MIDNIGHT TEXAS - TV PILOT - NBC

LOGLINE: After a near death run in with an angry spirit, a psychic with the ability to not only speak with, but also see ghosts flees to the remote town of Midnight, Texas, in the hope of relaxing and recuperating, only to discover this small, nowhere town is the epicentre and home of all mythical creatures imaginable.

SCRIPT BIO: 2016 Pilot for NBC. Based on the Midnight Texas trilogy by Charlaine Harris.

WRITER: Monica Owusu-Breen.

STORY:

We meet MANFRED (20s), a psychic who speaks with and sees ghosts as he performs a seance for a client of his, RACHEL (50s). 

When Manfred tells the client's dead husband that she is moving on, starting a new relationship with another man, the spirit of the dead husband crosses over from the netherworld, possesses Manfred's body and almost kills Rachel. 

It's only through Manfred's powerful skill and control that he manages to banish the spirit of the dead husband from his body at the last moment.

After that close call, Manfred decides to get away. He needs some downtime, time to get his head back together. 

As he finds himself driving with no destination in mind, the spirit of his dead Grandma appears next to him in the car. She advises him to go to a remote nowhere town in the desert. Not one to ignore sage advice from the dead, Manfred sets course for Midnight Texas.

Midnight, at first appears to be just another one street town in the middle of nowhere. A forgotten place. That is, until you meet the characters living here. 

Without giving away too much of the storyline, we meet a real life practising witch, a vampire, a werewolf and... you get the idea. 

This town is anything but ordinary. 

Manfred is introduced to all these incredible characters via a series of fascinating, often life endangering encounters. Then around the half way mark, one of the main players, a young lady - is found killed.

Investigation into her death soon reveals that she has a past no one knew about. 

A past that comes to town willing to wreck havoc on anyone and everyone to reap vengeance for her death. 

In the closing throws of the pilot one of the main characters is wrongly accused of killing the young lady and is taken into custody. 

A freak of nature in so many ways himself, Manfred decides to stay and work with the band of mythical creatures to exonerate the man wrongly accused and to discover who the real killer was, and more importantly, to discover the secrets of this strange town. 

INITIAL REACTION:

I've been reading a lot of TV pilots recently. I find the approach to TV a refreshing switch up from the format of Film. 

TV seems to be where the good writing is at these days. With TV there is an innate need to 'cut to the chase.' Get the story told as efficiently as possible.

Quite often with feature films, there is a sense of laziness to the story telling. There is a notion that - 'This is a film, let me take my time getting to my point, let me show you this character walking through a doorway, or driving up to a house even though you learn nothing about who that character is through these actions.'

In TV all the fat is cut away and all you're left with are compelling beats that pull the story along.

Ok, that's a generalisation, there are TV pilots that wander and take their time, but on the whole I'm noticing that TV writers are aware of how important it is to 'get to the point' as fast as you can. 

This TV pilot is a great example of good, clean, fast writing. 

Not only is the writing itself A grade, but the storytelling never wanders. Every scene is as short as it can be, every scene starts as late as possible and ends as soon as possible. 

It is so refreshing to read a well orchestrated script. 

CONCEPT:

Fantastic idea here. A psychic who can see and interact with the dead, finds that he's not the only person on earth with freakish abilities. He is 'guided' to a town where mythical creatures live among ordinary folk, and is embroiled in a murder mystery. 

This is an idea that immediately jumps out at you, you can imagine all the interesting characters - the witch, the werewolf, the vampire etc... all these great folklore creatures living as humans in a small town. 

This is a great example of high concept AND a character piece. More often than not, when you have a high concept script, be it film or TV, the characters are underdeveloped. And on the flip coin, when you have a really well developed character piece, with sensational players that explode off the page, you will find that the story itself is ho-hum, nothing to write home about.

It's when you marry those two all important aspects of story together that you end up with a powerful piece such as this. 

CONCEPT RATING: 9/10

THE TAKEAWAY: Look at your latest script. Break it down into these two core parts. IDEA and CHARACTERS. Look at each one separately. Does you IDEA stand up? Is it different enough to stand out from the masses? Or is it really just another mystery, just another crime drama, just another comedy etc... 

Try and single out that one aspect of your script that you can hold up and say, look, this is my unique angle, this is WHY my script is different to all the rest. 

If you can't honestly do that - then re-write your idea until you have an ANGLE. If you don't have an angle, no matter how well executed, you're just not going to get the reads, just not going to get it over the line.

Likewise with your characters. Look at each character and think about how well developed they are. Again, be as honest with yourself as you can be. Does each character have a flaw of some sort? Or if not a flaw, do they have a unique personality to them? What makes them stand out? If there's nothing making them stand out from the rest, re-write them until they have their own unique flavor. 

FORM:

Form here is exceptional - except for one thing. The writer often directs the camera. Now for an established writer adapting a pre existing novel as an assignment for an established TV company, she can get away with this. 

For everyone else out there - never - ever - direct the camera in your script.

End of discussion.

FORM RATING: 9/10


STRUCTURE:

TV structure differs greatly from film structure.

With film - the Hero's Journey structure guides the story. 

In TV - there are less defined beats that are necessary to hit to have a successful show. 

By the end of a film it is important to have resolved the main character's flaw, in a TV series, it is often the main character's flaw that is the driving force behind the series. When you resolve their flaw, you've resolved the series. 

Can you imagine if Dexter resolved his innate urge to kill serial killers. You'd have no show. 
Or if House wasn't an asshole, what kind of show would House be?

So the hero's journey is not applicable to the TV format the way it is to film.

This begs the question - what is the structure of TV?

Well firstly, for most pilots - there is the TEASER - a short opening hook that sets up the main player and conflict in the series. This is followed by four acts of roughly equal length. 

Each act is best served if it ends with a hook, or a cliffhanger to pull the viewer into the next act to find out what's going to happen. 

The one thing I've noticed with successful TV shows is that CONFLICT drives the story. 

TV structure breaks down to the scene level. If you have a scene that has no conflict, you're going to have a dull lifeless scene. Put too many of these back to back and you're going to have an unwatchable show. 

Doesn't matter what genre you're writing, if EVERY scene doesn't have conflict of some sort, your script will bomb.

Conflict is something that this script does really well. Almost every scene is loaded with conflict, and consequently, the story is compelling and pulls you along. 

STRUCTURE RATING: 8/10

THE TAKE AWAY: Inject conflict. Go through your script - be it TV or film - and if you have a scene that has NO CONFLICT - re-write it until it does. 

CHARACTERS/DIALOGUE

Again, this is another aspect of the script that is well executed. Every character here is unique, and well defined. 

Dialogue is fine, but I'd say this is the only part of this script that didn't pop. Every other part of this script was really well executed, above par, but the dialogue, while it feels well done, it's not as good as all the other aspects. 

There's a great dialogue test you can do. Remove all the character names from your script, then give it a read. If this were the first time you'd ever read the script, could you tell who was speaking simply by the way they're talking?

If you can't, then go through and look at working in a specific way for each character to speak. This is a fine line, as you don't want to inject too much eccentricity into your characters or they won't feel real. Just give them enough uniqueness to make them stand out from the others.

CHARACTERS/DIALOGUE RATING 8/10

THE TAKE AWAY: Characters are often defined by the way they speak. You have a great control over how the audience will perceive the characters by the way you make them talk. 

Are they fast witted? Are they reclusive and hence mumble? Do they say what they're thinking when really they should be discreet with their thoughts? Use the way your character speaks to define their personality  

VOICE:

This writer has a great voice. This comes from just how well executed the story is and just how well it is written. Voice is the sum of all the individual parts of your story. The stronger the parts - the stronger your voice.

PRODUCTION:

Relatively easy to shoot. Set in a small dessert town, with minor special effects. I can see this pilot going to series easily. 

OVERALL TAKE AWAY;

Work on your IDEA FIRST - until it pops. Until you can be sure you're working on something unique.

Secondly, work on your CHARACTERS until you have really well defined players.

Next work on your structure. Write it and re-write it in a basic form until you have every scene outlined.

Then and ONLY THEN start writing...

And when you do - make sure that EVERY SCENE has conflict and that EVERY SCENE starts as late as possible and ends as soon as possible.

AND don't ever write a character walking through a door, up a set of stairs, or driving up to a location UNLESS that action is used specifically to show us something about the character or to introduce conflict. 

AMC - LODGE 49 - TV pilot

LOGLINE:  A young knucklehead from Long Beach joins a dusty old fraternal lodge.

SCRIPT BIO: Pilot for AMC. Peter Ocko is show runner. Exec produced by Paul Giamatti.

STORY:

We meet Sean Dudley, the driving force behind Lodge 49 - as he finds a small 'gold' ring with a Lynx engraved in it on Long Beach, California.

We soon see that Dud, as he is known, is about as down on his luck as you can imagine. His father's swimming pool supply business that he inherited after his father's death hasn't turned a profit in years. His family home sold as a foreclosure, he doesn't actually have anywhere to live - he currently sleeps (illegally) in his former apartment - he only has a handful of change to his name.

Dud is a quitter, he never follows through on anything. 

Dud tries to sell that 'gold' ring to a pawn broker, but is told that it's not made of real gold, it's a membership ring for the fraternal order of the lynx.

Dud thinks nothing more of the ring, until a strange coincidence has his car run out of gas directly in front of the Lynx fraternity building. 

With no other life direction to follow, Dudley applies for membership at the Lynx fraternity. Here he meets Ernie - the second main player in this pilot. Ernie is about to step up into the  pole position at the Order of The Lynx, but Ernie is also in debt $2k to some ne'er-do-well. 

Ernie decides to dupe Dud into thinking there's a $2K admission fee for joining the fraternity. Dud takes a high interest loan from a pawn broker to get the $2k together, then joins the fraternity in the hope that contacts made there will help him get his life back on track. 

Dud feels there is a higher calling directing him to join the fraternity. That finding the fraternity ring and his car running out of gas outside the lodge were no mere coincidences, they have a higher meaning - he's just not quite sure what.

(Spoiler) When Ernie is appointed the highest order within the fraternity, he is granted access to an inner sanctum, a room where no other member may go. Here - in the closing hook of the pilot he sees a photograph of a previous high order member of the lynx from 1945 - the man in the photo is a doppelgänger for Dud.   

Da, da, daaaaaa

INITIAL REACTION:

There was a certain amount of bias on my behalf going into reading this script. It's being produced by AMC - so that means it HAS TO BE GOOD RIGHT?

I was reading it with eyes that knew some producers who have a great track record decided that this was good enough to pump money into. 

Had I come upon this script by chance, with no contextual knowledge of its attached talent, I don't think I would have given it as much leniency as I did.

See, there's a lot going wrong with this script even before I read the first word.

How's that you say?

How can you judge a script before you read a word?

Well, the answer to that is easy.... 

I just look at the page. I look at the formatting.

Now, in the world of screenwriting there are certain 'principles' that experienced writers follow. First time or relatively new writers eschew these 'principles' for a myriad of reasons.

The first thing the trained eye looks for is the black to white ratio on the page. If there is far more black than there is white, you know you're about to read an over-written script. 

When a script is over written, it's because the writer hasn't taken the time to take a 10 word sentence and write it in 7 words. They haven't taken the time to take a 50 word paragraph and write it in 30 words. 

You get the idea. 

Experienced writers work on their sentences - parring them back until they are as lean as possible yet still convey every ounce of nuance required to tell the scene.

Here - in Lodge 49 - there is a bad black to white ratio. And when I started reading - you guessed it - the writing was dense. 

Here's a really simple screen writing error made in the second sentence on the first page - he writes ' We see...' 

You should never write 'we see.' Just describe what we're seeing. Of course we see it. You're describing it aren't you? It's going to be filmed, then put on screen right? 

It's superfluous to write 'we see.' 

The writer is also guilty of a second rookie mistake - often he writes - 'Dud is running down the beach...' - or something like that.

This is a clunky way to write - Dud runs down the beach.

That's two really simple screenwriting mistakes very early on in the script. 

The second main problem I had with this script is the 'why should I stay watching? factor.'

For 60 pages we follow Dud around, seeing just how bad his life is and how hopeless he is at doing anything right.

There just wasn't enough to really engage me. 

Take Breaking Bad for instance. 

First of all it starts with an awesome hook. A cut ahead to the penultimate moment of the pilot - Walter White is in his underpants in a mobile meth lab in the dessert with what sounds like police coming for him. 

That is a huge hook. That makes me want to stay tuned to find out how the hell that happened!

Then compare that to the hook here - well technically there is no hook. Dud finds a gold ring on the beach. That's it. That's the hook, the mystery that's supposed to keep me glued to the screen for the next 45 minutes?

No sir, it's just not enough. 

Then look at the empathy in Breaking Bad - Walter White finds out he has terminal cancer in that first pilot - he figures out that he needs about $700k to see his family straight after his death. So he concocts a plan to cook meth and sell it to make sure he can leave money for his family. 

What's the goal in Lodge 49? 

Well, there is no goal. 

Dud ambles along for 60 pages, then finally joins the lodge because he's got nothing else going for him. 

It's just not enough to drive the story. 

This highlights the importance of GOALS and STAKES.

If your story doesn't have a CLEAR GOAL - your audience is going to get bored quickly. If there are no STAKES attached to the goal - then your audience isn't going to care weather or not your hero achieves their goal.

THE TAKE AWAY....

How to apply this to your script...

Firstly look at your script's MAIN GOAL. 

Identify it. 

And be honest. 

Lodge 49 - honestly - doesn't have a goal. There is no goal.

Someone might argue that Dud's goal is to 'better his life' - which would be a fair argument. But is that enough of a goal to drive a TV series?

To answer that question - you need to look at the STAKES - what happens if Dud fails at bettering his life. 

The answer is - not much really. He just keeps going about his squalid life as it is. 

So the stakes there are low.

Now - look at the stakes in Breaking Bad - if Walter fails to make the $700k before he dies- he leaves his wife and crippled son in a HUGE debt that would ruin their lives. 

That's a MASSIVE amount of stakes by comparison.

So back to your script - 

Identify your script's goal. 

Ask yourself honestly - is your script's main goal enough to drive the story?

If the answer is no. Then re-write until you have a strong main goal.

Then when you have that - look at your script on a scene by scene basis. Go into each scene and ask yourself - what is the micro-goal of this scene?

If your scene has NO GOAL - then re-write it until it has a goal. The goal can be as simple as getting to a shop in time to buy something important - but there needs to be a goal to the scene. 

If in the same scenario - the same character was on their way to the shop to buy something - but the shop is open 24 hours - there's no sense of urgency to the scene. 

That raises the importance of URGENCY. 

The film Transcendence - failed miserably to understand the importance of Urgency.

I'm not sure how long precisely, but I think that film was set over a 2-3 year period. 

2-3 years??? What the hell?

There's no urgency there what so ever. Just one of the million reasons that film failed.

In summary -- 

Look at the main goal in your film - then look at the scene by scene level goals - make sure that each scene has a micro goal - and that there is an urgency to the goals, and stakes attached to them. 



   

FAULTS - DARK DRAMEDY

LOGLINE: An expert on cults is hired by a mother and father to kidnap and deprogram their brain-washed daughter. He soon begins to suspect the parents may be more destructive than the cult he’s been hired to save her from.

WRITER: Riley Stearns

SCRIPT BIO: 19 votes on the 2013 blacklist. It has since been made into a film directed by the writer. This is Riley's first feature.  It has a 6.7 rating on IMDB. Metacritic has it on 70/100 and rotten tomatoes gives it a 90% rating.

Interesting to note this film didn't get a box office release yet and I imagine it won't. 

STORY:

Ansel Roth is a weird character to say the least. I think this character is the core reason this script placed so high on the 2013 blacklist - the blacklist is becoming more and more a celebration of the weird. If you go through the blacklist loglines of the last few years, you will find a large percentage of scripts dealing with cancer, and lead roles that are either mostly dislikable or straight out serial killers.

The story to this script is pretty straight forward - Ansel Roth is a 40 something professional deprogrammer - that is - a person who deals with people (mostly young adults) that have been brainwashed by cults. He takes them away from the cult - locks them in a room then spends 5 days deprogramming them.

This story is pretty much that - we first meet Ansel at a seminar he's giving where there's only a handful of people present. One of whom is a member of a family that Ansel worked for deprogramming a young lady. That same young lady killed herself - this man believes it is as a result of Ansel's deprogramming and he punches Ansel hard in the face. 

Ansel doesn't seem fazed by this - he takes the punch and moves on. At the same seminar a husband and wife approach Ansel and say that their daughter has been brain washed by a cult and that they dearly want him to kidnap her and deprogram her.

At first Ansel is reluctant - but being that he is in debt to his manager for the cost of all his self-help books he had printed on credit but has failed to sell, he decides to take the 'case'.

He then kidnaps Claire - a 19 year old lady - sequesters her in a remote motel and begins deprogramming her. 

As the logline suggests - what he discovers makes him question who is more dangerous - the cult or Claire's parents. 

DECONSTRUCTION:

The first thing that hit me as I was reading this - was how much I disliked Ansel. In fact, the first 18 pages are nothing but negative empathy. I wrote in my last post the importance of making the audience like your hero BEFORE showing us their flaw. 

The writer has done just that here. The entire first 5 pages of this script are devoted to showing Ansel run out on paying a food bill. He does it in a fashion that makes us hate him.

He's an asshole to the manager, he's an asshole to the waiter, he's just a plain asshole. 

Now what was the point in opening like this? I imagine the writer was trying to SHOW us that Ansel is down and out - he can't even afford a meal. But why convey that story point in a negative light. Why couldn't it have been written in a positive light? 

Here's an alternative - instead of having Ansel steal a lunch, then be abusive toward the manager and waiter of the diner, why not have him out the back of the restaurant, picking through the rubbish bin after scraps thrown away - then have a couple walk past and see him and recognise him 'hey, aren't you Ansel Roth, the author?' He denies it, as he's embarrassed, then when he's up on stage giving his presentation, that same couple are in the audience. In fact, that couple could BE the couple that come to ask him to deprogram their daughter. 

This way we have conveyed that he is down and out on his luck in a positive light - this execution of this character point is an example of passive empathy. Which is FAR better than ACTIVE NEGATIVE EMPATHY. 

Just for those that aren't 100% up to date on the 4 types of empathy --

ACTIVE POSITIVE EMPATHY is when the hero DOES something we like them for. They save someone, they run after the mugger, they whistle blow on the bad guy etc.... 

PASSIVE POSITIVE EMPATHY is when something bad happens to them and we feel sorry for them. 

Then there is ACTIVE NEGATIVE EMPATHY and PASSIVE NEGATIVE EMPATHY.

Active negative empathy is when the character actively does something we don't like them for. As in this instance, Ansel is an asshole to the waiter and the manager. 

PASSIVE NEGATIVE EMPATHY is when something bad is happening - and the hero chooses not to do anything about it. Say, your hero is watching someone being mugged and they don't try to stop it. We don't like them because they DIDN'T do something. 

The next 13 pages in this script are one active negative empathy beat after another.

When you don't have empathy for the hero in a story - there is no vicarious connection between the audience and the film. People will still watch, but that's all they're doing - is watching - they're not FEELING the film. We get feeling when we have a connection with the characters on screen. The first 18 pages of this script are spent alienating the reader/watcher. 

The first positive empathy beat comes in the form of a threat from a strong-man who threatens Ansel that he has 1 week to pay off his debt or he'll be beaten up. 

But even that is PASSIVE POSITIVE EMPATHY. What really gets the audience connected is ACTIVE POSITIVE EMPATHY. In fact - I don't recall ONE SINGLE beat of ACTIVE POSITIVE EMPATHY in the first 50 pages of this script. 

Ansel goes and kidnaps Claire - that's active - but is it positive? I would argue no. His intentions might be well placed - but forcibly kidnapping someone is never something that endears us to a person. 

OKAY....

Empathy beats aside - my next big problem with the first half of this script is...

EXPLAIN THEN HAPPENS

What does that mean? 

It's a beat in a film - where you have a character saying - 'Okay, this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to kidnap your daughter and take her to a motel where I'm going to deprogram her.'

Then after saying that - we spend the next 5 - 10 minutes watching - exactly that. There is nothing more boring than being told what's about to happen, then it playing out exactly as we were told it would. 

If you do have a character explain what's going to happen - then it's on YOU the writer to make sure that SOMETHING GOES WRONG. 

If you just have it play out as it was explained - then that's dull screen time. It's boring as hell.

This script is also guilty of TRAVEL TIME. 

Right after the kidnapping goes completely to plan... (boring) ... we then have a series of shots of Ansel driving for about 24 hours. 

It takes up almost a full page. That's 1 minute of screentime. Why do we need to see them driving for a minute?

Then, when they get to the motel, they have the problem of walking Claire from the van into the motel room without her causing any trouble. 

This was a great opportunity for something to go WRONG.

Nope - nothing went wrong - not really - Claire tried to walk away - but one of Anel's minders grabs her and forces her into the motel room without incident. 

So there was really no point to showing the kidnapping as NOTHING WENT WRONG.  

Then there was no reason to show the travel time of driving as NOTHING WENT WRONG.

Then there was no point in showing them get Claire into the room as - you guessed it - NOTHING WENT WRONG.

I'm not gong to break this script down completely like I have many other scripts. But I do want to look at another few aspects of where this script went wrong.

Next is ANSEL'S FLAW.

What is it?

He's down and out. That's not a flaw. That's a by-product of a flaw. What is it that's causing him to be down and out?

He's an asshole? Is that a flaw? Not really. Again, it's a by-product of a flaw. 

So to this end... I can't really see what Ansel's flaw is. When a hero doesn't have a clear flaw, it makes it harder for the audience to connect with them. 

When a hero doesn't have a clear flaw, there's no inner journey - the story becomes spectacle only. Surface level. 

Why is Ansel a deprogrammer? Wouldn't it have been more interesting if he went into this bizarre profession as he himself was once a victim of a cult? 

Remember in Jaws - the famous monologue from Quint about being on the USS Indianapolis that sank in the pacific. He spends days in the water, watching his buddies being eaten alive by sharks.

That made Quint's hatred of sharks personal. We understand what his flaw was. Why he was the way he was. When you understand WHY a person is flawed - you are far more likely to be forgiving toward their flaw. 

If someone is an asshole for a good reason, we forgive them. If someone if just a plain asshole, we dislike them.

Let's look at the goal here. 

What is the goal? Deprogram Claire. 

We are given a tentative timeline - one week - or Ansel will be beaten up - but we get the feeling Ansel doesn't really care if he's beaten up or not. He's kind of psychopathic like that. 

Let's look at the stakes of the goal. What happens to Ansel if he fails at de-programming Claire? Nothing really - he goes back to his normal life and he's been paid.

So there's zero stakes. 

IF - say - Ansel was really messed up BECAUSE he blamed himself for the suicide of the other girl that he tried to deprogram - and he reluctantly took on this case - not for the money - but for the opportunity to prove to himself he can succeed - then we have a great motivation for his flaw! And we also have great personal stakes. We - as the audience - are suddenly SOOOO much more invested in this story. 

If Ansel fails deprogramming her - then he is a failure. We can get behind that as a story line. 

As it stands - there's nothing personally invested for Ansel. He doesn't really want to do this deprogramming - he's really only in it for the money.

Okay -- so that's a lot of negative for this script - there is one ounce of goodness here...

This script is 90% contained in the motel room. That brings the production costs waaaaay down... which is a good thing. I had a look around but could not see a production budget for this film. I' going to guess less than $5m - and assume it was more likely around the $2-$3m mark. 

Looking at the setup of this film - the lack of empathy for Ansel, the lack of flaw, the lack of personal motivation for the hero - I can see why this film played well at film festivals - but then did not make any money at the box office. 

There's no big idea here - this script is a DRAMA - it's got darker elements - but it's definitely not a thriller and definitely not a horror. 

It could have been both a thriller and a horror if it had been executed differently. Look at Jason Blum's THE GIFT - that was a straight forward drama that was told as a thriller/horror. The dark/suspense elements of that drama were played up and it found an audience. 

Faults could have gone in that direction - but instead it chose the dark dramedy route (drama/comedy). 

Dark drama's almost never make money. And a dark dramedy is even less likely to make money.

So how to apply what we've learnt to your script?

Take a look at the moment you reveal your hero's flaw. Do you do it in a positive or negative way? If you do it in a negative way, re-write it until you can convey the point in a positive way - a way that makes us LIKE your hero despite their flaw.

Second tip: - personal investment. Look at your story. Is your hero PERSONALLY involved in the storyline? If not, then go through and re-write it until your hero has a personal reason to want to go on their journey. 

When your hero is personally invested - WE the audience will be personally invested. 

In the original draft of Jaws written by Peter Benchley - Quint had no personal reason for hating sharks. It was Spielberg who wrote that monologue about Quint going down with the USS Indianapolis, and the film is all the more powerful for it.