Save the Cat! (3 page)

And concentrate on writing one sentence. One line.

Because if you can learn how to tell me "What is it?" better, faster, and with more creativity, you'll keep me interested. And incidentally, by doing so before you start writing your script, you'll make the story better, too.

THE LOGLINE FROM HELL

I talk to lots of screenwriters, I've been pitched by experts and amateurs, and my question when they prematurely drift into the story of their movie is always the same: "What's the one-line?" Oddly, this is often the last thing screenwriters think about when writing a script. Believe me, I've been there. You're so involved in your scenes, you're so jazzed about being able to tie in that symbolic motif from
The Odyssey,
you've got it all so mapped out, that you forget one simple thing: You can't tell me what it's about. You can't get to the heart of the story in less than 10 minutes.

Boy, are you screwed!

And I personally refuse to listen.

It's because I know the writer hasn't thought it through. Not really. Because a good screenwriter, especially anyone writing on spec, has to think about everyone all down the line, from the agent to the producer to the studio head to the public. You won't be there to "set the mood," so how are you going to get strangers excited? And getting
them
excited is Job One. So I cut writers off at their FADE IN: because I know everyone else will too. If you can't tell me about it in one quick line, well, buddy I'm on to something else. Until you have your pitch, and it grabs me, don't bother with the story.

In Hollywood parlance it's called a
logline
or a
one-line.
And the difference between a good one and a bad one is simple. When I pick up the trades and read the logline of a spec or a pitch that's sold and my first reaction is "Why didn't 7 think of that?!" Well... that's a good one. At random I'm going to select a few recent sales (from my Web source:
www.hollywoodlitsaIes.com
) that made me jealous. They're in my genre, family comedy, but what we can learn from them crosses comedy, drama, whatever. Each of these was a big, fat spec sale in the six-to-seven figure range:

A newly married couple must spend Christmas Day at each of their four divorced parent's homes — 4
Christmases

A just-hired employee goes on a company weekend and soon discovers someone's trying to kill him —
The Retreat

A risk-averse teacher plans on marrying his dream girl but must first accompany his overprotective future brother-in-law — a cop — on a ride along from hell! —
Ride Along
(Please note: Anything "from hell" is always a comedy plus.)

Believe it or not, each of these loglines has the same things in common. Along with answering "What is it?" each contains four components that make it a sale.

What are those four components?

Well, let's investigate...
the logline from hell!

ISN'T IT IRONIC?

The number one thing a good logline must have, the single most important element, is: irony. My good friend and former writing partner, the funny and fast-typing Colby Carr, pointed this out to me one time and he's
IOO%
correct. And that goes for whether it's a comedy or a drama.

A cop comes to L.A. to visit his estranged wife and her office building is taken over by terrorists —
Die Hard

A businessman falls in love with a hooker he hires to be his date for the weekend —
Pretty Woman

I don't know about you, but I think both of these loglines, one from a drama, one from a romantic comedy, fairly reek of irony. And irony gets my attention. It's what we who struggle with log-lines like to call
the hook,
because that's what it does. It
hooks
your interest.

What is intriguing about each of the spec sales I've cited above is that they, too, have that same ironic touch. A holiday season of supposed family joy is turned on its cynical head in the 4 C
hristmases
example. What could be more unexpected (another way to say "ironic") for a new employee, instead of being welcomed to a company, to be faced with a threat on his life during

The Retreat?
What Colby identified is the fact that a good logline must be emotionally intriguing, like an itch you
have
to scratch.

A logline is like the cover of a book; a good one makes you want to open it, right now, to find out what's inside. In identifying the ironic elements of your story and putting them into a logline, you may discover that you don't have that. Well, if you don't, then there may not only be something wrong with your logline — maybe your story's off, too. And maybe it's time to go back and rethink it. Insisting on irony in your logline is a good place to find out what's missing. Maybe you don't have a good movie yet.

A COMPELLING MENTAL PICTURE

The second most important element that a good logline has is that you must be able to see a whole movie in it. Like Proust's
madeleine,
a good logline, once said, blossoms in your brain. You see the movie, or at least the potential for it, and the mental images it creates offer the promise of more. One of my personal favorites is producer David Permut's pitch for
Blind Date:
"She's the perfect woman — until she has a drink." I don't know about you, but I
see
it. I see a beautiful girl and a date gone bad and a guy who wants to save it because... she's the one! There's a lot going on in that one-line, far more than in the actual movie, but that's a different subject altogether. The point is that a good logline, in addition to pulling you in, has to offer the promise of more.

In the above examples for new spec script sales, we even see where each film begins and ends, don't we? Although I haven't read more than the one-line for
Ride Along
, I think this movie will probably take place in one night, like
After Hours.
That actually goes for each of those examples. All three loglines clearly demarcate a time frame in which their story takes place: Christmas Day, the weekend of a corporate retreat, and in the case of
Ride Along
, a single night.

In addition, the
Ride Along
example offers an obvious comic conflict as opposites face off over a common goal. It will take a naive, scaredy-cat teacher and throw him into the crime-ridden world of his brother-in-law, the cop. This is why "fish-out-of-water" stories are so popular: You can see the potential fireworks of one type of person being thrust into a world outside his ken. In that one set-up line a whole story blooms with possibilities.

Does your logline offer this? Does giving me the set-up of your comedy or drama make my imagination run wild with where I think the story will go? If it doesn't, you haven't got the logline yet. And I'll say it again:
If you don't have the logline, maybe you should rethink your whole movie.

AUDIENCE AND COST

Another thing a good logline has, that is important in attracting studio buyers, is a built-in sense of who it's for and what it's going to cost.

Let's take
4 Christmases
for example. I'll bet they're going after the same audience that
Meet The Parents
and its sequel
Meet the Fockers
found. Both of these are medium-cost,
four-quadrant pictures
that seek to attract the broadest possible audience. From the elements I see inherent in the
4 Christmases
pitch, it's what the writers are trying for. They're going to get two twenty-something stars to pull in the core target — young people — and they're going to stunt cast the parents' roles with stars the older crowd likes. Can we get Jack or Robin or Dustin? Well, sure! Look how well De Niro did in
Meet The Parents!

I also know from the logline that the movie's not expensive. Sure there may be a car chase or two and a Christmas tree fire (I'm guessing) but basically it's a
block comedy
— so called because it lakes place... on the block. There are few "company moves" where cast and crew have to travel. It's cheap. If I'm an executive who's looking for a general audience, medium budget (depending on the stars) Christmas perennial, this sounds just about perfect for my needs. I know what I'm dealing with in terms of audience and cost.

Send it over!

And someone obviously did.

That's a whole lot to ask from one lousy line of description, don't you think? But it's right there.

Does your logline contain that kind of information?

A KILLER TITLE

Lastly, what is intriguing about a good logline must include the title. Title and logline are, in fact, the one-two punch, and a good combo never fails to knock me out. Like the irony in a good logline, a great title must have irony
and
tell the tale. One of the best titles of recent memory, and one I still marvel at, is
Legally Blonde.
When I think about all the bad titles it could have been —
Barbie Goes To Harvard, Totally Law School, Airhead Apparent
— to come up with one that nails the concept, without being so
on the nose
that it's stupid, is an art unto itself. I am jealous of that title. A good sign!

My favorite bad title ever, just to give you an idea of what doesn't work for me, is
For Love or Money.
There've been four movies with that title that I know of, one starring Michael J. Fox, and I can't tell you the plot of any of them. You could probably call every movie ever made
For Love or Money
and be right — technically. It just shows how un-daring a generic title can be and how something vague like that kills your interest in paying $10 to see it.

One of the key ingredients in a good title, however, is that it
must
be the headline of the story. Again I cite 4
Christmases
as an example. While it's not a world-beater, it's not bad. But it does the one thing that a good title must do, and I'll highlight it because it's vital that you get this:

It says what it is!

They could have called 4
Christmases
something more vague, how about
Yuletide?
That says "Christmas," right? But it doesn't pinpoint what this particular Christmas movie is about. It doesn't say what it is, which is a movie about one couple spending four different Christmases with four different sets of families on the same Christmas day. If it doesn't pass the Say What It Is Test, you don't have your title. And you don't have the one-two punch that makes a great logline.

I admit that often I have come up with the title first and made the story match. That's how I thought up a script I went on to co-write and sell called
Nuclear Family.
At first all I had was the title, then I came up with the ironic twist. Instead of nuclear as in "father, mother, and children" the way the term is meant, why not nuclear as in "radioactive." The logline became: "A dysfunctional family goes camping on a nuclear dumpsite and wakes up the next morning with super powers." With the help of my writing partner, the quick-witted and jet-setting Jim Haggin, we fleshed out that story and sold the script in a bidding war to Steven Spielberg for $1 million. Our title and logline met all the criteria cited above: irony, promise of more, audience and cost (four-quadrant, with special effects, not stars), and one that definitely said what it is.

It's a movie I
still
want to see, if anyone's listening.

YOU AND YOUR
"WHAT
IS IT?"

All good screenwriters are bullheads. There, I said it.

But I mean it in a
nice
way! Because if there's anyone who understands the occasional arrogance of the screenwriter, it's
moi.
To be a screenwriter is to deal with an ongoing tug of war between breathtaking megalomania and insecurity so deep it takes years of therapy just to be able to say "I'm a writer" out loud. This is especially so among the spec screenwriting crowd I like to hang with. We come up with our movie ideas, we start to "create," we SEE it so clearly, that often by the time we're writing that sucker, it's too late to turn back. We're going to bullhead our way through this script no matter what anyone says. But I am suggesting that you say "whoa" to all that. I'm proposing that before you head off into your FADE IN: you think long and hard about the logline, the title, and the poster.