This week features a series from Uncle Jam on the most common scripts he encountered during his time as a Hollywood reader, as well as the lessons we can take away from them.
I went into Ford v Ferrari with my knives out.
In a vacuum, it looked perfectly fine. The trailer showed plenty of cars and people driving them fast, it had actors I’ve seen in other things I liked, it had globetrotting and racing and, on the whole, it seemed like a good ol’ fashioned early 2000s Best Picture movie. What’s not to love?
However, I was the lone grump in the theater who was expecting it to be terrible. At this point in this series, you’ve probably guessed why. F1 scripts didn’t flood my inbox nearly as much as the sports movies or the trio’s night outs. But I read way more of them than I ever wanted to, and at a certain point, you can’t help but get resentful.
The Screenplay
Unlike the other kinds of screenplays we’ve covered so far, F1 scripts don’t have a rigid narrative formula I encountered over and over again that we can critique. There are, however, similarities I saw in just about every one of them.
Generally speaking, these scripts take place in the ‘60s and the ‘70s. Generally speaking, the lead characters are real life personalities who were big in the F1 world or the Grand Prix. Names even an outsider might know like Enzo Ferrari, Mario Andretti, Jackie Stewart, and other famous racers, managers, and figures inside or adjacent to the formula one racing world. Generally speaking, these people will be portrayed as upper crust “ladies’ men” who slept around a lot and drank too much. You know… assholes.
The Danger Zones
As far as story, from a technical standpoint, there’s very little in the way of actual plot. Rather, these are character centered stories, and by “character centered stories” I mean “a bunch of dickheads driven by arrogance, ego, and pride who spend a lot of time antagonizing each other for no apparent reason.” At best, we get a plot where we start in a race, the American driver says something disrespectful to the Italian driver, the Italian driver tinkers with his car in some elaborate fashion that allows him to go faster than the American driver when they meet again, the Italian driver then antagonizes the American driver and the cycle repeats until the movie just kind of stops. At worst, the antagonism’s still there, but it plays no part in pushing the story forward. We have story beats, but no connective tissue between them.
You’d figure that the high stakes nature of the racing would add more drama to the proceedings, and indeed, the races and the crashes are often the best parts of these scripts. However, the problem is everything between the races. Fun, like any other emotion, needs to be earned. Sure, you’ve got fireballs and racing, but if I don’t care about any of the characters, than I’m not really engaged. You can have the most arrogant debonair driver on the planet die in the biggest car crash ever. It won’t matter if I don’t give a shit about him.
The Takeaway
Let’s be transparent for a second. Though I believe that any topic can be made interesting if the writer is talented enough to make me care, individual taste can be an obstacle. My reaction to these scripts could entirely have to do with the fact that I couldn’t care less about F1 racing or any of the people involved.
I mention this because a lot of these scripts get bogged down in the minutia of car maintenance and racing. That part I mentioned earlier where we’re tinkering with the car to make it go faster? It usually involves lots of detailed explanation of car parts and their function.
It’s one thing to add these details in the descriptions to communicate to the reader that you’ve done your research. (A welcome move, by the way, as long you don’t overdo it.) It’s another to devote real estate to these details instead of spending time developing the characters and the story. If you’re a fan, these scenes could work for you. If you’re not, then they’re torture.
At the end of the day, the real problem with most of these scripts is complacency. Did I end up hating Ford v Ferrari? No. I liked that it reduced the amount of douchebaggery, I liked how much work it put into its character development, and I think it found a way to make all the technical car elements approachable. However, I didn’t love it either because, like all the formula one scripts I read before it, it doesn’t really take any risks. For some, that’s fine. But if you’re looking to stand out, you’re going to have to try something new.