Write Your Screenplay Podcast

Pamela Cederquist, a staff writer and JK Studio student, discusses her experience writing for David Fincher's 'Mindhunter' and the importance of research. She shares insights into the process of joining the show, trusting the flow of writing, stepping into characters, and writing action scenes with visual impact. The podcast also explores the value of understanding without graphic details and the opportunity to work with experienced filmmakers like Fincher.

Mother!: Intellect vs. Intution as Screenwriting Tools By Jacob Krueger Before we get started with this week’s podcast, I want to take a moment to remind you that you still have a few days left to register for our Annual TV Writing Retreat, October 11-15 in Manchester Vermont. This is our biggest event of the year. We bring our entire faculty-- including Jerry Perzigian, former showrunner of Married With Children, The Golden Girls and The Jeffersons, our Pulitzer prize nominated TV Drama teacher Steve Molton, me, and of course the rest of our award-winning teachers--and we all head up to ITVfest, the second largest TV festival in the world. You get world-class TV writing workshops all morning, a VIP Content Creator pass that gets you into all the screenings, parties and events in the afternoon and evening, and a special one-on-one pitch consultation with one of our incredible teachers, so you can develop your show, get out there and pitch your heart out to everyone you meet. Plus, we team with the festival to get you hours of exclusive access to the producers, managers, and agents in attendance at our exclusive Secret Producer Pitch Party! It’s the best event of the year for TV writers, so I hope you can join us. You can find out more at our website: writeyourscreenplay.com/vermont. Hope to see you there!   This week we are going to be talking about Darren Aronofsky’s new film, mother! mother! is probably one of the most frustrating movies of the year. It is frustrating because of its ambition. It is a movie that shoots so big, and attempts to do so much-- filmically, thematically, visually, structurally, societally, politically, psychologically-- that you desperately want to love it. It’s a movie with a first half that’s nearly perfect (at least for those of us open to magical realism in films)-- an ending that should move you to tears… But it suffers from a sequence about ⅔ of the way through that makes you want to scream. And not for the right reasons. It’s a movie that, despite its profound message, is having a hard time connecting with the emotions of its audience-- that often elicits unwanted groans and laughs at what should be it’s most haunting and disturbing moments-- rather than the emotional and political response it’s shooting for.   I would like to suggest that what’s brilliant and what’s problematic in mother! both come from the same source, and can actually be boiled down to three really simple concepts. So, I would like to walk you through mother! today. I would like to walk you through what is brilliant about the film, and I would like to walk you through where the film stumbles. That way, if you are ever working on a screenplay whether it is an experimental movie that is breaking the mold like mother! or something much more traditional-- if these really common problems were to happen to you, then you can anticipate them and be aware of them and address them in an early draft, rather than try to explain them in interviews after the film is out. Now, I want to say that none of the issues I am going to raise with mother! have anything to do with the surrealism of the film. There are a lot of people who don’t like mother! because of what it is trying to do; there are a lot of people who don’t like mother! because it isn't living in the world of naturalism. They don’t like mother! because it isn't telling a traditional story. And if that is you, then it is important to understand that this is a taste issue, rather than an execution issue. And pretty much any film that gets made--if your film is good enough to deserve to get made--the truth is you are going to piss some people off. There are going to be some people who hate your film. And there are some people who hate mother! And then there are some people who love mother! despite its pretty obvious flaws. So what I want to do first is to separate the taste issue out. Separate the genre issue out.

War for the Planet of The Apes: Interview with Writer Mark Bomback By Jacob Krueger JAKE: Today I’m really excited to be hosting my friend Mark Bomback as a special guest on this podcast. As you probably know if you are a listener, Mark is the writer behind the latest two installments of the Planet of the Apes trilogy, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and War for the Planet of the Apes. As well as a host of other hugely successful blockbusters including Insurgent, Total Recall, The Wolverine and Live Free or Die Hard. First, I just want to say thank you for joining us. MARK: Thank you Jacob. JAKE: The first thing I am curious about is a lot of our writers work in collaboration with other writers, or are thinking about doing those kinds of collaborations. And you’ve had a couple of different kinds of collaborations on the Planet of the Apes Franchise with Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver on Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and then with Matt Reeves the director on War. I am curious about what those processes were like for you.  What is the difference between working with a partner, coming in to help out with a project like you did on Dawn or working on a script alone? MARK:  Well, you know the thing is, other than Planet of the Apes, I have actually never co-authored anything. And truthfully the only film of the two that I co-authored was the last one, War, which Matt and I truly wrote together from beginning to end. So, how I came onto the Planet of the Apes actually when Rise was heading into production, Rick and Amanda, who were the creators of Rise of Planet of the Apes were getting a little bit---I don’t even know how best to put it-- a little “written out.” It was a really, really intense pre-production, they were doing a lot of cutting edge things. There were just a lot of moving parts, and Rick and Amanda were also producers on the film. So they, along with the other producers, decided it would be great to get an extra set of eyes on this. And so I came on and did some pre-production, inter-production rewriting, and got to work with Rick and Amanda as producers. So, I would sort of vet what I was doing with them, but we didn’t actually write together. And, in fact, I don’t even get credit on Rise because the work was really surgical and had more to do with sort of finessing things. When Dawn came around, Matt Reeves wound up replacing Rupert Wyatt, who was the initial director of Dawn, and when Matt came in, he really had a lot of work to do. So, the studio asked if I would come on and help Matt sort of realize his vision. So, although Rick and Amanda had written a script for Rupert Wyatt that was the starting point of Dawn, when I came in again it was really me working as a writer alone-- actually that isn’t entirely true in that Matt and I were sort of collaborating-- but, Matt was really the director and I was the one doing the writing-- although as we sort of got deeper into production itself, because we had such a crazy timeframe on that movie, Matt and I really were almost functioning like co-writers as well. So, when it came time to work on War, we both agreed “let’s just actually, now that we have the luxury of time a little bit, let’s write it together from beginning, from the very, very start.” And so, it is really the only time I have ever truthfully co-written. And I wound up loving it. And since the screenplay work on War, I am back to writing by myself. And while I do enjoy having the freedom-- certainly in terms of my schedule and having a little more say as to where things are going, and not having to vet everything through my partner-- I really do miss having a partner. Matt and I became super close friends as well as colleagues while working on it. And, I, to this day will vet things with Matt on other things I am working on, and vice versa.   I really came to appreciate what it meant to have a writing partner. You know,

Annabelle: Creation &  The First 10 Pages of Your Script By Jacob Krueger This week we’re going to be discussing Annabelle: Creation, directed by David F. Sandberg and written by Gary Dauberman. Normally, since this is a screenwriting podcast, I don’t talk a lot about directors. But this is a case of a good director taking a struggling script, and turning into something far better than what exists on the page. I’m not saying Annabelle: Creation is a fully successful film. The truth is it’s a pretty cheesy horror movie, full of holes, gaps in logic, violations of its own rules, crappy dialogue… But it’s also a movie whose director understands the demands of its genre, and capitalizes on that understanding to turn a script that could have been a total flop into a finished product that not only squeaked to a 68% approval ratings on Rotten Tomatoes, but also has generated over $280 million at the box office for a reported budget of $15 million. Not a bad return on investment for the producers.   Now the truth is, Annabelle: Creation is a prequel to an extremely strong horror franchise, The Conjuring, with a dedicated fan base and a loyal following among critics and moviegoers alike. And the connection to that franchise, and the very strong script, The Conjuring, that launched it, certainly has a lot to do with its success. So if you’re a new writer, please don’t take Annabelle: Creation’s success in spite of its problems as a suggestion that all you have to do is hit your marks with your genre elements to succeed as a writer. For you to get noticed and get your script made and have that kind of success in this challenging business, the truth is you have to write better than the professionals. Because you neither have the connections in the industry, the track record on your resume, nor the fan base out there in your audience for producers to see the dollar signs unless your script knocks it out of the park. Nevertheless, studying Annabelle: Creation is not a bad return on investment for you as a writer. Because while you will certainly be frustrated by the way Annabelle: Creation fails to live up to what should be a very strong premise, you can also learn a ton about rewriting from the film. That starts with understanding the tools David F. Sandberg used to transform a weak script into a genre success. It means understanding the power of genre, and how to use it to your advantage, regardless of whether you’re writing a horror movie, action movie, romantic comedy, web series, or even a little indie drama. And it also means understanding how the writer, Gary Dauberman, fell into the most common trap in screenwriting and lost track of his own premise. So that you’ll know what to do if the same problem starts to happen to you. And it all comes back to one simple premise.   Screenwriting Rule #1: You’ve got to nail the  first 10 pages of your script! The first 10 pages in your script are the most important 10 pages in your script. And the first page of your script is the most important page of your script. Not your brilliant trick ending. Not that fabulous turn halfway through the movie. Not that moment that makes you laugh or cry or hurl on page 72. The first page. The first 10 pages. And why are these first pages the most important pages? For 3 very important reasons. #1 - The first 10 pages of your script are the only pages everyone is going to read! By the time your producer, coverage reader, A-list actor, director, manager, agent… hell even your great great great uncle who you’re begging to invest… reads the first page of your script, they are already making a decision about whether this script is actually worth reading. You either grab them, or you don’t. And by the time they get to page 10, if they even get that far, they’ve already made a decision about whether this script is actually for them-- if they’re going to read it, or skim it,

How To Write A Web Series By Jacob Krueger   Jake: This week we are on with Karin Partin, and we are going to be talking about Web Series, which is something I haven't talked about yet on the podcast. Karin teaches our Web Series Writing Classes here at Jacob Krueger Studio and has a lot to say about Web Series writing and producing. We’re going to be looking at Web Series from a creative point of view, and also talking about how you can use a Web Series and very little money to actually launch your career and get noticed-- how a Web Series can become not only a calling card, but actually something that brings you money or something that builds your career. So, Karin thank you so much for joining us. Karin: Yeah, Hi! Thank you for having me. This is exciting to be sitting in on the podcast. I know so many of my students are just huge fans of the podcast and listening to the podcast, so it’s very exciting to be on the podcast. Jake: When you think about Web Series writing, why do a Web Series? Why start with a Web Series? Karin: You want to make a Web Series to break into the industry. If you write a script, you can pitch that script to managers and agents for six months or a year. And then, you get that one yes or five yeses and all five of those managers and producers and agents are putting that script on their desk, and may take six more months to read that script. Once they love your script, let’s say of course you have the perfect script ever, it is the best script ever anyone has ever written and they love it, then it is going to take those people championing for you to get it made. And it can take a very long time and the chances of its momentum falling off is high. That is why it takes a thousand no’s and one yes to break into this industry. So if you make your own Web Series, you can send it to anyone you’ve ever met in the industry, and all of a sudden your chances just skyrocket of someone actually seeing your writing because it got made. You can just send it out and say “hey, here is my five minutes”. And the chances are much higher that they are going to see your work. And you can do it! You can make it affordable. You can make your Web Series affordable. That is the whole point: getting your work out there. it is a very short form content that lets you highlight your skills. So, if you can pull off character development and an A to B of storytelling so your character goes from point A to point B, they change in a very, very short amount of time. So, if you can change your characters in five minutes or less, people are going to be impressed. So it is a way to impress managers and agents and producers that you can do short form of storytelling, and that translates to long form storytelling very easy. If you can pull off a Web Series they will believe that you can write anything, because it is the most difficult thing to do: to tell a well-crafted, beautiful, impeccable story in five minutes or less. Jake: So, you feel it is a way of demonstrating a higher level of craft or a level of compression? Karin: Yes, making a Web Series that costs very little money with minimal characters in very few locations is constraint. And so, you want to be able to let these constraints work for you as a writer. And with all those constraints on your back as a writer, and you still pull off great storytelling, people are going to be excited about your writing. It used to be it cost you $50,000 to make a television pilot. Now, you can get a camera, you can shoot it with your iPhone and spend $500 or $50 if you have actor friends and you know somebody willing to cook for you for the day or the weekend. Then you can make your own Web Series. Jake: The other really beautiful thing about being a Web Series writer is that you are your own producer. So you don’t have the limitations of someone telling you, “hey I don’t really like this character,

The Big Sick: How To Adapt a True Life Story By Jacob Krueger This week we are going to be talking about The Big Sick by Emily V. Gordon and Kumail Nanjiani. I am excited to talk about The Big Sick not just because it was a successful film, but also because it allows me to talk about a topic that I have wanted to discuss for some time: How to adapt a story from your life. There is a wonderful scene in The Big Sick, one of the scenes that actually doesn’t get talked a lot. Kumail (for those of you who haven't seen the film) is a Pakistani-American Uber driver who has fallen in love with a white American girl. And in one of the really lovely scenes in their romance, he invites her to this terrible play that he has created about Pakistan. It is meant to be a one man show but it comes out more like an extremely detailed and dry history of Pakistan. The scene has a lot of wonderful little jokes for the audience. But the joke for the character is that Emily shows up for her boyfriend’s show and it is the worst thing ever, and everybody knows it is the worst thing ever, and now she has to pretend that it is good. If you are an artist and you have artist friends, you know what that experience is like. You know that there is often a desire, when that happens, to protect the person whose work we have gone to see: to tell them things are good that aren’t good, to protect their ego rather than their art. Emily, in the film, does actually a much more loving thing, actually a much more brave thing. She doesn’t trash the play, but she does tells Kumail the truth. She says, “I learned a lot about Pakistan, but I didn’t learn a lot about you.” And this sets up a beautiful structure in the The Big Sick, which is really a story about Kumail learning what it is to tell the truth.   In fact, in a way, it is a story about all these characters learning to tell the truth. Emily’s father, Terry, played by Ray Romano also has to learn how to tell the truth, how to not be a coward. What makes Emily’s mother, Beth, played by Holly Hunter, so wonderful is that she always tells the truth-- even if it means that she is going to attack a racist heckler in the middle of a performance. So all these characters are eventually going to go on a journey about telling the truth. And the biggest journey about telling the truth is Kumail’s journey. Kumail is a character who is afraid to tell the truth. Kumail is a person who is trying to please everybody in his life. And because he needs so badly to please, he isn't saying what is real. He has convinced his parents that he is going to accept an arranged marriage with a Pakistani woman, even though he isn't taking any of his potential dates seriously. He has convinced Emily that they are in a relationship, even though he doesn’t believe he is ever going to marry her because he is afraid of being disowned by his parents. And as an artist he isn't yet able to tell the truth with his writing. Ultimately, he is going to go on a journey in relation to his one man show, in which he learns to tell the truth about himself. And in that way earns his happy ending; he earns his happy ending by telling the truth. When we are adapting a true life story, our job, like Kumail’s job, is to tell the truth. And oftentimes we have a lot of different urges pulling against us. What is interesting is that Kumail and Emily’s story is based on a true story-- is based on their true story-- the true story of how they fell in love, how she fell into a coma and how, during the time that she was in that coma, he realized that he wanted to marry her no matter what his parents thought. So this is a movie based on a really beautiful true story. And like most true stories, at first glance we might think that it isn't enough to be a movie-- which is how a lot of us feel when we first write a true story. I remember the first class that I was hired to teach-- before I created the...

[spb_text_block pb_margin_bottom="no" pb_border_bottom="no" width="1/1" el_position="first last"]   From Little Miss Sunshine to Dead Poets Society: Writing a script with more than one main character. by Jacob Krueger   This week, we’re going to be talking about a whole bunch of movies, but they all have one thing in common. They all have more than one main character.   There’s a lot of debate about the question of whether new screenwriters should write scripts with only one main character, or whether it’s okay for them to write scripts with multiple main characters.   There are even some famous gurus who say that “multiplot” structures are just plain bad and that nobody should ever write them.   It’s a good thing nobody ever gave Robert Altman that advice, (or at least if they did that he never took it) or we would have missed out on a whole chapter of film history!   We’d also have missed out on a lot of other hugely successful movies, The Squid & The Whale, Little Miss Sunshine, Crash, The Shawshank Redemption, The Usual Suspects, The Godfather, Dead Poets Society, American Beauty, True Detective and the entire library of Quentin Tarantino.   And at the same time, there are genuine risks when we break point-of-view and start telling a story from the point-of-view of multiple main characters.   So what do you need to know about writing a script with more than one main character?   In general, if you stay with your main character, very little bad can happen to you.   If you stay with one character, very little bad can happen to you because you just have to focus on creating the journey of that character. Which is a far more intuitive process for most writers-- it feels more like our lives.   In my life, for example, I don’t know what my wonderful TV Writing teacher, Merridith, does when she goes home. I only know what she does here in front of me at the Studio. Unless I literally follow Merridith home, that part of her life will always be hidden from my view.   In my life, my experience of my relationship with Merridith happens only through my eyes. Only in what I get to see.   And so, when we follow only one character, what happens is it allows us to feel like we are watching the movie through their eyes. And this is natural for us structurally, in that we’re used to experiencing the story of our own lives in this way.   The other thing is that we end up with 95-105 pages that we get to dedicate only to one really specific journey. And that just allows us to dig deeper in one place, rather than digging shallowly in many places.   When we start following multiple main characters, our point-of-view starts to shift.   In narrative, they call it “omniscient point-of-view,” when suddenly we are sitting in the place of G-d, rather than sitting in the place of any single human being.   And this is not the way we’re used to experiencing our lives.   That doesn’t mean it can’t be a compelling experience. It can, especially if it connects to the theme of what you’re trying to write.   But if it’s happening for superficial reasons, rather than organic ones, there’s a good chance you’re going to run into trouble.   So, the real question is not if you should pull your audience, and yourself, out of the point-of-view of the main character, it’s why you are choosing to do so.   In less successful screenplays, we often get pulled out of the main storyline to follow another character so that the audience can learn a little bit of exposition.   In these cases, it’s often a manipulative technique by a writer who has not yet developed the craft to weave that exposition into the structure of her story.   If you’ve watched crappy action movies, you’ve seen this all the time. You’re following the main character, and then you suddenly pop out and follow the bad guy. And the bad guy isn’t doing anything interesting,

[spb_text_block pb_margin_bottom="no" pb_border_bottom="no" width="1/1" el_position="first last"] ATOMIC BLONDE Script Analysis: Guns are No Fun by Jacob Krueger This week we are going to be talking about Atomic Blonde by Kurt Johnstad. I would like to start this script analysis by talking about the way that I saw Atomic Blonde, because this was actually my first experience with 4DX. I went to a 9:15 screening and I am wondering, “Why am I spending $28 on this screening?” But it was the only screening that I could make. I show up, and I have no idea what to expect, and it’s not until I sit down that I realize the seats are on a platform that moves.   There are fans and lightning effects, and when it rains in the movie, it sprays water on you. There are little air bursts that hit you every time a gun goes off, and the seat will shake you or kick you in the back when a fight scene is happening. And basically, this is the worst and most distracting way that I have ever seen a film.       Rather than sucking you into the film, it actually shakes you out of the film. It reminds you that you are seeing a movie-- that you aren’t experiencing something real. And I am not telling you this to complain about 4DX, even though I think 4DX is a total nightmare… I am telling you this because oftentimes, as screenwriters, we make the mistake of inadvertently doing 4DX in our own screenplays. Rather than simply telling the story that we want to tell, simply pulling our audiences into our story in an organic way, we get so obsessed with all the bells and whistles that we end up distracting our audience from what makes our screenplay powerful. We get so obsessed with all the things that that are supposed to make it a “commercial” experience that instead of pulling our audience into the movie, instead of augmenting their experience, all those bells and whistles end up distracting from their experience, taking them out of the movie, shaking them out of the reality of the film.   If you’ve taken my screenwriting classes you have heard me talk at length about the idea of screenplay formatting as a way of hypnotizing the reader.   Ultimately what we are trying to do is to use formatting to capture the visual eye of the reader-- whether they are creative or not-- to allow our movies to play in the little movie screen of their mind. And bad screenplay formatting happens when we fail to do that-- when we either require the reader to supply their own creativity to make our screenplay cool or when we start shaking them with improper rhythm or with overly technical scene headings or with things that they can’t see or with dense action or with images that aren’t specific, that don’t play out exactly the way that we see them in the movie screen in our mind. Sometimes our action, the way we put it on the screen, the way we write our dialogue can be like those annoying jets of water and those annoying sprays of air and the shaking of the seats: they can shake us out of this world that we want to experience.     So we have spoken at length about the idea of how sometimes our formatting can become our 4DX, can become that thing that is supposed to augment but instead shakes us out of the experience of the movie. What we haven't talked about as much is the way that sometimes our ambition -- our impulse to complicate what could be a beautiful and simple experience-- can shake our audience out of what should be a really great story. And for me this is very much the experience of Atomic Blonde.   Atomic Blonde wants to be a Quentin Tarantino movie. And there is no doubt that to the extent Atomic Blonde succeeds, it succeeds because of its extraordinary fight sequences.   Whatever the flaws of the film-- and there are many-- those fight sequences are really impressive on a number of different levels. The first is that this writer is deeply aware that guns are no fun.

[spb_text_block pb_margin_bottom="no" pb_border_bottom="no" width="1/1" el_position="first last"] DUNKIRK PODCAST Dunkirk vs. Saving Private Ryan: What is Your Screenplay About? by Jacob Krueger This week we are going to be looking at Dunkirk by Christopher Nolan. On top of being an extraordinary cinematic experience, Dunkirk is a particularly interesting script to look at as screenwriters, because it breaks pretty much every rule that you’ve likely been told about screenwriting or about filmmaking in general, or certainly about the war movie genre. When we think about big budget war movies, we generally think about movies like Saving Private Ryan, movies about great heroism and winning the battle against incredible odds. And yet this is a war movie that (for the most part) isn't about winning but about losing. This is a war movie about a retreat, about a surrender, but also about the kinds of miracles that happen when people care about each other. This isn’t a typical Joseph Campbell Hero’s Journey about one great man, one great woman who saves the world. This is a movie about a lot of little individuals. Some of them are behaving bravely, and some of them are behaving cowardly. Some for their own survival, and some for the survival of others.   Dunkirk is a movie that flies in the face of every traditional notion of star-power and how it’s supposed to be used in a big budget feature. This is a movie with an American budget with no American actors and no American characters. In fact, it features an actor in a starring role that we have never seen in a major motion picture before-- who spends most of the movie, from the very first scene, simply running away! He’s not “Saving the Cat” or behaving in any of the courageous ways we’ve been taught our main characters are supposed to behave. Not trying to help other people, but trying to save his own life in whatever manner is possible. He’s a guy who will pretend to be a Red Cross worker in order to try to sneak onto the boat that is evacuating the wounded. And yet we are able to connect with this character, we are able to care about him; we are able to feel for him. This is a movie that stars Tom Hardy and sticks him-- for most of the film-- in the cockpit of a plane and behind a mask that obscures so much of his face that we can’t even tell it is him! That takes its biggest name star and hides him from the audience that cloaks him in anonymity. And though in some ways this is an inside joke-- a nod to the recurring trend of directors covering half the face of one of the best actors in the business in roles ranging from Bane to The Road Warrior-- it’s also a thematic decision -- one that captures the anonymity of real heroism. That evokes the memory of the thousands of forgotten heroes of World War II and countless other wars. Dunkirk is also a movie that ignores most of the standard rules of the war movie genre. This is a big budget war movie with firefights shot almost entirely from the point of view of the pilots. It’s a war movie in which planes don’t explode in spectacular fashion but rather disappear silently into the ocean. A movie in which fighter pilots are more concerned with running out of fuel than with bad-ass lines of dialogue. A movie in which we watch not from the perspective of an audience being entertained by the fireworks, but from the perspective of exactly what it feels like to be a fighter pilot in the middle of battle. It’s an action movie in which the “good guys” don’t always win, and in which the bad guys can actually shoot. Where there are no supervillains, but no super heroes either. Where the Nazi pilots are as anonymous, and as good at their jobs, as the British ones. It’s a movie which assembled the largest naval unit in film history, not for a spectacular battle sequence, but for a simple journey against the waves of the English Channel. A movie in which Battleships don’t participate in ...

[spb_text_block pb_margin_bottom="no" pb_border_bottom="no" width="1/1" el_position="first last"] Spider Man Homecoming Part 2 - Creating Unforgettable Characters & The Game of Screenplay Structure   In last week’s podcast we talked about writing a great antagonist by letting go of our need to see them as the bad-guy, who “antagonizes” the main character, and instead stepping into our antagonists as real human beings.   Because every character in your script believes that they are the hero of the story (just like every human being sees themselves as the hero of their story), to write a great character of any kind-- a character that actually lives and breathes--we need to see world through their eyes. And this begins by connecting to what our characters want.   And what’s exciting is that when we start to think about our scripts in this way, we not only find unforgettable characters, we also start to organically discover the exact structure we need to tell our stories.   In Spider-Man, Homecoming, what makes the character of the Vulture, Adrian Toomes (played by Michael Keaton) so compelling is that everything he does grows directly out of his simple human desire to provide for his family.   And you can see, if you look at the structure of Spider-Man: Homecoming, that this isn't just the formula for creating a great bad guy, it is actually a way of creating an entire cast of unforgettable characters, and shaping the journeys they all go on in the script.   Because every single one of these characters is really just a person with a really strong want and a really strong obstacle that forces them to reveal their really strong “how”—the way that they pursue the things that they want differently from everybody else.   And when we understand a character’s want in this way, it allows us not only to enjoy the drama, but also to feel like we are in on a joke. It allows us to laugh at these characters even as we feel for them-- not because the characters are begging for a laugh, but because they are being themselves in a funny way.   So let’s talk about Peter Parker.   Just like Adrian Toomes, Peter Parker starts the movie with his own clear priority. His own clear superobjective.   Peter Parker only wants one thing. Having returned from his adventure with the Avengers, the only thing he wants in the universe is to join the Avengers.   He wants to wear that Spider-Man outfit that Tony Stark has given him. He wants to tap into the full power of that Spider-Man outfit that Tony Stark has given him.   He wants to stop being treated like a kid and start being treated like an adult. He wants to stop solving little crimes and start solving the big ones. He wants to stop being the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man and become what he sees as a real superhero.   In fact he wants it so badly that he consistently makes really strong choices in relation to all the other things that he wants-- in relation to the way the other kids at school see him, in relation to his secret identity, in relation to his Aunt May, in relation to The Academic Decathlon Competition and even in relation to The Homecoming after which the movie is named, and his desperate desire to date the coolest, richest, most perfect girl in school, Liz.   Despite his desire to be with Liz, despite his desire to win The Academic Decathlon, despite the desire to be admired by his friends, despite his best friend Ned’s desperate desire for him to reveal his identity so he can stop being treated like a loser— even when Peter Parker wavers in his resolution in the face of the pressures of his daily life as a regular kid-- ultimately Peter Parker always chooses to be a superhero.     Even if it means that none of the other kids will ever take him seriously. Even if it means that he is going to have to ditch his friends for The Academic Decathlon,