Sample Screenplay Analysis

Below are excerpts from recent notes I wrote to give you a sense of my style.

……p.1) I still think the open is not there. The fact that you have Ben doing 5 or six things, which implies montage, suggests you don’t have your home-run open. A series of shots as montage is not a clean way to intro……

……do we need to superimpose a title card determining time and place? How much is that really serving the viewer of movie vs. reader of screenplay?……

……p.2) Margaret needs to ride home with father? Is this a one-time thing? Her character feels independent, is this consistent? Again, by increasing the proximity she has with her father, how much mileage do you get from her not caring about her father when he goes to hospital? It’s also passive. She’s reading a book? This implies studious, bookwarm, withdrawn, awkward……

……p.4) “Saw you yesterday.” Why not today? Why yesterday? I realize he has to see Teddy in the laundromat, so it must be the next day, but maybe there should be an intermittent scene, maybe a scene in the morning, where he does see Teddy all by himself. This time jump feels weird. The flow burps……

……p.5) I don’t like the flashbacks. Why all this now? Is it natural that he wants or needs all this info? Looks conspicuously like the writer is responding to a note. And then we have to wade through this to get to the “A” stuff, and that’s not good. Again, backstory problem. Why don’t you just let it go and get the script all the way and let the backstory issue fix itself, because it will. You are forcing this right now, it’s not funny and the seams are huge and it being in the first five pages makes it much worse……

……p.8) Instead of the one great joke, I think you can have 4 or 5 bits happen during this mini-match that would build the initial fascination and exposure of family and Teddy to the new doctor. Again, a proper, full introduction of this relationship to audience is called for, as this is the story of that relationship……

……p.16) So if Margaret is still a semi-cynical nursing student fully cognizant of her sexual power, placing her in the class simply to get the notes doesn’t seem to jibe with character. Conversation now seems diluted when Teddy has come to house prior to meeting mother. Rewrite and rewrite and rewrite. Your great screenplay has yet to reveal itself. We have to be patient and work hard. There’s only one turn in Hollywood and then it’s try again, and try again means write another script. So you might as well do all the rewriting on this one, because you will have to do it eventually……

……Flirting between Teddy and Margaret, whole coffee house scene, seems a little long. Is the pacing slow? If Teddy interacts with Margaret before this, then when he shows up at the house, they could have a different conversation, and it would actually be a progression, an escalation beat, of their relationship. By making her overtly sexual early, you have nowhere to travel. Arc. Arc. Arc. Audiences watch story to see and hear what happens. Something happens. That’s why we tell story……

……I think you should have a Teddy family scene earlier in movie, introducing all these characters. This will break up the movie earlier in terms of locations, making the picture bigger, in order to see the tension building between father and daughter. I also think the talk on the phone goes on TOO LONG. It’s got some funny stuff in it, but it’s murky. Cut it back to the gold only……

……p.60) This scene is floating and unrooted to narrative. By ramping us this trajectory early, this scene will involve and enmesh your audience to your narrative more completely. Should there be a payoff to the knee injury? Why? Does it matter?……

……I think the audience is charmed by Teddy through Margaret’s eyes to some degree. Consider the progression of Margaret’s relationship to Teddy as a real yardstick for where your audience is with Teddy……

……Genius. "I've been sitting in my house," The whole screenplay has to be that good. If ambition gets in the way of being honest with what we make, that's mediocrity and we cheat our audiences and ourselves. These ideas, this scene, is not a mistake. It is what this entire screenplay is capable of……