No Payoff

I watched an okay movie last night.

The trailer was great. The premise was fine. The setup was excellent.

Unfortunately, I lost interest somewhere in the middle. Although I kept watching it, the ending left me feeling “blah”. There was no payoff.

I’m not going to name the movie. There are far too many movies like this.

It featured a couple of great actors, actors who gave extraordinary performances in other movies or series. The cinematography was good. I had no complaints with the audio. The editing wasn’t bad.

I blame the script.

For a joke to work, the punchline needs to pack a punch. The best setup isn’t going to make your audience laugh. The same is true for a screenplay. If the ending doesn’t work, it doesn’t matter how great everything else is.

Here’s the thing. It’s not easy to write a great screenplay. And not everyone can recognize a bad screenplay just by reading it. And to be honest, even bad screenplays can be made into movies that are good enough to make a lot of money.

Yesterday, I finished the first draft of a screenplay.

Like any first draft, it’s got a lot of problems. I’m hoping that some of the problems can be fixed during the process of re-writing it. But it has at least one thing going for it.

It has an ending that (mostly) works.