WAYNE'S WORLD 3 GoFundMe - How is this news?!

So this has been an interesting week. I'm about to tear into some really stupid behavior, but I feel like I have to own up to my part in it first.

This weekend I got an email from a reader, who linked me to a GoFundMe campaign by a gentleman seeking donations for an advertising campaign to promote his spec script through the use of billboards in L.A. This was a script he has spent 23 years trying to sell - WAYNE'S WORLD 3.

I will not be linking to that GoFundMe. After having read through it, I became convinced the person behind it was either an attention-seeker, a deeply naive individual who deserved neither attention nor public humiliation, or a brilliant piece of performance art. The campaign page included scans of all the rejection letters he'd gotten over 23 years, and revealed that he'd first tried to peddle only a synopsis for the film, having never written a screenplay until his first round of rejections.

Gang, we've talked before about writing specs for properties you don't control. I don't think I have anything new to add on the subject, but it is probably worth reading my old posts if you want a sense of how wrong-headed this is.

So with nothing new to glean from that, I didn't see much value in spotlighting a prankster nor making public ridicule of a guy who was the epitome of the clueless wannabe writer. Having said that, I did privately share the link to the page with several professional writers who have crossed paths with these sorts of dreamers before. One of those writers, Geoff LaTulippe, started discussing the campaign on Twitter. It provided the hive mind with about an hour or so of amusement, spawned a few running gags, but at the time there didn't seem to be much harm done.

By Monday afternoon, multiple sites that cover the industry had written stories about this GoFundMe. These include SlashFilm, Uproxx, Metro, Den of Geek and The Independent. I'm not linking to those sites either, because fuck those guys. This is empty content. We're talking about a crowdfunding campaign for a movie that (as most of those sites acknowledge in their story) will NEVER be made. There is ZERO journalistic value in writing about this.

None of the sites even bothered to draw comparisons between this and a similar recent campaign. Not long ago, a DIE HARD fan took out a full page ad in The Hollywood Reporter to pitch his idea for a new film in the DIE HARD series. There's something funny about the fact that no one ever takes this big a risk to promote their OWN original idea. It's always their effort to pitch on existing IP. Perhaps ironically, it's not unusual to see these guys complain about how they're taking such desperate measures because "Hollywood doesn't want original voices." Yes, and pitching a fifth sequel to a 30 year-old film establishes you as the King of Originality.

(The DIE HARD story has a post-script I hesitate to repeat for fear of encouraging copycats. Per The Guardian, the campaign drew the attention of Avi Lerner of Nu Image, producer of films like The Expendables and Olympus Has Fallen. The writer and his partner eventually had their screenplay optioned by Eclectic Pictures, which has a first-look deal with Lerner's company.)

With regard to WAYNE'S WORLD 3 though, at best, there's the point-and-laugh value of the story, and as I said, it feels a little mean to devote an entire story to that. None of the sites apparently attempted to contact the man behind the campaign to get any kind of real story. Nor do they give much context to the discussion of why people shouldn't spec properties they don't own. Honestly, Geoff's tweets from Sunday night - while mocking the silliest aspects of the campaign - were more educational than any of these write-ups.

I want to ask you, SlashFilm, Uproxx, et al... How is this news? There's an ironic line in the Slashfilm article where the writer says of WAYNE'S WORLD 3, "Honestly, there’s nothing about that which jumps out to me as a story that must be told." I'd apply that same statement to every article written about this.

I wrestled with the notion of even posting my own piece on this, but two facets struck me as valuable takeaways. First, seeing this go from a message in my inbox to coverage on a dozen sites in less than 24 hours was a real eye-opener in how fast something can spread despite being completely devoid of value as content. The second point, related to the first, is the incredibly clear demonstration that the editorial oversight of all of those outlets is either lacking in any understanding of the filmmaking process, or is desperate for anything that will get attention.

There's a lot of empty content on those sites, to the point where I'm not even sure they should be considered news anymore. They're blogs that aggregate any content that seems likely to get attention from their reader base. Part of being a reporter and an editor should be to sift through the noise to get to the signal. The only one of these sites I even used to read regularly at all was Slashfilm and I eventually had to walk away from that late last year when they were reposting seemingly every baseless "Fan Theory" about THE FORCE AWAKENS and its successor. That material isn't news. It belongs in the discussion in a comment section, or possibly in a writer's regular column.

If you want to be a news site, stop acting like a message board. If you MUST post something about this GoFundMe, maybe try chasing a real story there and interview the guy behind it. As someone working in the industry, it's embarrassing and frustrating to see it covered by people who cover it without any insight or regard at all.

This is a nothing story, but when they report on things like WGA arbitration, reshoots or post-production without any understanding of how the creative process works, it can actively hurt a film. This is how we get posts implying that a credited writer "stole" rightful credit from a beloved director and writer, or insinuations that J.J. Abrams was a terrible director because scenes were removed and shifted around in the post-production process. And don't get me started on the continuing insinuations that reshoots of any kind must mean that the film is terrible. Plenty of great films have benefited from additional photography and changes discovered in the editing room.

But I'm getting off on a different rant here. If you take nothing else from this post let it be to not do what this WAYNE'S WORLD 3 guy is doing, and to take a second look at how much non-news you're actually consuming on those sites.

Just because the making of a film was unique or difficult, it doesn't make it great

I'm trying to imagine a conversation of this kind taking place in 1975:

"Oh man, Spielberg has GOT to get Best Director for Jaws! It's just amazing what he accomplished!"

-"Really? The movie is that good?"

"You have no idea how hard it was to make this movie. Ended up costing them TWICE their original budget. The mechanical shark barely worked. There were days where they only got a few usuable shots, if any. I read it was supposed to be 55 days of shooting. They went like a hundred days over that. At one point, an entire boat sank and everyone almost drowned! Shooting on water, man.... it's a bitch."

-"...but how's the movie?"

Jaws is a fantastic movie. It's one of my favorite movies and it's also one of the most rewatchable films I've ever seen. If I run across it on cable, I will stop and watch the rest of it from that point forward. After 30-some viewings, Robert Shaw's tale of the U.S.S. Indianapolis is just as spell-binding as the first. Some of the dialogue still makes me laugh no matter how many times I hear it, and the performances and Spielberg's staging of them usually yields new appreciations with each viewing.

This is a movie that would be impressive on its own merits even if it had wrapped on schedule and on budget. (Yes, I'm aware that one bit of serendipity provided by the production troubles was that it forced Spielberg to be more "Hitchcockian" in how he featured the shark. Let's not go on that tangent.) If I was going to tell someone to watch Jaws, the production issues probably would not even factor into my sales pitch.

As of this writing, I have not seen THE REVENANT. From the time I saw the first trailer, it simply didn't look like a film that would appeal to me. From that point forward, anything I heard about the film was focused solely on how difficult the film was to make and how the director ran roughshod over his crew, subjecting them and his actors to extreme conditions.  This Yahoo News article is a good example of that press. It's an interview with star Leonardo DiCaprio and it's focused SOLELY on the behind-the-scenes factors. He's not asked one question about his character or the story. Instead, Leo tells us about the freezing cold and the constant risk of hypothermia.

I've held off on seeing the film because I wanted to wait for a point when watching it didn't feel like homework, when it wasn't an "eat your vegetables" experience. And yet, it remains a story I have no itch to see because all I know about the narrative is what was shown in the trailer. The fact I've heard nothing about narrative or the characters makes me wonder if the film has anything to offer me. (Two examples where such endorsement DID land a film on my radar were Brooklyn and The Stanford Prison Experiment, and to a lesser extant, The Gift.)

With buzz around the films that debuted at the latest Sundance Film Festival, I couldn't help but think back to three years ago when all the chatter out of Park City was about Escape From Tomorrow. The film became a must-see as word spread of its unique production - shot covertly at the Disney Parks, with the actors and film crew posing as tourists. The combination of the sheer balls involved to mount that production and the likely legal apocalypse that awaited the filmmakers made this a daring film that cinephiles felt they had to see.

And then they did.

EOT was no Jaws, I can tell you that. The performances were... inconsistent. I don't think the script ever quite finds its groove and there's an uncomfortable subplot about the family patriarch lusting after some 14 year-old tourists. I can't bring myself to call it a "bad" film, but man is it one you're not likely to feel the urge to revisit. The story it tells cannot prevail over the story of its making.

I recall the disappointment of another then-daring film, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. It was one of the first films shot entirely on blue and green screen soundstages, with the sets and backgrounds added via CGI later. With a structure influenced by the old serials of the 40s, and production design descended from sci-fi of that era (and to my eye, the Fleischer Superman cartoons). It was a first-time director who got a shot at making a film in a revolutionary way.

Try watching it now, over a decade later. Stripped of the novelty it achieved by being the first of its kind, the CGI looks less impressive, the pacing drags and... well, there's no way around it... Jude Law just doesn't have the kind of presence needed for what should be an adventurer. I'll concede that 40 years shows a few seams in the mechanical shark, but the entire film is so well-built that you don't care. Sky Captain, by contrast, simply evaporates from your mind soon after you've seen it.

No matter how much new ground you break technologically, no matter how much an ordeal your production was, there will eventually come a time when your film will stand on nothing more than its story. 3D novelties become common place, visual effects developments go from eye-popping money shots to appearing in every third soda commercial, and all of these trappings eventually mean nothing.

Keep that in mind when you write. No matter how you or the director think you will blow mind by shooting a film entirely in one take, or by doing everything motion capture, in the final analysis, none of that shit matters beyond how it informs the story.

I'd aim this especially at anyone directing their own script or short film - don't fall in love with all your bells and whistles. Eventually no one's gonna give a shit HOW you did it and they're just going to want to be entertained. Do you want a participation trophy, or do you want to make a film that will touch people 40 years later?

How does a reader keep from being too harsh?

I can't believe I missed it, but the 7th anniversary of this blog was just over a week ago. Time flies, especially when life is so busy.  Very sorry about the scarcity of posts on this site for a while. As I've said, it's a combination of life being busy and of me having tackled a lot of tops over the last seven years.

I got an email recently from Eva that I felt merited some attention:

I've been reading for the French film industry for 7 years now (production and distribution companies, talent agencies, and sometimes worked directly with authors), and I know I can be a tough bitch on the analysis and try to "babyproof" everything (a lot of money is involved in producing a film, but I'm sure you don't need a reminder). It wasn't such a bad issue working with producers. But I lately started to read for the Script Department of a distribution company that wants to get involved in development. And the head of development keeps telling me I'm too harsh even though he thinks I have good ideas (I mean I've only read two scripts for them so far - one I brushed off because of a repetitive and non-evolving structure and the other that I considered could be ok with some rewriting - and two drafts of a treatment).

And the thing is I know I tend to be some sort of purist when it comes to story writing but when I see patterns that don't match or a story that is being forced into an arbitrary frame, it kind of drives me nuts. Even though I always explain, with examples, why I think a script is weak, I still feel that I set the bar too high. Tell me I'm not crazy and that you get that feeling too... Because I sometimes wonder if I have too much hope in people willing to make not even great but at least good movies, or if "carelessness" is just a new trend.

How do you manage this kind of situation? And how do you adjust your reports depending on the company you work for? Because I feel that the guy I just started to work for always needs to be reassured a lot. Do you sometimes question your opinion on a script? Because I often fear I'm being too harsh and I could have missed something. 

Ah, when to be too harsh. I was pretty fortunate in how I came up. The first production company I worked for really only wanted two paragraphs of written coverage. When you're forced to be that sparse, it becomes easy to avoid beating a dead horse too harshly. Even then, every now and then one of the VPs might tell me that a particular word for phrase seemed needlessly harsh, and I'd adjust. (More often than not, the gratuitous harshness was the result of my trying to be clever, or at least an attempt to amuse myself.)

The bottom line is: I had room to learn the difference between being blunt and between being mean. And we're talking about a job where 80% of what I read was an easy pass. Fortunately, as this was just internal coverage, I was free to be as direct as I wanted in calling something awful.

And even then, I still needed a little tempering. When I went to read for one of the "Big 5" agencies, their coverage structure was more strict and called for more diplomacy. After all, you never knew when a script you panned would later end up getting a client attached to it (happened often), or if the writer would end up repped at the agency (also happened.)

The best advice about writing criticism in general is to write it like the person responsible for that work will read it. Imagine them reading it. Better still, imagine them reading it and then ending up sitting across from you at a social gathering. There are movies I've trashed where I'll totally stand behind my harshest words. If the writer created something vile or misogynist, I won't shrink from that assessment when confronted. You'll find your most fair and honest criticism is the easiest to stand behind.

Your cheap shots - not so much. (Though even then, you'll occasionally come across a writer or director so full of themselves that they're practically begging to be deflated.)

I wouldn't worry about setting the bar too high. Finding something worth of production (or distribution) is incredibly rare. You're there to be the yardstick for people sinking their money into films. If you were writing coverage for the writers, trying to help them refine their work into something people want, then I might tell you to ease up and make more effort to be constructive.

I think your boss wants to just make sure that you're an objective enough person that don't fall into the habit of reading scripts to find what's wrong with them. You might try making a point of recognizing the good, or at least calling out the attempts. That would give the review a little more balance, and show that you're smart about understanding why something isn't working.

Do I sometimes question my opinion on a script? Not often. It's more likely to happen when the script is mediocre than if it's really good or aggressively bad. You'll get scripts that don't seem to do anything wrong, but also leave you completely apathetic. That's where you point out the good, but also note that much of it left you uncompelled.

I had this happen with a script at the first company I worked at. It was a cool concept, but the script itself wasn't just dry, it was arid. I could not see the movie there. The tension was non-existent, the visual moments were few and far between and the pacing was slow.

I have never been more wrong about a script. A year later the movie was done and the director had found all those moments that weren't there on the page. He cast the right actors. He shot it the right way. He tightened the pace. In a good script you'll get a sense of these elements, but when they're gone you really feel their absence.

As a reader, you can only make the call based on what's in front of you. It's not a challenge unique to that job. People who actually have to put money into these scripts face the same crucible with a lot higher stakes. The biggest thing you have to temper as a reader is not falling victim to your own cleverness. That's where you make most of your unforced errors.

Short takes on: Streaming, TV shows, Bad movies, Oscars, etc.

A bunch of short-takes on opinions and observations I don't have much inclination to write up as a full blog:

- Only a month after the release of THE FORCE AWAKENS and I'm already fed up with speculation and "theories" about what will be revealed in EPISODE VIII. I'm especially fatigued of the theory that Rey was a Jedi padawan at Luke's Academy when Ben went rouge. The suggestion is that she got training there (thus "explaining" her adeptness with the Force) and then had her memory erased before being sent into hiding. I think it's unnecessarily complicated and rests on some shaky evidence, but mostly I'm just annoyed with how universally this has been accepted as the "obvious" reveal. I'm looking forward to seeing it proven wrong.

- I haven't blogged or even tweeted about it much lately, but THE FLASH and THE GOLDBERGS continue to do excellent work each week and remain two of the shows I anticipate most eagerly. SUPERGIRL also remains pretty great. The flying wirework is amazing, and while there's still a kink or two to be worked out in the show, it's not afraid to be fun. I like a superhero show that doesn't think earnestness is a dirty word. I like that it's even more all-ages appropriate than THE FLASH.

- I still haven't figured out where I stand on DAREDEVIL vs. JESSICA JONES. I feel like JJ hit higher heights, but also lower lows. At times, I definitely felt like both shows bathed in so much unrelenting darkness that I could only watch an episode or two before needing a break. I do hope that both shows find a little more restraint and balance in season 2. Streaming gives license to be as brutal as they want to be, but the JJ episode "A Thousand Cuts" had a lot of brutality that just seemed to be showing off "Look how violent we can be since we're streaming." Kilgrave making people do horrible things to themselves was effectively creepy at first but this ep (and the later scene where a gentleman gets two arms cut off) went a long way towards alienating me from the show. I'm ready for them to explore a new story in that universe next season.

- I also still don't understand what most of you saw in SICARIO, not even after reading several reviews. I felt like it had a great opening, and fell into some blah character work as the focus shifted from Blunt's character to Del Toro's. Every year there's at least one critical darling that has me scratching my head and saying "Really?" This seems to be this year's.

- Okay, I didn't like KINGSMEN either, but I can accept that as a "Shut off your brain and enjoy the ride."

- There are some critical duds I seek out just to see if my opinion swims against the tide. It didn't really happen this year. FANTASTIC FOUR, BLACKHAT, and THE VISIT were among those that were pretty fairly maligned. THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. was more fun than the buzz suggested, though.

- My take on the Oscars: CREED was robbed. That's even more egregious to me than STRAIGHT OUTTA COMPTON being overlooked. It's easy to say that screeners would have really boosted CREED, and maybe that's true, but COMPTON had screeners sent out to little effect. You can blame the aging out-of-touch Academy voters and probably be right in using that to contend that race played at least some part in those films being overlooked.

- Fun movies that didn't make my Top 20: THE DUFF - a sharp teen comedy better than the trailer suggested; THE FINAL GIRLS - a send-up of slasher films that worked because of a strong emotional core; TIMELAPSE - a clever ultra-low-budget time-travel thriller; and UNFRIENDED - a smartly executed horror film that takes place entirely from the POV of a laptop screen as friends are stalked and taunted online during a video chat.

- If you get a chance, binge THE 100 on Netflix and catch the third season when it premieres this week on the CW. Might be that network's darkest, most mature show to date, and I mean that in terms of themes and moral choices as much as violence. It's the one CW show that feels like it really belongs on cable.

- Bringing up THE 100 reminds me of another thought - TV 'shippers have ruined TV fandom. Sad that we have a direct pipeline to writers and creators and a vocal and aggressive aspect of fandom uses that mostly to scream about which characters they want paired with each other and attacking every pairing that threatens that. Occasionally a showrunner for a series with this kind of following replies to me on Twitter and the next several days my mentions get hit with shippers replying to that tweet just to lobby for their particular hobby horse. It sad when these groups attack each other, and it's infuriating to watch them attack the writers for not making a show that matches the way THEY feel it needs to be done. Let's all try for fewer online death threats in 2016, okay?

My Top Ten Films of 2015

Let's get right to it. Here's my Top Ten films from last year. You can find 11-20 here.

1. Creed - The best movie of the year. It's amazing that what's essentially the seventh film in a series can feel so fresh, even as it's constructed on the bones of the original film. Rocky Balboa himself got a fantastic, feel-good send-off in his previous eponymous outing. I was concerned that bringing him back again could only ruin that. Seeing him become a mentor to Apollo Creed's son justifies that risk. From acting to writing to directing, this movie fires on all cylinders. It manages the neat trick of feeling like a Rocky film for the old-timers, and a Creed film with a wizened mentor for the young 'uns. This movie wouldn't work if we didn't care about Creed, and Ryan Coogler and co-writer Aaron Covington have created a new lead so engaging that (as with THE FORCE AWAKENS) longtime fans won't be checking their watches waiting for the next time Stallone shows up.

2. The Martian - Matt Damon plays an astronaut named Mark Watney who's presumed dead when his flight crew has to evacuate Mars in the middle of a storm. As it turns out, he's very much alive and can't expect another mission to rescue him for four years. Oh, and there's the small matter of how he doesn't have a direct communication line to NASA to tell them he's still alive in the first place. On top of that, his rations will run out well before any rescue, which means he has to somehow figure out a way to grow crops on a planet with no oxygen. It's stirring to see these people given an unsolvable puzzle - one that's fleshed out from several angles - and then figure out an equally complex solution. There are so many variables to every possible course of action, which makes the obstacles feel real and not just convenient roadblocks to be hurdled. I said in my original review that this is the kind of film that screenwriting classes will study and I still stand by that.

3. Spotlight - In some ways, this is little more than a procedural set within a newspaper. It's plot-driven, based on the true story of The Boston Globe's expose on sex abuse by members of the clergy in the Boston area. Since it's not character-driven, that means the script needs a more subtle hand in developing its characters. Michael Keaton gives a less showy performance than in last year's BIRDMAN, but it's at least as interesting. (Roger Ebert once rhapsodized about how a mark of good acting was watching an actor "think." You can see Keaton "thinking" at several points here.) Screenwriting homework: Study the build-up to Stanley Tucci's entrance if you're looking for a way to build anticipation for a character's arrival. Most of all, I love this film because it's a tribute to the kind of journalism we see too little of these days in real life.

4. Love & Mercy - I don't know who I'm more in awe of, Paul Dano or John Cusack, both of whom channel Brian Wilson at two key stages in his life. This might be my favorite Cusack performance since BEING JOHN MALKOVICH and he absolutely captures Wilson's essence despite not looking much like him. Dano IS a dead ringer for younger Wilson and is completely captivating. Forget the stories about all the people THE REVENANT almost killed, the real "that's insanely amazing" behind the scenes story is how LOVE & MERCY dressed real session players in period clothing and just turned Paul Dano loose in-character, shooting the scene documentary-style as he ad-libbed based on what he knew of Wilson. There's not enough space in this capsule review to get into all the reasons I loved this film, but I want to make mention of Paul Giamatti's depiction of the controlling Dr. Eugene Landy. I don't know if he's ever been scarier. It's a shame that none of these three men (or Elizabeth Banks, who's also quite good) seem to have much Oscar buzz behind them this year.

5. Mad Max: Fury Road - MAD MAX: FURY ROAD is a helluva ride. That's really all you need to know because this is one of those rare films where it's more of an experience rather than a two-hour photoplay. Gravity might be the only release in recent history to compare, being a film that's seemingly light on story and plot but still incredibly powerful and evocative. There's merit in comparing this film to the action orgys of the Transformers/Battleship school of filmmaking. Why does one seemingly require the viewer to force themselves not to examine the film too closely while the other effortlessly earns the audiences emotional investment? "Battleformers" is a sort of movie where the action eventually becomes boring as its assault on our senses eventually leaves us numb. Chicago and Beijing are nearly reduced to rubble throughout those films and while MAD MAX's violence never even threatens a city. Yet the viewer cares more for the half-dozen good-guys in the later than they do for any victims in the former. It's not about the size of the target. It's about the audience's connection to the target.

6. Star Wars: The Force Awakens - This was my favorite film of the year. Somehow, it managed to be even more powerful on the second viewing where all the emotional beats hit even harder. I don't hate the prequels the way many fans of the original trilogy do, but if J.J. Abrams and Lawrence Kasdan had screwed this one up, it would be a lot harder to forgive. Yes, it has maybe a few too many callbacks to A NEW HOPE, and coincidence moves along the plot more times than necessary, but movies aren't entirely intellectual exercises. The moviegoing experience can be as much about how a movie makes you feel than about the mechanics - and this movie made me feel like a kid again. I can over look a few nitpicks for that. (spoiler-free review here.)

7. Inside Out  - Speaking of how movies make you feel... this movie. What could have just been a fun romp inside the subconscious of a pre-teen is made more resonant by a willingness to dive headfirst into real emotions. Imaginary friend Bing Bong could have been a simple jester character, but instead there's poignancy in how he's been long forgotten, especially with his eventual fate. Lest things get too serious, some of the other emotional avatars are always ready with a joke (Lewis Black as Anger is particularly adept at stealing scenes.) But maybe the main writing lesson to take from this is how the easy way to write this would have just been a quest to get the missing memories. The writers' efforts at keeping everything tied to emotion, both inside and outside Riley's head, gives the film a depth many childrens' cartoons lack - while still meeting those young minds on their level.

8. Ex Machina - I've got a weakness for these sorts of smaller, limited-location, character driven films. A programmer named Caleb is asked to spend a week at the home of his CEO, who wants him to interact with the artificial intelligence he's developed, housed in the android body of a young woman. The programmer is there to provide a Turing test, which is a way of evaluating if a machine's behavior is indistinguishable from real human behavior. It's not long before Caleb appears to be a pawn, with the man question being, "Who's really manipulating him, and to what end?"

9. Batkid Begins - This is one of those films that will renew your faith in humanity. You probably remember two years ago when the Make-A-Wish Foundation helped turn San Francisco into Gotham City so 5 year-old leukema patient Miles could play "Batkid." Guided around by an actor dressed as Batman, Miles saved a sports mascot from The Penguin, foiled a bank robbery by the Riddler and took on a few other villains. This is the story of that massive good deed and all the people who worked to make it happen. You'll want to nominate Make-A-Wish Executive Director Patricia Wilson for sainthood after you see how she pulled together all these resources to give this kid a special day. Just as moving is seeing the good will of all the spectators, the people who were there just because they wanted to be a part of something good.

10. Faults - Summing up Riley Stearns's feature debut, FAULTS, without blowing too many details that are best left discovered for oneself is a tricky prospect. What I can tell you is what it displays an abundance of from its writer/director: confidence. I'm a sucker for these sorts of "two-characters-stuck-in-a-room-together" thrillers when done right and cults have always been a particular fascination for me, so this is about as tailor-made for me as an indie movie gets. If you're tempted to think that a film centered largely on two actors in one room is an "idiot proof" prospect for a director, you need to realize there are probably about fifty ways FAULTS could have gone wrong, even with it starting from an incredibly solid script. Leland Orser and Mary Elizabeth Winstead also give very strong performances in this very unique, funny and unusual thriller.

My top 20 films for 2015

So we again come to my Top 20 films for last year. Today we'll cover 11-20, with the Top 10 revealed tomorrow. I saw just shy of 60 movies from last year, so there are going to be some I haven't seen yet. ROOM is the one I most regret missing, along with BRIDGE OF SPIES. I also have yet to see JOY, TRUMBO, and THE REVENANT, but everything I've heard about those suggests that they probably wouldn't have entered my Top 20.

I missed others, but I suspect those are the ones people will bring up. As these are capsule reviews, I'll refrain from major spoilers.

11. The Stanford Prison Experiment - I'd been hearing big things about this one since Sundance last year. This is a college psych experiment gone horribly wrong... or perhaps more right than its originator, Professor Zimbardo had ever dreamed. 24 student volunteers are gathered, with half of them spending two weeks as prison guards and half of them spending two weeks as their prisoners. It takes shockingly little time for the guards to become abusive in their power, and it's just as disconcerting when the prisoners submit nearly as fast. In particular, I like the relatively subtle way we're shown that Zimbardo is as equally corrupted by his own authority in the experiment as his "guards."

12. Me And Earl and the Dying Girl - The story of a young man who's forced to give comfort to a classmate suffering from leukemia. As the film reminds us (perhaps too often), this is not the feel-good "Hollywood" version of the story. Romance doesn't blossom between Greg and the ailing Rachel. Indeed, Rachel - played by the wonderful Olivia Cooke - is allowed to be a bit more of a raw nerve than these stories cast their cancer patients as. I liked The Fault in Our Stars, but this is very much the anti-Fault, the less romanticized version of the story. I can see the argument that the film at times is a little too cute with its own meta-ness (a subplot has Greg and Earl making a film), but the ending pulls it back from that brink. I think I appreciated the film more than I loved it, but it's still a wonderful piece of work.
 
13. The Gift - I nearly wrote this one off from the trailers as just another stalker thriller. Fortunately there were enough rumblings about this being a very compelling script that I saw the movie before the big twists were blown for me. What elevates this thriller is the careful character work and the subtle performances. Joel Edgerton (who also directs from his own screenplay here) plays his role very finely on the line where he might be dangerous or he might just be a little "awkward." For a while, it seems like we might be in for a darker version of What About Bob. Bit by bit, we start seeing other shadings to Jason Bateman's character and by the time the big twists arrive, the character work elevates those moments above being mere shock value.

14. Straight Outta Compton - I'll confess I don't have much knowldege of hip-hop, particularly the era documented here. Thus, the story behind the early days of Ice Cube, Dr. Dre and Easy-E didn't hold much compelling interest for me as a reason to see the film. Still, I found myself pulled into this story, particularly with what it has to say about the relationship between the police and the black community. It feels relevant now in the wake of a number of recently documented police abuses, and then you realize it was relevant when it was shot, just around the time of Ferguson. Then sadly you realize there's probably no point between now and the time the film documents where there wasn't racial tension between the black community and the police, spurred on by a possible law enforcement overreach. Sadly, the lack of accountability in the Tamir Rice shooting indicates that this film will remain relevant for many, many years to come.

15. The Nightmare - Horror films never really scare me, but you know what gets under my skin? Paranormal "documentaries." When I was a kid, the Time-Life commercials for Mysteries of the Unknown were probably the most unsettling thing I'd ever seen. The Nightmare is cut from the same cloth, a documentary about sleep paralysis and the utterly terrifying hallucinations and experiences it subjects people to.
 
16. Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films - For what's largely a "talking heads" documentary, this look at the work of schlockmeisters Menahem Golan and his partner Yoram Globus is endlessly entertaining. At one point, these men were producing nearly 50 films a year, most of them incomprehensible. Most of the earlier years is dominated by exploitation flicks just shy of soft core porn, but later they tried to make inroads into respectability by making MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE and SUPERMAN IV. The best part of the documentary tends to be the many, many tall tales, from numerous imitations of Golan, to one collaborator noting "We didn't make films for the audience. If you came to our films, they were something to be suffered through."

17. The Big Short - If this movie doesn't make you angry, then you didn't pay close enough attention. Adam McKay's film follows three teams of people who stumble onto a disturbing truth in the early 2000s - the housing market is built with a foundation of quicksand. Not only that, but the collapse is inevitable, imminent, and they can make a LOT of money betting against the market. We didn't really need another reminder that banks are scum and some really terrible people need to be in jail rather than still walking the streets... or did we? It's a shame that films like this can't spur on real change in the system. It's an excellent argument for capital punishment in white collar crime. Call me for the Hank Paulson perp walk.

18. Spy - I haven't always enjoyed Melissa McCarthy's comedies. In fact, I think she's often better used as a supporting character, as her characters wear out their welcome when they monopolize the screentime. Spy is an exception, perhaps in part because she's given other strong personalities to play off.  Jason Statham steals several scenes, showing a flair for comic timing no one would have suspected. The film impressively finds laughs in what seems like overdone territory - spoofing James Bond films. Actually, forget it being a spoof - it might actually be a BETTER Bond film than this year's offering, SPECTRE.

19. Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation - I didn't love it as much as I loved the previous outing, Ghost Protocol, but if every action film was as committed to interesting set pieces, generating tension and just doing "cool shit" the way the MI series has gone, we'd be in good shape. There's a showmanship to this film that helps smooth out the rough patches that crop up now and then. Both this film and SPECTRE did a little bit of naval gazing into their own past with this year's offerings. The difference is that SPECTRE thought that this sort of inside baseball was what we were paying to see. The opera sequence alone is better than the entirety of SPECTRE, and if we're comparing female leads, Rebecca Ferguson wipes the floor with anything Bond has had to offer in a while, save for Dame Judi Dench.

20. Man Up - It's been way too long since we've had a really great romantic comedy and Man Up excels because it starts with one of my least favorite rom-com conventions (a romance starts with an implausible and inevitably discovered lie solely so its reveal can generate tension) and then just when we think we're ahead of the film, it pops that tension far ahead of schedule. Lake Bell and Simon Pegg also have real chemistry as two older people who feel like complete characters rather than an assemblage of quirks. I'm tempted to call this an anti-rom-com.

A conversation with Franklin Leonard about all things Black List: podcasts, live readings, website

Last month the annual Black List was released, compiling the "most liked" unproduced scripts of the year for the 11th year in a row. The dawn of a new year seemed like a good chance to check in with Black List founder and CEO for an update on all aspects of the Black List empire, including the Live Readings, the Black List Table Reads podcast and the website. 

We also touch on the yearly list, and the fact that for the last two years, the #1 script on that annual survey has been a discovery from the Black List website.

So you've had a busy year! Let's start with the Black List Live Reads - You staged four readings in LA and two in New York, and speaking as an LA attendee, attendance is nearly sold out, if not completely sold out. Are you surprised by how popular they continue to be?

I’m very excited by how popular they’ve come to be, but I can’t honestly say I’m surprised. The first live reading we ever did was Maggie Carey’s The Hand Job (released as The To Do List) at the Austin Film Festival years ago. It was sold out and utterly hilarious. Between that and Jason Reitman’s Live Reads with Film Independent, I knew there was an appetite for them, and when you take the best screenplays the industry hasn’t yet made and you put great actors onstage performing them, it’s a pretty good proposition for a Saturday night.

Has that made it easier to cast the parts and get approval to use particular scripts?

I think it certainly helps, but honestly a tremendous amount of the credit on the casting goes to Lisa Zagoria, our casting director, and Megan Halpern, the Black List’s Events Director.

Are you at the point where people are lobbying you, "Hey I want to be in one of these?"

We have had a few folks reach out and ask to participate and when they do, we certainly make an effort to figure it out (and if anyone wants to participate, by all means, get in touch.)

Funny thing about that question: the idea for the Black List Table Reads podcast actually began because of such a call from Paul Scheer’s reps. I had been listening to How Did This Get Made religiously for weeks when it came in and between that and the regular tweets from folks who wanted the live reads to be streamed online, it seemed like an obvious extension of what we were already doing.

At each Live Read, you take care to remind every one that this is really the writer's night, but there's no way anything like this would be going on if it weren't for you and the Black List staff. Is there an aspect of the Live Reads that you're most proud of?

Probably that it actually is the writer’s night. It’s not really something that happens anywhere else in Hollywood. We – and by we I mean me, the entire Black List team, especially Megan, and everyone else involved in putting them on – really make a point of following the writer’s lead on how they want to see their script executed and making sure that they’re the star of the show on the night.

What would you say are the most difficult aspects of pulling off these live reads are?

In all fairness, I think Megan’s probably the right person to answer this question, but from my point of view, it’s probably the number of moving parts that go into pulling this off. I know you’ve been to a few of these at this point so you know that there’s a lot that could go wrong, and with the exception of a late start at the first and third due to some audio issues, we’ve managed to avoid any major or even minor issues.

After two reads - GIFTED and CARTOON GIRL - that were stolen by some very young actors, we joked that a future live read should have a cast entirely of child actors. In all seriousness, after staging so many successful readings in the last eighteen months, do you have an itch to take a few more risks with the format? Or to pick the kind of script you might not have selected while you were still building the audience?

At the risk of being a bit coy, suffice it to say that the success that we’ve had thus far has made us quite a bit more ambitious for 2016. Rest assured you’ll see some stuff in 2016 that we wouldn’t have thought to attempt in 2015.

Moving on to the Podcast, there have been some changes for season two. Specifically, you're not serializing the table read podcasts anymore. What sort of feedback did you get from season one?

The feedback from season one was universally positive with one great exception. Audiences hated the fact that they’d get thirty minutes into a script and then have to wait a week to find out what happens next. They were loud and clear about that, and we couldn’t help but listen. Honestly, I’m really proud of how we responded, and the feedback on Season 2 reflects the good work that the entire team has done. Being named one of iTunes best podcasts of 2015 and the Guardian’s best podcasts that isn’t Serial is frankly beyond my wildest dreams this early in the process.

Knowing the numbers geek that you are, I'm sure you've poured over all the download data from the first season and tried to learn what you can from it. Who is the audience for the Black List Table Reads? Do you have any sense that a notable percentage of your listeners are coming to you through Earwolf's audience and not necessarily the sort of aspiring writers who are already active in the Screenwriting blogosphere/Twittersphere? Or to put it another way, does it feel like the podcast is reaching an audience that was completely unaware of the yearly Black List up to this point?

This is a tough question for me to answer, because we actually don’t yet have data rich enough for me to analyze, though obviously I’m looking forward to it greatly. Anecdotally, based primarily on the social media response to the podcast, we’re definitely reaching beyond the audience that is aware of and has professional use for the annual Black List or our website. I imagine it would be hard for us to be ranked as highly as we are on the iTunes charts if we weren’t.

Are there plans for any episodes that might be drawn from the Black List website as opposed to the yearly list?

To date, all but one of the scripts for the podcast have been taken from the site, and that one exception was our debut script BALLS OUT. We chose that one because it was the first ever script to make the jump from the internet to the annual Black List (which was symbolic of what we wanted to do with the podcast) and because it fit well with the Earwolf/Wolfpop brand and talent relationships.

What sort of criteria do you look for when selecting something for the podcast?

Very simply, we’re looking for scripts that have the highest ratings on the site with a particular eye toward high ratings for dialogue, for probably obvious reasons.

Regarding the website, is there any sense that the "new toy" aspect might have worn off in terms of it being a useful scouting tool for reps and producers? It's been a long time since your last data drop.

It has been a long time since a massive data drop but look for that to be remedied in the first half of 2016.

Short answer: no, I don’t worry much about new toy dynamics with the Black List, because we continue to deliver on the promise of enabling great storytelling by changing the way things have been done historically.

After three years, do you have a bigger picture of the kinds of success stories the site can facilitate? Are unknowns still able to get traction there?

In the last year alone, five films have been produced based on screenplays discovered via the website including NIGHTINGALE, which was nominated for two Emmys and a Golden Globe, and ZINZANA, an Arabic language genre film that played the London Film Festival and Fantastic Fest based on a English language screenplay by a husband and wife from my home state of Georgia.

Possibly the most remarkable thing though – and this I was only made aware of days after the 2015 list came out so maybe we can make some news here – the last two #1 scripts on the Black List have come from writers discovered by their representatives because of the Black List website.

Kristina Lauren Anderson based on CATHERINE THE GREAT (which topped the 2014 Black List after a strong showing on the site) and FOREVER JIAYING (which will be movie number seven in this season of the podcast). Isaac Adamson based on a script that preceded BUBBLES, which topped the 2015 list.

As we go into 2016, what place does the site have in the industry?

I think we’re still in the very early stages of being a hyper-efficient marketplace where writers of great work can have their work discovered by people who can do something with it, and folks looking for good material can find exactly what they’re looking for much more efficiently than anywhere else.

Do you have any data on how many industry pros are coming to the site on their own, versus only arriving there in response to an alert email?

We don’t have numbers on the percentage of industry members who arrive to the site because of alert emails, and I’m not sure I’d trust those numbers even if we did have them because folks could receive an email, login without clicking the link, and then go in search of a script mentioned in the email (I know I do sometimes.)

I think the best indicator of industry pro activity on the site might be the number of unique downloads we’ve seen over the life of the site, more than 42,000, and the average number of downloads scripts receive with high scores of 10, 9, 8, and 7: 61.4, 35.9, 15.5, and 2.8 respectively.

Is it harder to get noticed on the site now than it was in late 2012, early 2013?

Probably, but only because more writers (and I suspect more experienced writers) are using the site than did in the early days before there were success stories like the ones we now have. I think you see this in the numbers as well. The average number of downloads for scripts with a high score of 7 has gone down since our first annual report while the average number of downloads for a script with a high score of 8 has gone up slightly (3.3%) and the number of downloads for a script with a high score of 9 has gone up dramatically (43%)

After over a decade of seeing stories of all kind land on the list alongside each other, were there any scripts on there this year that completely surprised you? (And here I'm speaking of an idea that seemed so original that you can't believe it had never been done before, not in a "How did THAT get on the List" sort of way.)


I think I’m still surprised when two scripts about the same subject matter make the list. This year it was the making of The Godfather. Two years ago it was the making of Jaws.

It’s also quite strange to see my “write an inflection-point biopic about someone who folks between the ages of 25-45 feel some sort of nostalgia” advice continue to be quite so on the mark.

The Black List brand encompasses so much now, as this interview demonstrates. Is there ever a point where you worry about taking on too much? You and your staff make it look easy, but the lack of competition suggests it's not at all effortless to manage a yearly list, multiple live readings, a podcast, and your Screenwriting Workshops.

We have a team of five (plus our readers):

· Me
· Dino Sijamic, my co-founder and CTO
· Terry Huang, our Director of Product and Data
· Megan Halpern, our Director of Events
· Kate Hagen, our Director of Community 

And special mention goes to Scott Myers, whose blog Go Into the Story is the official screenwriting blog of the Black List and is frankly required reading in my mind.

Suffice it to say that we’re enormously proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish thus far, but we’re just getting started.

What have you learned from that success that could make a good life lesson for anyone who aspires to build something that covers as much scope as The Black List does?

Impact optimization is always more fulfilling than profit optimization, which in my experience is true in most aspects of life worth exploring.