Jeremy Svenson

I know of a former script coordinator who'd be a shoo in.

LA Life Hack: Wash your car when it rains!

It pre-softens that fine crust of urban detritus and saves our precious fluids.

FAVORITE OVERLY COMPLICATED PLOT
Dead Reckoning

What does The Entity do again? And who the heck is Gabriel to it? Don’t know, don’t care, movie was a blast!

HM: M:I I’ve watched the first film at least 40 times and I think I almost understand most of it!

So… what are your franchise faves?

9/fin

FAVORITE NEW CHARACTER
Ghost Protocol

Hello, Jeremy Renner and your beautiful, tortured backstory.

HM: MI III, who can even imagine Benji wasn’t in 2 of the movies? An essential addition, but it was the later movies that made even better use of Simon Pegg.

8/n

FAVORITE CHARACTER CALLBACK
Fallout

I’m living for that Michelle Monaghan emotional wrap up.

Nice try: Fallout’s the White Widow. Bring back Max, you cowards!!

7/n

FAVORITE MCGUFFIN
Mission: Impossible III

The Rabbit’s Foot, a weapon with the power to… eh, I’ll tell you tomorrow. — Peak J.J Abrams!

HM: Fallout. You can never go wrong with a nuke!

6/n

FAVORITE MASK REVEAL
Mission: Impossible 2

Samp brings a gagged Ethan to Ambrose who kills him… only to realize Ethan is really Samp and Samp is Ethan! (This movie also gets award for MOST masks—woo boy!)

HM: Rogue Nation, Ethan as head of MI6 fools both Prime Minister & Alec Baldwin.

5/n

FAVORITE VILLAIN
Mission: Impossible III

Phillip Seymour Hoffman nailed the twisted, sadistic Davian so well.

Honorable mention: The spicy tuna hand roll that chased Ethan’s motorcycle in Fallout (I can not take credit for this joke, it was a tweet I saw years ago andlives free in my brain)

4/n

FAVORITE ACTION SEQUENCE
Dead Reconing

The falling train cars!! Brilliant use of repetition to escalate the stakes, I wish that train had 200 cars!

Honorable mention: Rogue Nation’s opening — Ethan’s not in the plane? He’s on the plane!

3/n

FAVORITE HEIST SEQUENCE
Mission: Impossible

Gotta go OG on this with stealing the NOC list from CIA HQ. It created such a fun template often imitated (I’m looking at you, Charlie’s Angels), rarely matched.

Honorable mention: Rogue Nation’s liquid cooled data vault.

2/n

In honor of Mission: Impossible The Final Reckoning opening weekend, here are my franchise favorites — alove letter to these films that have brought me joy and thrills for nearly 3 decades.

Feel free to chime in with your faves, as well!

1/n

Or 3 days of picking the *perfect* font on the title page, for me!

A fun game I play watching #TheLastofUs season 2 is:

How few days did they manage to schedule Catherine O’Hara for this episode?

Implement a 100% tariff, and ruin a movie:

“Twice Upon A Time In Hollywood”

Final Draft 13 will not let me write the word “gorilla” without automatically changing it to “guerrilla” and it’s making this scene about an African jungle expedition impossible to write!!

Can anyone else check if this happens on your machine (I’m on a Mac)? It’s the only app that does this to me.

“Dear valued client(s)” is a great way to start an email to let your client(s) know how little you value them.

Selling an item on Facebook Marketplace is 2 weeks of responding “Yes” to “Is this still available?” messages until you finally take the thing to Goodwill.

Repost with a movie you know all the words to.

When it comes to my screenwriting advice, I'm simply trying to help writers avoid that confusion.

Because there are tradeoffs to breaking "rules," and in my opinion, if you're going to break a rule, it's better that it be a choice than an accident.

#scriptsky

4/4

If I take a bowling ball, put it on a pedestal, and call it a "painting," who's to say I'm wrong? (Certainly not Marcel Duchamp!)

But if I put that bowling ball in a gallery that sells paintings, I should not be confused if nobody wants to buy it.

3/n

Now, "rules" can be broken (especially in art!), but it's to an artist's detriment if they don't understand that's what they're doing.

For example, the "rules" of a painting are that it's made of paint on a 2D surface.

2/n

Hey Newt, I appreciate the engagement (and intro to the Mumblecore movement!). Here's where I'm coming from when I give screenwriting advice :

I think we'd both agree that art should have no limits. But every type of art has certain cultural and societal expectations — let's call them "rules."

1/n

If you enjoyed my TED Talk, I post a new screenwriting tip every week and really appreciate the likes, replies, reposts, and follows that help spread the word!

#Scriptsky

INDECISIVE and RELUCTANT characters make for weak protagonists.

So write a character who WANTS something with the same fiery passion you want your reader to feel about entering a bidding war for the rights to your script!

🧵9/9

a man says just when i thought i was out in a kitchen Alt: Scene from Godfather, Michael Corleone says: "Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in."

But isn’t Michael Corleone RELUCTANT to join the “family business” in THE GODFATHER?

Yes! But that’s because it’s the OPPOSITE of his want.

He WANTS to escape the family business and he’s not reluctant about that, he’s just thwarted and ultimately fails.

🧵8/9

Scene from Romancing the Stone: Joan, lost in the jungles of Colombia, looks at her busted shoes and says "These were Italian"

In ROMANCING THE STONE, Joan Wilder gets a call that her sister was kidnapped and has to go to Colombia with the ransom.

She doesn't want to go to Colombia and complains the whole way (discomfort!), but she still does it because her WANT is to save her sister, and nothing will stop her.

🧵7/9

But don’t confuse “reluctance” with “discomfort.”

RELUCTANCE in a character is BAD — they hesitate and resist moving forward.

DISCOMFORT in a character is GOOD — your character does things that push their boundaries.

🧵6/9

a gold robot says " this is madness " in a movie scene Alt: C-3PO running away says " this is madness" from Star Wars

#2: The RELUCTANT protagonist

If your protagonist “just wants to go home!” and the only reason they can’t is because they’re being dragged along by others, maybe you’ve chosen the wrong character to be your protagonist!

There’s a reason C-3PO isn’t the lead of STAR WARS.

🧵5/9

If you’re writing the kind of story where your character turns down the thing they thought they wanted at the end, make sure the question in your reader’s mind is not: Does the character even want this or not?

The question should be: Will they still want it once they’ve gotten it?

🧵4/9

a woman is sitting in a car with the words `` everybody wants to be us '' written on the screen . Alt: Miranda Priestly says `` everybody wants to be us '' in The Devil Wears Prada

By the end, sometimes a character has figured out that what they REALLY wanted was something totally different. (THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA, WALL STREET)

That’s growth — that’s great!

But up to that point, they need to THINK they know what they want and ACTIVELY pursue it.

🧵3/9