

Ben and Naomi are put on a client case together. They have to wine and dine an elderly executive to keep the client happy. 

Naomi and Ben's affair continues until Naomi finds out that Ben has a girlfriend. 

Are you still bored?

I am. 

As revenge, Naomi tries to sabotage Ben's relationship by putting a small lipstick stain on his shirt. 

This almost ends Ben's relationship and he gets justifiably annoyed with her. 

Ben then invites Naomi to a client dinner, but he purposefully gives her the wrong time and she turns up late, making her look stupid. 

You'd think that was 1-1 - but no, Naomi reports their arguing to her boss saying that Ben has been inappropriate with her in the office environment. 

The script then skews into Naomi being treated like a pariah, and socially cast out from the company. She's put on 'administrative leave'.

Naomi feels that she has been treated this way because of her race and gender and sets out to destroy the company and Ben. 

There's so much wrong with this script that it's great! There's so much to learn from it. 

Firstly, did you notice that there was nothing high concept about it? It is a plain- straight forward drama. 

There's very few producers out there who want to make a straight forward drama in the feature film format. Dramas work much better in the TV series format.

If you want to stand a better shot of getting your feature film script made, it's better to give it a unique angle, something that makes it stand out from the rest. Something that makes it high concept. 

Next, there is no goal. Not until the very end of the script when Naomi decides that she wants to crush Ben and the company. But that goal isn't established until around page 90.

If you want your script to keep your audience engaged you need to have established a goal by page 25. Page 30 at the very latest. 

The dialogue was plain and very average. With the exception of Diane, every other character sounded the same. 

To make your characters sound like they're real people you need variance in the way they speak. Think of the people in your real life and how they speak. Does everyone speak in the same manner? No, of course not. So to give your script life, vary the way your characters speak. 

START LATE FINISH EARLY

It's simple - start the scene as close to the main beat then finish the scene a soon as you've executed that beat.

In this script characters were constantly saying Hi, how are you? Characters were constantly entering new locations, walking places, taking Ubers places, driving.

You're not moving your story forward if your characters are travelling places. 

Cut out the fat, cut straight to your characters in the middle of a conversation - preferably a conversation that involves - CONFLICT.

This brings us to the next short-coming of this script. 

CONFLICT - or rather the severe lack of it. There's basically no conflict in this script until Naomi finds out that Ben has a girlfriend. 

That happens around page 50. 

Until then there is no conflict. No conflict means your audience is bored, bored, bored. 

Like I was reading this script. 

EMPATHY is another huge lacking of this script.

There are two types of positive empathy. Active - that's where the hero DOES things for other people that we like them for. Then there's passive, this is when bad stuff happens to your hero and we feel sorry for them.

While this script had ample doses of passive empathy for Naomi, I can't think of a single beat where Naomi went out of her way to help someone other than herself. 

When you don't have positive empathy beats for your hero, then you're not connecting with your audience. 

Predictable - this script threw me no curve balls. After about 10 pages I was predicting where the script was going for there rest of the entire screenplay. 

If there's one sure thing that's death to a movie it's predictability. When your audience guesses what's coming next and they're right, then they check out. They grow bored very quickly. 

Never have a character tell another character what the audience already knows. This script was guilty of this little screenwriting crime on a couple of occasions. 

If we've just had a big reveal in one scene, what ever you do, don't cut to the next scene where character A tells character B all about what just happened in the previous scene. It's really boring for the audience to wait for a character to catch up with what they already know. 

There was also no urgency. Not every script needs a ticking clock, but they sure help to keep your audience engaged. 

Now, this script had no goal and no urgency, so you've effectively got a character who doesn't have to get anything done in no particular rush. 

This is not a winning formula for writing successful movies. 

In summary - I'd give this script a 3/10. It's a great first effort, but it would make a very dull, predictable film that wouldn't make any money. 

There is a lot to learn from this script, however. That's why I love reading unproduced screenplays - there's always something they can teach us. 

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.