Screenplays by

Christian Blake

Are you looking for Christian's book about the Seven Moments? It has been moved to Seven Moments

Screenplay Writing / Analysis

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My advice for writers....

If you're considering writing screenplays for a living, my advice is simple: don't do it. It's an enormous waste of time, and your time and energy are better served elsewhere. Every year,  millions of screenplays get written but only a small fraction of those get produced, and they are usually produced/funded by the very same person (or company) who wrote it. Your chances of getting your screenplay sold/optioned/produced rank right up there with your chances of walking on the moon. If there is one universal truth about 'Hollywood', it's this: nobody knows what they are doing and, therefore, by default, nobody knows what they are reading either. You could write the next Braveheart or As Good As It Gets or The Godfather or Goodfellas and it still wouldn't get produced because so few people in the industry know how to properly evaluate a screenplay's entertainment value. The only person who should invest time into writing screenplays is the person who has the ability to either fund their own production or has the capacity to rally the troops and get a movie produced. For anyone else, writing a screenplay is a complete waste of time because, unfortunately, there's only a handful of people in the film industry who actually know what they are doing, and the chance of you getting your screenplay into their hands for a review is less than impossible . 

To further prove my viewpoint that nobody knows what the hell they are doing, let's look at the average Rotten Tomato rating of the past 10 movies of some of the highest paid actors of 2016 according to Forbes:

Dwayne Johnson (65 million for 2016), Average Rotten Tomato rating for last 10 movies: 64% audience rating

Jackie Chan (61 million for 2016), Average Rotten Tomato rating for last 10 movies: 44% audience rating

Matt Damon (55 million for 2016), Average Rotten Tomato rating for last 10 movies: 59% audience rating

Tom Cruise (53 million for 2016), Average Rotten Tomato rating for last 10 movies: 66% audience rating

Johnny Depp (48 million for 2016), Average Rotten Tomato rating for last 10 movies: 49% audience rating

Jennifer Lawrence (46 million for 2016), Average Rotten Tomato rating for last 10 movies: 67% audience rating

Ben Affleck (43 million for 2016), Average Rotten Tomato rating for last 10 movies: 59% audience rating

Vin Diesel (35 million for 2016), Average Rotten Tomato rating for last 10 movies: 68% audience rating

Melissa McCarthy (33 million for 2016), Average Rotten Tomato rating for last 10 movies: 58% audience rating

Shah Rukh Khan (33 million for 2016), Average Rotten Tomato rating for last 10 movies: 60% audience rating

Robert Downey Jr. (33 million for 2016), Average Rotten Tomato rating for last 10 movies: 79% audience rating

Akshay Kumar (32 million for 2016), Average Rotten Tomato rating for last 10 movies: 53% audience rating

(I only included audience ratings because critic's ratings are heavily influenced by political agenda / social engineering. The audience's opinion is all that matters when it comes to a movie's true entertainment value.)

If the above list of actors, with their abundant resources and industry connections, cannot consistently choose projects with amazing screenplays, what makes you think the first line of analysis for a production company (a $10 per hour script reader) has the ability to identify a quality screenplay?

You would think the actors in the above list would only choose to participate in movies that have top notch screenplays. They certainly have the money to produce anything they want, and they've earned the clout to say YES or NO. But based on the low overall audience ratings, either those actors deliberately chose to participate in subpar movies (doubtful) or, much more likely, they simply don't know how to properly analyze a screenplay for potential entertainment value (or maybe they just want to get paid and don't give a rat's ass whether the film is entertaining or not). To be fair, any actor that gets paid handsomely is no doubt surrounded by a team that helps him/her decide on which screenplay is best, so the fault of participating in a terrible movie isn't 100% the actor's fault. In my opinion, with the exception of Robert Downey Jr., all of the above listed actors need to assemble a more effective team of advisers.

After taking into consideration the averages of quite a few actors (regardless of earnings), anything in the mid 60's and up is a decent average. So, Jennifer Lawrence, Vin Diesel, Dwayne Johnson and Tom Cruise are doing much better than their peers when it comes to satisfying their audience. However, in my humble opinion, I think their averages should be much higher. There's really no excuse for participating in projects with weak screenplays. So any actor that's developed a name for themselves shouldn't have any problem selecting a worthwhile screenplay for production as low/high budget has nothing to do with audience appreciation (think American Beauty, El Mariachi, Primer). 

Great acting doesn't make for great movies even though most actors probably believe their acting chops are the reason why movies are successful. It's actually the other way around. Without a properly structured screenplay, the greatest performances go unnoticed. The screenplay is everything when it comes to a movie's chance for success. With that in mind, you would think that actors would do everything in their power to secure only the absolute best screenplays, but that isn't the case as 'Hollywood' continues to churn out terrible stuff, year after year. The amount of crap that hits the big screen these days amazes me. In fact, I won't invest my time into any theatrical release unless it's scored relatively high in audience opinion. So far, for 2017, I've only gone to the theater for three movies: Maudie, Wonder Woman, and Wind River. That's it. 90% Audience Rating is the low mark for me when it comes to going to the theater, and even then I'll take the time to read a little about the storyline before I plunk down cash for a ticket. The only other movie that I plan on seeing at the theater this year is Blade Runner 2049 and that's mostly because my brother and I were part of the crew that rebuilt the Bradbury in the early 90's. 

Successful, big screen entertainment is not random or accidental. Successful movies are highly organized stories that deliver relevant information in perfect doses over the course of 90 minutes. 

Here's a few more actors that need serious help selecting screenplays:

Nicolas Cage, Average Rotten Tomato rating for last 10 movies: 34% audience rating

Katherine Heigl, Average Rotten Tomato rating for last 10 movies: 41% audience rating

Hilary Swank, Average Rotten Tomato rating for last 10 movies: 52% audience rating

Art Imitates Life

...not the other way around. Movies that embrace some form of social engineering concept are doomed to fail from the outset because the audience will be unable to accept any storyline that contradicts their real life experience. You'll spot these movies relatively easy as the audience rating is dismally low while the critic's rating is inflated. One such movie is Haywire. The audience rating is 41% while the critics rating is 80%. The fundamental flaw in this story (and it's so big that it makes the entire movie just plain silly) is that a woman easily beats up a slew of men throughout the entire movie. That just doesn't happen in real life. Not ever. The smallest man will kick the crap out of any woman in a straight up fight about 99.9% of the time. This "you go girl" and "women are just as strong as men" nonsense ruins Haywire from the start and the audience isn't fooled one bit. In order for the audience to believe such a premise about a woman being physically superior to men, there must be a logical reason behind her unusual strength/ability (think Hanna or more recently Wonder Woman). Instead of showing the heroine competing with men through brute force (impossible to convey because it never happens in real life), feminist film maker's would be better off showcasing a woman's natural abilities instead of flaunting something that simply isn't there (nor ever will be in our lifetime). Ex Machina is a perfect example of showcasing a woman's natural ability to manipulate a man. It also shows how a woman can't compete physically with a man without basically taking a cheap shot to begin the fight (and using a weapon). The natural behavior of men and women in Ex Machina is far more realistic than in Haywire, and the audience rating clearly shows it.