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I watched a couple of things this past week, both of which I (mostly) enjoyed: The season finale of Pluribus and the Oscar-contending film, Sentimental Value. For those unfamiliar, Pluribus follows the last two people on earth who haven’t fallen victim to a global virus that turns humanity into a hive mind. And Sentimental Value is about a theater actress who has an extremely contentious relationship with her director father, who left the family when she was a child. He comes back into her life and wants her to play the lead role in his latest film.

What stood out to me about both stories was that the writers (either purposefully or ignorantly) were writing on hard mode. Writing on hard mode is the act of choosing a concept that doesn’t generate consistently dramatic scenarios (scenes).

Writing on easy mode is the opposite. It means choosing a concept that naturally generates dramatic situations. The most basic example is a zombie script. Zombies are always after you. They are a threat wherever you go. Because of that, you don’t have to work hard to create entertaining dramatic scenarios. The story can simply introduce the next wave of zombies, or the next survival challenge in a post-apocalyptic world, and the tension takes care of itself.

Writing on hard mode is like writing with one hand tied behind your back. You never get that strong inciting moment that launches a scene in an immediately engaging way. Instead, it’s like placing two characters in a coffee shop and saying, “Be entertaining.” They couldn’t even pull that off in one of the greatest films ever made!

The only way to make “hard mode” work is through relatable characters, compelling character development, and compelling character dynamics. In short: through character. And the reason that’s so hard is because 90% of all screenwriting results in cliched characters, people we feel like we’ve seen before doing things we’ve seen them do before. Once we feel like we’re watching a tired “been there done that” group of people doing the same old shit, we tune out.

Is there a way to write in “hard mode” and make it work?

Yeah.

It’s just… harder.

You start by creating main characters we can relate to. So, for example, you create a character who’s struggling with their purpose in life. They’re not sure they’re on the right track. A lot of people can relate to that. If you can relate to someone, it’s easy to root for them. That’s why this first step is so important.

From there, you have to make the character feel REAL. This is the hardest part of hard mode. Because if you don’t make the character feel like they could exist in the real world, they will come off as cliched. How do you achieve this? It’s delicate. But, generally speaking, you can’t lead the character. You have to let the character lead you.

Let’s say your hero is running away from a bad guy. And then the hero comes up on a parked car with someone in it. Now, as a writer, you might want to evolve this foot chase into a car chase. If that’s the case, you might have your hero rip the driver out of the car, jump in it, and drive off, with the bad guy getting a car of his own and going after him.

You wrote the character doing that simply because you wanted them to. But you never asked the key question: would my hero actually do this? For example, if your hero is truly selfless, would that person really throw someone out of their car to save themselves? No. In that case, you’re forcing the character to serve your needs, instead of letting the character act according to their own nature and volition.

This is an extreme example but the point I’m making is, your hero will need to make dozens of decisions throughout a story. How many of those decisions are *you making for your character* and how many of those decisions *is your character making for themselves?*

By the way, I’m not saying to never make your character do something because you want the plot to move a certain way. I’m saying that the characters who come off as the least believable and the most cliche are the ones where the writer ALWAYS makes their decisions for them.

The last piece of this puzzle is coming up with compelling character dynamics. You want to think of character relationships similar to how you think of characters on an individual level. You’re trying to come up with the most compelling ones possible.

For example, just like a character who’s battling some inner conflict (i.e. they don’t believe in themselves) is compelling to watch because they’re trying to overcome that weakness in pursuit of their goal (Rocky Balboa), a character relationship can be battling its own conflict (Luke Skywalker sees everybody as good and approaches the world selflessly, Han Solo sees everybody as out for themselves and approaches the world selfishly – therefore every scene they’re in will be a clash).

Doing these three things effectively is writing on hard mode, because you don’t have concept-rich, built-in scenarios like zombies that automatically make a scene entertaining. Even the best writers struggle with this. That’s because there’s a frightening fourth factor you can’t control: character creation luck. Sometimes you can do everything right and a character still doesn’t work. There’s an indescribable X-factor that brings characters to life, and it’s one of the most frustrating aspects of screenwriting.

How do you deal with something you can’t control? Unfortunately, you go with your gut and hope for the best. But if you get those other three things right, the chances of you getting that fourth thing right improve dramatically.

Bringing this back to Pluribus, the final episode is 95% character-driven and, therefore, screenwriting on hard mode. Manousos finally gets to New Mexico to team up with Carol and stop the bad guys. But there’s a problem. Carol has fallen in love with bad guy, Zosia (who, remember, is an accumulation of 8 billion other people).

Hard mode activated.

While it’s true that we do have this sci-fi element to spice things up, the finale doesn’t really explore that sci-fi element. What it explores is that Carol finally has someone to team up with to try and take back the world but she’s fallen in love with someone on the bad guy’s team. That’s your strong character dynamic. That’s the reason the reader wants to keep reading. What is Carol going to do? Will she prioritize love over humanity or will she prioritize humanity over her love?

Now, this next part is beyond the scope of today’s conversation but it’s worth noting because it’s an example of what good professional writing looks like. This is not a straight “A” or “B” answer. If Carol decides to go with Manousos, it’s still a .1% chance that they figure out how to save humanity. The odds are still heavily against them. When you add that variant into the mix, Carol’s decision becomes that much harder. If it was 50/50, it’d be easy. But it’s more like 99.9/.1.

But the point is, everything in this episode is character-driven. There’s very little plot. And because of all the hard work that Gilligan and his team did in creating these characters, we care about them enough individually that we care what happens between them.

In a decision that can only be described as insane, Sentimental Value embraces hard mode and asks, how can I make this even harder? What’s wild is that writer-director Trier actually had the option of writing on easy mode. His concept — an actress daughter who despises her director father being offered the lead role in his latest film — is inherently dramatic and capable of generating plenty of juicy, entertaining scenes. It’s not quite easy mode on the level of a killer robot sent back in time to murder the future resistance leader’s mother, but it is the kind of premise that organically creates conflict. An actress is being directed by someone she hates, yet she forces herself to endure it in order to advance her career.

Except Trier completely abandons that setup and inexplicably imposes hard mode on himself. The story should have centered on a daughter who desperately wants to become a successful actress but can only achieve that goal by working with her tyrannical father, whom she despises. Instead, Trier creates a daughter who has no interest in becoming a famous actress at all and therefore has no trouble saying no to him. It completely undermines the premise.

This choice forces Trier to introduce a second actress, a famous movie star, to take the role, and it immediately deflates the tension. Why should we care about this new, random relationship? He has no history with her, and he doesn’t even need to win her over, since she’s the one eager to work with him. As a result, there’s very little conflict or dramatic tension in their scenes. Trier ends up tripping himself up by setting the difficulty level unnecessarily high.

Now, that’s not to say the movie doesn’t work. Trier did a great job creating complex characters in Nora and Gustav. And did an even better job creating all this conflict between them. So, when they do have scenes together, those scenes are dripping with dramatic conflict. But because Trier, for whatever reason, designed the story to keep them out of the same scenes for much of the movie, he made what should’ve been a solid dramatic movie setup into more of a meditation on life, which is a nice way of saying “boring.”

But here’s where things get interesting. Remember when I said earlier that you want characters to make choices that are true to who they are, rather than what the writer wants? That’s exactly what Trier does here. You could argue that he avoids the more obviously dramatic version of the movie because it would feel inauthentic to real life. By staying true to the characters he created, Nora says no to the inciting incident, her father asking her to be in the film, instead of yes.

Because of that choice, the characters all feel VERY REAL. And for the people who love this film, that’s a big reason why they love it. Because every character in this film feels like a real person. It can therefore be argued that Trier won the game on hard mode. Not easy to do.

With that said, I do not recommend writing on hard mode. The whole reason I advocate so aggressively for generating strong concepts is because when you come up with a good concept, the script writes itself. If you create a character who’s determined to be the number one nighttime news videographer in Los Angeles (Nightcrawler) plotlines throw themselves at you. You know he has to go on the next run sooner or later. You know there’s always going to be other nightcrawlers trying to beat him to the story. You know his greed is going to drive him to be the best at any cost. That script writes itself for you.

But the second you enter the arena with a soft premise, you make your life miserable as a writer. Your life is already miserable as a writer. Why make it more difficult? I can’t imagine trying to generate scene after scene for a concept-less script like, say, The Banshees of Inisherin. Not saying it can’t be done. But it’s just 10x, 100x, 1000x harder. If you think you have the writing skillz to pull that off, go for it. But I wouldn’t call you a writer, then. I’d call you a masochist.

Write on easy mode by picking a concept that does the work for you. If you embrace this advice, the rest of your screenwriting career will be loads more enjoyable. :)

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Will this film make the list??

Could this be the last post of the year???

I don’t know.

The truth is, I usually get separation anxiety whenever I don’t post for too long so I’m guessing you’ll see me again.

In the meantime, I wanted to give us all something juicy to talk about for the rest of 2025. And since we’re all so darn opinionated, why not discuss our favorite and least favorite films of the year!?

I can promise you my list is unlike ANY OTHER “Best Movies of the Year” list you’re going to find. My lists are always driven by something I see in the writing, whereas most other reviewers look at the movie as a whole. I do that as well but I always prioritize the writing. What I can promise that you won’t find here is me including any movies I believe I’m *supposed to* include, which is what I’ve always hated about end of year movie lists. I feel like I’m reading lists of people who have been brainwashed rather than getting their true favorite movies of the year.

Let’s start with my worst movies of the year. For me, the biggest disappointment (expectations versus execution) goes to Good Fortune. I thought this film had a real shot at bringing comedy back to the multiplex, but Ansari’s screenwriting felt surprisingly lazy. The story crawls into its second act, never fully exploiting its fun premise.  And while casting Keanu Reeves sounds great in theory, his limited time on set seemed to prevent anyone from clearly communicating what was expected of him. As a result, he often appears unsure of what kind of movie he’s in.  Just an all-around dud.   

Next up has to be Mickey 17. I knew this movie was screwed when I read the book. But people told me that the book was only going to be used as inspiration and not as a direct adaptation. It goes to show that you can’t dress up a story that, at its core, sucks. And, to make matters worse, Robert Pattinson botched his performance so aggressively that the movie turned out not just to be bad, but spectacularly bad.

I think this is the only shot in the entire movie with a real background.

The race for worst superhero film of 2025 is a dead heat between Brave New World and Fantastic Four. It’s a tough call because they’re both bad in different ways. Brave New World is just boring. Whereas Fantastic Four felt different but looked so incredibly CGI generic that you never felt for a second like you were watching something that was really going on. Fantastic Four is probably a little bit better. But this quadro definitely isn’t good enough to be leading Avengers Doomsday, which is rumored to be the case. 

Believe it or not, One Battle After Another is not my least favorite movie of the year. That title goes to If I Had Legs I’d Kick You. You have never IN YOUR LIFE watched a movie that is more frustrating than this one. It is an onslaught of abuse. Seriously! I feel like the director could be taken to court for the abuse she puts everyone through who sees this film. And it’s not fun abuse. It’s like she hates you and wants you to suffer for 90 minutes. Avoid this movie at all costs unless you hate yourself.

All right, time to move on to the movies I haven’t seen yet. These are movies that could conceivably make my 2025 Top 10, and therefore, I reserve the right to retroactively add them.  

These movies include F1, Marty Supreme, Predator Badlands, Avatar 3, 28 Years Later, The Long Walk, Warfare, Hamnet, and Good Boy. Of these films, the ones most likely to make the list would be Marty Supreme and The Long Walk.

Don’t worry, we’re getting to the main event. But before the Top 10, here are some movies worth mentioning. I’ll begin with the Philippou Brothers’ “Bring Her Back.” A very odd movie with a completely nonsensical but spooky-as-hell character whose only purpose is to trigger a million WTFs during the film. Shaky and just missed my Top 10.

Next up we have Frankenstein which was easily the most beautiful movie I saw all year. The only reason it didn’t score higher is that I’m not a Frankenstein guy. But it’s very unique and different and worth checking out.

We then have Thunderbolts, which was a big swing. But it was a swing that ultimately failed. Nobody who goes to a superhero movie wants to be swindled into realizing they’re watching an A24 film about depression.  That’s not an exaggeration by the way.  The studio touted that 95% of the crew were A24 crew.

Next we have Naked Gun. This was easily the funniest movie of the year. I only wish they could’ve kept the laughs up for the whole film. The first half is very strong and then it kind of falls apart. But it has some hilarious moments so if you need a good laugh over the holidays, check it out.

Coming in next is The Amateur. What’s interesting about The Amateur is that, 15 years ago, this would have been a solid box office earner that would’ve given Rami Malek’s career a big bump and primed him for a shot at leading a high-budget Hollywood film. Now it’s just relegated to a Hulu streamer that barely anybody’s heard of.  But it’s a fun movie that does a lot with its medium-sized budget.

This next one is going to be controversial but I don’t care. I thought Flight Risk was highly entertaining. This is the Mel Gibson-directed Wahlberg film. You guys know me. I love a good contained thriller. And this hits all the beats I require from one. The only reason why it didn’t make it into the Top 10 is because Mel had no explanation for why these two would repeatedly leave the passed-out dangerous murderous criminal in the back and never check to make sure that he was, ya know, STILL PASSED OUT.

Tim Robinson’s Friendship is a frustrating movie because it’s so unique and genuinely different that it immediately stands out from the crowd. Unfortunately, there are too many moments where the writing feels juvenile. It’s sloppy and never rises to the level of sophistication its oddness seems to promise. That same issue is why I couldn’t fully commit to Robinson’s HBO series, The Chair Company.

If you want a film that’s good but that is going to bring up feelings of extreme frustration, to the point where you want to throw something at your screen, Apple’s “Echo Valley” with Sydney Sweeney is your movie. You get so angry at this mom for babying her drug-addicted monster of a daughter. And yet, despite it all, you still want to find out what happens next.

Finally, we have Superman, which was easily the best superhero movie of the year. But it says a lot about how much this genre has fallen that Superman took that title. Because it just wasn’t big enough. Granted, the primary reason why this movie didn’t feel big enough was the hype behind it. But James Gunn built that hype. So, it was up to him to deliver. The film is better than okay. But never reaches anywhere above that.

I’ve made you wait long enough.

Here are my Top 10 movies of the year!

NUMBER 10: NOBODY 2

Nobody 2 is all about one thing: making sure you have a good time. That’s it. And it pulls this off using one of the oldest tricks in screenwriting: we know our hero is an unstoppable ass-kicker, but none of the bad guys do. That creates a reverse dramatic irony that plays out over and over. These fools keep challenging him, and he keeps making them pay.  What’s interesting about the Nobody universe, though, is how it differs from the Equalizer or John Wick franchises. Hutch has to earn every kill. Some people dislike that Denzel in The Equalizer never struggles, that he always wins so easily. With Hutch, there’s always doubt. Even though he’s a badass, he’s twice the age of most of his opponents, so nothing is guaranteed.  The franchise also balances its action with a fun, semi-goofy sense of humor that keeps things light. That combination is what makes Nobody 2 the kind of movie you watch and leave feeling invigorated.

NUMBER 9: BUGONIA

I went back and forth on whether to include this one. In many ways, it’s the opposite of Nobody 2 in that it’s all about you having a bad time, lol. The main character chemically castrates his retarded cousin as a means to accomplish his big kidnapping plan of a CEO. He then shaves the kidnapped CEO’s head and there’s this sexual abuse subplot with a local cop and, needless to say, it’s all a real downer. With that being said, it’s never not interesting. And that’s something I put a lot of stock into – are you being interesting with your creative choices? Creative choices are the one thing you can’t really teach in screenwriting. Does the writer make good ones or not? The only thing you can really teach screenwriters to do is challenge every creative choice they make to see if it’s really the best one they can come up with. This writer never makes the easy obvious choice. And some wild-ass things happen in it. All in all, it’s too interesting to leave outside my Top 10.

NUMBER 8: AFTER THE HUNT

I know I’m on my own island with how much I like this screenplay and movie, and I’m not going to change my mind just because everyone else dislikes it. I still think it has the best dramatic setup of any film this year. The writer constructs a triangle between three characters that is incredibly complex and layered, requiring each of them to think seven moves ahead in order to succeed.  That said, the film also highlights how difficult it is to connect with audiences when none of the main characters are likable. I believe that’s the primary reason it didn’t resonate with viewers. It didn’t bother me because I resonated with Julia Roberts’ character. I understood her guardedness and why she kept others at a distance. While many people disliked her, I found myself rooting for her, which probably explains why I experienced a very different movie from everyone else.

NUMBER 7: SKETCH

Before I saw this movie, I reserved the word “sketch” for the DoorDash guy who suspiciously hung around the inside of my building for 30 minutes after every delivery he made. But now, the word will always make me think of this movie, which is as close to a Spielbergian experience as you’re going to get in 2025. Heck, it was more Spielbergian than Spielberg these days. While it’s true the movie is limited by its low-budget, it somehow still has some of the best effects of the year.  But what really holds it together is the touching, well-crafted story of a family trying to move on from the death of their wife/mother. For that reason, this script is a particularly good script to study for how to write a formulaic movie. It’s a deceptively difficult format to write in because the formula makes everything predictable. But if you can make us love and care about the characters, you can supersede that issue.

NUMBER 6: WEAPONS

I absolutely love that this movie did so well, because it’s a major swing for a horror film. It doesn’t follow a single protagonist, which is always a risk, and it uses a backwards approach to navigating its central mystery. All of this reinforces a point I constantly stress on the site. If you truly want to break through in this industry, you have to take creative risks. The one downside is something I noted when I first reviewed the screenplay. The characters lack depth. The only character who feels fully realized is the villain. If that issue had been addressed, Weapons would go from being the best horror film of 2025 to one of the best horror films ever made.  Even so, Weapons has a sharp, risky edge combined with just enough mass appeal to make it the kind of movie anyone can enjoy.

NUMBER 5: EDDINGTON

There isn’t a movie on this list that made a bigger comeback on the Carson Opinion-O-Meter than this one. When I first read the screenplay, my main criticism was simple. You can’t make a movie about Covid. Period end of story.  People want to put that time as far behind them as possible. It was miserable, and nobody wants to be reminded of it. In a way, I was right, because nobody went to see this movie. But it turns out Ari Aster actually did find a way to make a movie about Covid good. In retrospect, I think the location is what made it work. If the story had been set in a city, it would have felt uncomfortably close to home. By placing it in a remote small town in New Mexico, it felt like a world we hadn’t seen before, which helped create a genuinely original moviegoing experience. Aster’s one real flaw here is that he tries to cram too many ideas into the film, and by the end, things start to feel garbled. That said, when it comes to making unexpected creative choices, he always delivers. They aren’t always the right choices, but they’re consistently bold and unpredictable. And the insane WTFIGO climax ranks among the most entertaining large scale Hollywood endings in recent years. You have to go in with the right mindset and expect the unexpected, but if you do, there’s a very good chance you’ll love this film.

NUMBER 4: FINAL DESTINATION: BLOODLINES

Talk about bringing a franchise back with a bang. This movie was insanely entertaining. Just last week, I found myself hovering my mouse over the “rent” button for The Running Man, but I couldn’t bring myself to click it. Then it hit me why. I know for a fact that Edgar Wright has no passion for making that movie. Glen Powell doesn’t either. Wright needed a paycheck so he could keep making more art-driven films, and Powell was looking for a star-making vehicle and thought he’d found one by teaming up with a respected “artsy” director. But neither of them actually gave a shit about The Running Man franchise. The result was exactly what you’d expect: predictable, forgettable sameness. Now contrast that with Final Destination: Bloodlines. Directors Lipovsky and Stein are massive fans of the franchise, to the point that they made a spreadsheet ranking every single kill in the series. Then they asked themselves a simple question: how do we create five kills that are better than anything on this list? And they delivered. This movie was great. It was the best time I had in a theater all year. It’s a perfect reminder that when you write something you’re truly passionate about, you put in the extra work to make it as good as it can possibly be. When the primary motivation is anything else, that level of care just isn’t there.

NUMBER 3: THE BALLAD OF WALLIS ISLAND

To me, the true test of good screenwriting is executing a story built entirely around characters. There are no bells and whistles to distract the audience, no robots, monsters, or time travel. It’s just people. If you can write a great screenplay based purely on character, you can write anything. That’s why After the Hunt made this list, and it’s also why this movie did. The Ballad of Wallis Island has the best character arcs I saw all year. Charles, the man who owns the island and hires a once-famous folk duo to come play for him, has one of the most heartbreaking arcs you’ll encounter. He spends all of his money to bring them here because their music was the soundtrack to him falling in love with his wife, who has since passed away. Watching him slide through that grief over the course of the story is genuinely moving. On top of that, there’s the complicated relationship between the band members (also former couple) Herb and Nell. Their dynamic unfolds in ways you don’t expect at all. That’s a theme I’m always looking for in writing. Do you take the expected path and let the audience stay ahead of you, or do you choose the unexpected and stay ahead of the audience? It’s a slow movie, so you need to be in the right indie-film headspace to fully enjoy it. But if you are, this one is absolute magic.

NUMBER 2: NOVOCAINE

Hold up, Carson. Novocaine was your number two movie of the year? You bet it was. And do you know why? It’s a screenwriting reason. I’ll give you a second to figure it out. It’s because no movie did a better job of fully exploiting its concept. A guy can’t feel pain. His girlfriend is kidnapped. He decides to turn what should be his greatest weakness into his greatest strength in order to save her. Earlier, I mentioned what made Nobody 2 interesting was that we weren’t always sure Hutch could beat the bad guys. This script dials that up to a thousand. The main character, Nate, doesn’t even know how to fight, yet he’s up against trained killers. Usually, when I see this in screenplays, the protagonist only survives because the writer bails him out with plot armor. But Novocaine consistently puts Nate in truly fatal situations and then has him use his inability to feel pain to escape in ways that actually feel believable. I thought it was masterful. I’m convinced the only reason this movie didn’t perform better is because the trailer made it look familiar, like a typical B-grade, low-budget action film you’ve already seen. But it’s not. It’s the absolute best version of a B-grade action movie you’ll see this decade, precisely because it’s unique and because it relentlessly mines that uniqueness in inventive ways.  I place it as my second favorite movie of the year with complete confidence.

NUMBER 1: COMPANION

There was no movie this year with a better twist than this one. Much like Novocaine, it does an excellent job of using its unique concept to drive every creative choice. This is a film you’re best off seeing cold, but spoilers are coming, so consider yourself warned. Once we understand that this world includes robot companions, the writer squeezes every possible idea out of that premise. One of the best examples is the reveal that another member of the gang is also a companion robot. You might think that’s been done before, but it really hasn’t, because what makes these companions unique is that they don’t know they’re companions. They discover the truth at the same time we do. That choice opens the door to a deeper, almost existential exploration of humanity, suggesting that for all we know, we could all be living a lie without realizing it. Another thing I loved about the script is how convincingly it makes Iris feel completely outmatched by the villain, her “boyfriend” Josh. He literally remote-controls her. The entire time, you’re asking how this woman could possibly defeat someone who can control her every movement and even her emotions. I love stories where the goal feels genuinely impossible, and this one absolutely does. We care deeply about the heroine and truly hate the villain. The story delivers strong twists and turns, and midway through, a T-1000–like character enters the picture to make Iris’s journey even more daunting. In the end, it’s just a wildly fun movie built around the most inventive concept of the year and it makes for a perfect double feature with Novocaine.

There you have it. Those are my favorite movies of the year.

I’m now really interested in hearing what your favorite movies of the year are!

You guys know how into UFOs I am.

And one thing I’ve been keeping my eye on is this Spielberg movie. Ever since it was announced a couple of years ago, I’ve been eagerly scrounging up the little breadcrumbs Stevie’s been leaving as he’s traveled deeper and deeper into the forest.

For those who aren’t aware, Spielberg swore off ever making movies about aliens again. He felt like he’d covered the subject matter inside and out. And he’s probably right.

But when the 2017 New York Times article broke about U.S. pilots chasing UFOs, and Congress started booking UFO hearings, Spielberg felt like there was a new story to tell. And hence, we get this new film, Disclosure Day, whose trailer just debuted yesterday.

Now, when it comes to Spielberg and UFOs, he’s the top-dog director no questions asked. Close Encounters of the Third Kind might as well be a documentary. He worked closely with J. Allen Hynek, who infamously worked for the government, discrediting all UFO sightings, only later, once he left the position, to admit that many of the cases he had come across were real alien UFOs. Many of the best moments in Close Encounters were based on stories Hynek gave Spielberg.

You gotta understand, people in the UFO community have been simping over the release of this movie for months. They believe Spielberg will use it as a pseudo-means to prep the world for disclosure. It’s non-fiction disguised as fiction.

Here’s the trailer…

So, what do I think?

I think it looks like a big ball of crapola.

I’m sorry but THIS is Spielberg’s return to science fiction???

Where’s the story?

Where’s the tease?

Where’s the anything that gets me interested in seeing the movie?

Emily Blunt gurgling?

THAT’S YOUR BIG MOVIE TRAILER MOMENT???? REALLY????

Ugh.

I suppose there are still a million directions this story can go and Spielberg’s holding off on the good stuff until we get closer. But the fact that this trailer doesn’t have a single cool or memorable moment is concerning.

Which is why I want to talk to you about real disclosure.

I want to show you what real UFOs and aliens feel like.

I’m talking about a genuine UFO sighting.

Before you take a listen to this, let me give you some context. This audio recording is from 1987. The caller is calling from the Ozarks. After the government shut down its UFO investigation programs, a public call-in center was created to handle UFO sightings. If you thought you’d seen something strange in the sky, you could call in and report it. Over time, the center logged thousands of these calls.

Okay, check this out…

This is one of the most convincing sightings I’ve ever heard. I mean, I suppose you could argue the guy is lying. But if he’s lying, he’s a very good actor. Not to mention, at the beginning of the call, he says, “I suppose you’ve heard about MIssouri.” And the guy says, “Yes,” meaning this is not the first call he’s received about the UFOs that night. Also, later on, the guy mentions that he ran into multiple people in the area who also saw it.

However, if you’re a skeptic, you might say that the much more plausible explanation is that this guy is a having a laugh. He’s a joker. He probably made all the previous calls himself, each in a different voice, his friends sitting nearby and laughing their asses off. The 1980s were the heyday of the crank call. Surely, that’s a more plausible explanation than that there’s a real UFO with aliens in it flying around Missouri. And I would agree that, yes, that’s the more likely scenario.

One skill I’ve developed through reading so much is the ability to discern what is invented and what feels grounded in reality. The giveaway, when someone is describing something real, is specificity. If this person had claimed to see a flying saucer with little green aliens popping out of the top, I would have been skeptical.

But listen to what he actually describes. Three cigar-shaped crafts flying separately, then aligning into a staircase pattern, all oriented toward him. That level of detail is unusually specific. I have never heard anything like it, in either reality or fiction. Would a screenwriter come up with that? Would any of you? I don’t think so. It is so singular that, to me, it becomes the final confirmation that this account is real.

And the thing is, there are tens of thousands, maybe HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS, of experiences people have had through the years exactly like this – up close encounters with UFOs. Is it all a lie?

I don’t think so.

And he attempts to solve the impossible screenwriting quandry of ‘how do you make a screenplay work without any conflict???’

Genre: Christmas Hallmark Movie
Premise: After inheriting a house in Vail, an event planner finds herself planning a giant food fest to save a local restaurant, all while spending a lot of time with the sexy local contractor.
About: What do you need to know? It’s a Hallmark movie starring, of course, Lacey Chalbert! I asked AI how much Lacy Chalbert makes for one of these movies and they said half a mil! By my estimation that makes her a billionaire twice over. Co-writer Delondra Mesa wrote on one of my favorite underappreciated TV shows, Black Summer.
Writers: Delondra Mesa and Duane Poole
Details: A cool 85 minutes

As many of you know, I’ve been asking for Blood & Ink participants to e-mail me with an update on where they are with their scripts. I’m happy to report that most writers are doing well. They’re at least halfway through their first draft. So keep it up and keep writing!

One of those e-mails was from a concept I gave a rare “YES” to, immediately guaranteeing it entry into competition (I think I gave five “YESES” in total). That would be from the writer of, “It’s The Worst Time of the Year.” Here’s that logline if you’ve forgotten: “Two successful, single business women from the big city get trapped in a Hallmark movie nightmare where it’s always fall — but weirdly somehow also always Christmas. They’re forced to open a bakery, enter the pie contest, solve the weekly town murder, and date the impossibly hot plaid-wearing widower — all while trying to find a way to escape before increasingly aggressive townspeople trap them in this hellscape, force them to give up their lives and drink pumpkin spiced lattes….forever.”

I was trading e-mails with the writer when they told me they’d, of course, watched a ton of Hallmark movies for research. And to their surprise, they actually started liking them! But it was this line from our exchange, in particular, that caught my attention: “When you let go and embrace them for what they are, there is something very comforting about a movie with zero real world stakes or conflict.”

If there is one truism I’ve found in screenwriting, it’s that there has to be stakes. If there aren’t stakes, the audience can’t get emotionally invested. Because stakes are what create the “care” part of watching something. Stakes make things matter. If things don’t matter, then who cares what happens?

So, how is it, then, that these stakes-less Hallmark movies are so popular? Obviously, something works about the formula and I wanted to figure out how the one movie formula that didn’t include stakes was still able to keep its audience caring.

Hence, I decided to watch a Hallmark movie. You have to understand how momentous this occasion is. I’ve never watched one before. So, I asked the writer what their favorite Hallmark movie was and they gave me five options. I looked through them, comparing IMDB ratings. Winter in Vail clocked in with the highest score at a 7.0! That’s like a 13.9 if you’re scoring it as a regular movie. I was in. What follows may not only be the answer to great screenwriting. But the answer… to the universe.

Chelsea is a 30-something event planner in Los Angeles who gets passed up for a promotion and thinks it’s a sign that she needs to change careers. On that very same day, she receives a letter informing her that her Uncle passed away and left her a big house in Vail, Colorado.

Chelsea heads out there to feel things out for a few days, figuring she’ll fix the house up and sell it. That’s when she meets Owen, the impossibly hot contractor who seems to be everywhere in town. The two get off to a bumpy start when Owen chastises her for parking in a no parking zone.

Later, when Chelsea starts putting her Uncle’s house back together, she’s forced to hire Owen to help. The two immediately apologize for the way they acted and become fast friends, doing everything together, while Owen fixes up the house.

Owen also happens to be the son of the owner of a German restaurant in town that’s on its last legs. As it just so happens, Chelsea’s Uncle was the star pastry chef there who had a world-class apple strudel. But when he died, the recipe died with him and they haven’t had a strudel since.

When Chelsea later finds her uncle’s secret strudel recipe in an old photo book, she pitches the idea to Owen that they bring the strudel back. But who’s going to make it, Owen asks. We will! she replies.

Chelsea then calls upon her event planning background to put together… Strudelfest, which I’m beyond shocked wasn’t the title of the film. Strudelfest will unite the entire restaurant community to each make their version of a strudel and it will be a big fun event and, hopefully, bring people back to the restaurants and save Owen’s father’s place. Something tells me that, despite the odds being against them, it’s going to work out!

Did somebody say, “Strudel!?”

You know, I couldn’t possibly understand the appeal of these movies without having read the number one script from the Black List yesterday. But I’m really glad I did because it showed me EXACTLY why people love these movies.

Let’s take a quick look at the variables from each of these movies…

Best Seller

-Unlikable female protagonist
-Boring and mostly unlikable male protagonist
-A sad broken marriage.
-The only redeeming feature in the marriage is weird kink-filled sex
-Lots of unhappy people
-Tons of lying
-Infidelity
-Passive-aggressive attacks on your partner
-bitterness
-gossip
-people relishing in others lives being ruined

Winter In Vail

-Ridiculously likable female protagonist
-Incredibly likable male protagonist
-strong sexual chemistry
-Tons of happy people
-Everybody has good intentions
-Everybody helps each other out
-Characters go out and do fun things
-Celebration of family
-An overall happy experience

I mean when you break it down to brass tacks, it’s obvious why people like these Hallmark movies. If you go see Best Seller, you leave that movie feeling miserable about the world. If you see Winter In Vail, you leave feeling hope, happiness, and encouraged that people are, at their core, good. It’s almost scary how obvious it is that these movies do well.

HOWEVER…

I’m not sure I would’ve given the same marks to one of these films that scored a 6.0 on IMDB rather than a 7.0. I believe that these scripts are sneaky hard to write, maybe even more so than regular movies.

Why?

For the exact reason that the writer of It’s The Worst Time of the Year said. The stakes are low and there’s very little conflict. In fact, these movies seem to relish in the avoidance of conflict.

Again, their mission statement appears to be: Let’s make the audience feel good. And if people are double-crossing each other or being mean or getting in fights, that doesn’t leave you feeling good. There isn’t even a villain in this film!

So, where does the drama come from then?

And where does our interest come from when the drama is this light?

Well, the answer is: with good-old fashioned smart screenwriting.

There *are* some stakes to this plot. Owen’s father’s restaurant is on its last legs. It’s probably going to close down. The writers, therefore, make it a top priority to make sure we love Owen’s dad. We get an early scene where Chelsea meets him and he’s the nicest guy in the world. There’s also a slight sadness about him, since he knows that these are likely the last weeks of his restaurant.

Surprisingly, that can be enough to make us care about a story. We like the guy. We don’t want the guy to lose his restaurant. So we’re rooting for him, and everybody else, to save the restaurant!

And, actually, I think that’s the secret sauce to these movies. Everybody is so incredibly likable. They’re either nice, or funny, or helpful, or kind, or encouraging. They have each other’s backs.

This is the exact OPPOSITE of what we saw yesterday, when everyone was so unlikable. And what did I say? I said it is EXTREMELY hard to make a movie work when your main characters are unlikable.

So, the opposite would probably hold true as well, right? It should be EASIER to make a movie work if we *like* the main characters.

It’s funny because I thought that Owen was going to be more of an a-hole. And we were going to go the traditional route of him and Chelsea hating each other but he’s the only contractor in town, so she has no choice but to use him. But that’s not what happened. He was a little jerky in the first scene but from that point on, he’s super nice to her and she’s super nice to him. And it works!

Which leads us to the next secret ingredient on the Hallmark movie menu: Sexual Chemistry.

If you create two characters who we both like and we want to see them get together and then you make us wait to see them get together, that can work in a vacuum! You don’t need a great story around that if that part of the recipe is fire. You really don’t. People are captivated by two people who they want to see get together.

The mistake a lot of writers make is to have the two kiss (or do more) too early. And then most of that sexual tension disappears. They don’t make that mistake in Winter in Vail. They wait and wait and wait, ensuring that we stay until the very end because dammit we want to see these two officially get together!

These scripts really need that part to work because if it’s not working, it’ll shine a light on the lack of conflict in the story.

In the first act, we get a scene of Chelsea’s boss informing her that the big promotion she expected to get has been given to someone else. Her boss isn’t mean about it. But we don’t like her because she seems oblivious to the fact that Chelsea is devastated.

So, later, when she decides to quit, I was expecting a scene where she revels in telling her boss to take this job and shove it. Just to get back at her a little. The writer even sets the scene up for us, showing Chelsea approach her boss and ask to speak to her. But we never see that scene. We cut to afterwards, where she’s cleaning out her desk.

I thought that was a strange choice until later, when I got a better feel for how these Hallmark movies work. They don’t want to show any meanness, any spitefulness. And that’s tough as a writer because you’re leaving conflict-filled home-run scenes on the table. Taking that away from the writer is like taking away half his bat.

Which is why, again, you need to make the sexual chemistry stuff between the two romantic leads perfect. If that works, we’re not demanding a ton of conflict in the rest of the scenes. The conflict is taken care of through the unresolved sexual tension.

I’ll have to see one of the lesser Hallmark movies before I understand where the flaws in this formula are located. But based on this movie alone, I thought it was pretty freaking entertaining. And it was nice to feel happy after a movie for once. Which I’ll be ruining later tonight when I watch Frankenstein. :)

[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the stream
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Protagonist likability solves a ton of your problems as a screenwriter.

Time to review the 2025 Black List’s best script!

Genre: Drama
Premise: (from Black List) In New York’s literary scene, a struggling writer, pressured by her famous novelist husband to have a baby, pens a tell-all article that goes viral. This sparks a dangerous battle of seduction, manipulation, and betrayal in the public and private spheres.
About: The 2025 Black List just came out last week. This was the number one script on the list with 48 votes. Details on the project are scarce, but with Jason Reitman attached as producer and a female writer with a raw, unfiltered voice, it suggests Matisse Haddad may be getting positioned as a potential “next Diablo Cody.” Cody’s “Juno” was famously celebrated heavily in one of the first Black Lists.
Writer: Matisse Haddad
Details: 99 pages

If you’re going to write an unlikable lead, then let’s go FULL UNLIKABLE with the casting!

I’ve spoken so much about the Black List that I don’t know if I have anything more to say, lol. As flawed as it is, it’s still the best list we’ve got for highlighting the best screenplays of the year. And it’s going to stay that way until I find the time to read all 350 scripts that the industry circulates every year.

I don’t know much about this writer other than she’s had one other script on the Black List last year that sounded very “Substance-y.” I don’t think I ever reviewed it. So this is going to be my introduction to Matisse Haddad.

Best Seller follows a 30-something New York married couple, Anya and Chris, both of whom are writers. Chris is the more successful of the two. He has several best sellers. He also teaches writing at Columbia University. Anya, meanwhile, writes fluffy articles. She occasionally writes books but nobody takes them seriously.

One night, when Chris stresses that they aren’t getting any younger and he wants to start a family, Anya writes an article about her husband called “Mommy or Me?” In it, she basically vents about her marriage and makes her famous author husband look really bad for wanting her to get pregnant. Even worse, she didn’t warn him ahead of time. So, when the article goes viral, Chris finds himself dealing with the fallout.

After speaking to his livid editor, Chris decides to write a counter-article which, just like Anya with him, he doesn’t show her ahead of time. And that article attempts to rebuild his reputation, all while dishing out a few secrets about his wife as well (she lied about graduating grad school!).

Their friends and family think they’re ridiculous (join the club!) and tell them to stop doing this cause it’s only hurting both of them. So they decide to joint write an article for The New Yorker to hash things out.

Amongst their viral feud, the two go to a lot of literary parties and talk it up with a bunch of jealous aspiring authors who enjoy gossiping. There’s a lot of gossip in this script for you gossip hounds! They’re also each tempted by hot people who aren’t their partners. Oh and, oddly, 5% of the script covers their kinky sex life, which feels like it was thrown into the script at the last second over a flurry of weekend writing.

Anya decides to cheat with the guy she’s flirting with, after which she finds out she’s pregnant. She threatens Chris, who she caught trying to kiss the person he was flirting with, that she’s going to abort the baby if he so much as looks at her sideways.

Soon after, the two get in a huge fight during which their large dog gets involved and bites off Chris’s fingers. Chris freaks out because this means he may never be able to write again (he must not have a computer with a microphone). The two decide to get separated and the last 15 pages of the script montages its way through Anya’s pregnancy until we get to THE END.

So, do we have the next Diablo Cody here?

In the now-immortal response to my first Blood & Ink logline pitch…

No.

You could make the argument that Matisse Haddad’s voice is unique, though, which is probably why her script finished number one on the list.

The problem is that that voice is so depressing.

Observing this relationship is so sad. And neither of the characters are very likable, especially Anya.

You’re putting yourself behind the 8 ball if you’ve got a sad script with unlikable protagonists. It’s very hard to make that work.

And what’s also a problem is that the concept is weak. An article “write-off” against your partner? Movies are supposed to be larger than life. This concept barely feels like it’s larger than a month.

But Matisse doesn’t stop there in making things difficult for herself. She’s also writing about writing! Which is inherently boring. It’s not that it can’t be done. We were just discussing Rob Reiner’s Misery the other day. One of the greatest horror movies ever written. And that was about writing.

But to presume that, in this day and age of TikToks and Instagram and Twitter and Youtube, that some written article is going to take over the world and everyone’s going to be talking about it… I can’t remember the last time that happened. The early 2000s maybe?

The script is really a tale of two halves. The first half struggles mightily because of the issues I just mentioned. Weak concept. Unlikable characters. Boring subject matter. And a plot that goes nowhere.

I kept waiting for a plot development that actually mattered. Instead, I got, “Let’s write an article together!” That’s when I mentally checked out. I knew the script couldn’t recover after such a weak creative choice.

Funny enough, Matisse ditches all this silly “viral article” stuff for the second half of the screenplay and just focuses on the fallout of the dissolving marriage. That was the best part of the script because it was the most honest. But, again, because these characters were so unlikable, you didn’t care.

And they kept becoming more unlikable by the scene!

When you have a wife who deliberately goes out and seeks sex from some dude she wants to bang, she finds out she’s pregnant, then comes back and screams at her husband that she can’t wait to abort the baby — I mean how do I even keep reading after that? We all detest this woman at this point, right?

Writing characters is a funny thing. Because you can take two routes. Route 1 is to write a character as honestly as you possibly can and never worry about how they come off. The idea with writing a character this way is that, hopefully, because the character is so authentic, other like-minded people will see themselves in that character. And there’s no doubt in my mind that that’s how Matisse is writing Anya.

And I won’t say that can’t work. I loved After The Hunt because Julia Roberts’ character was written exactly that way. And I understood her character, even though she wasn’t inherently likable. And I’m sure that that’s exactly why some of you hated the character. Cause there was nothing about her that was likable.

Which leads us to Route 2: Be aware of how the audience sees people and create characters with traits that make the audience like them. What I’ve found is that the more serious the writer, the less interested they are in writing these characters. Because they don’t want to be inauthentic.

But there’s a cost to that. Which is that you have may have created a character who’s so unlikable that nothing in your story will matter because we’ve already decided we don’t like the person taking us on that journey. And that’s the case here. Anya is a horrible person and I hated her.

But even if I liked her, I’m not sure the script could’ve been salvaged. There are so many things working against it – the biggest of which is that there’s nothing in this concept that says: this needs to be a movie. This is something that happens every day in the world. Relationships fall apart. And the sorta-viral-article thing is just not big enough or interesting enough.

With that said, the script should find some fans, particularly among a New York–based, liberal, literary-minded female audience. But outside of that specific demo, I’m not convinced readers are going to find this concept or subject matter palatable.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: I’ve discovered that when scripts have these long stretches where people can just hang out in bars, or coffee shops, or parties, and chat, the script is in trouble. Cause what that means is that there’s not enough plot to keep the story moving. In any feature screenplay, your characters should never have time to just hang out. Maybe ONCE in the first act before the shit hits the fan. But even then, that scene should be setting up parts of the story. There were too many scenes here of people just hanging out and chatting without the story going anywhere. It took an already weak premise and further weakened it.

Note: Please use the comments section to share the scripts you liked and disliked from the 2025 Black List. This will make it easier to separate the wheat from the chaff. And it would help me, as I would really prefer to review the good stuff over the bad.