“Sex Tape” (cont’d): How to make a conceit big enough to work as a movie?
So the other day, I posted this about the latest spec script sale “Sex Tape”:
A married couple who get a night off from their kids, get adventurous and decide to spice up their lives by making a sex tape. When they wake the following morning, the tape is missing, and they must find out who took it and how to get it back.
Talk about a no-brainer. And that idea has been sitting in plain view for years and years. It’s a strong story conceit (couple makes a sex tape), conflict (lose the tape), goal (find the tape), and ticking clock (what if other people get hold of it first). That’s the stuff of a strong high concept.
There were a lot of comments. For instance, James said:
While everything Scott lists is spot on — there seems to be an innate problem raising the stakes with that premise.
Someone stole a sex tape. There is obvious conflict and a specific goal — but if the tape does leak, what are the main characters really losing? If anything?
How does this get more complicated in a manner that actually matters?
Ultimately, I don’t think their lives would be all that changed if the sex tape is leaked. At least not in the negative (the loss of the sex tape isn’t really a “bad thing.”)
Look what leaked sex tapes did for Kim Kardashin, Paris Hilton, Pam Anderson — if anything it HELPED their career.
If the whole story revolves around trying to get the tape back, it sounds like a huge dud of a film to me.
And Courtney said:
I have a feeling there are a ton of folks out there that have written a story similar to this…
Had the idea ready to go — 120 pages…
But their story was just not strong enough…
I have a feeling this Sex Tape story has been beat around plenty but this time…
The right person…
Found the right person…
Then made it happen with a great story…
With perfect timing.
The crap shoot we call…
Screenwriting.
Both James and Courtney are right: The premise has floated around Hwood over the years. The problem has likely been that no one could figure out how to make it big enough to be a movie. As Adam pointed out there was the premise to Road Trip:
Four friends take off on an 1800 mile road trip to retrieve an illicit tape mistakenly mailed to a girl friend.
But there the conceit of the sex tape is a device to instigate a road trip which is the real focus of the high concept. What about something similar but different, where the concept itself is wrapped up in a missing sex tape? It’s certainly big enough for an episode of TV, such as Season 4, Episode 7 of “The Larry Sanders Show”:
While rummaging through Hank’s desk, Phil finds a tape of Hank having sex with two women. Copies of the tape begin to circulate causing Hank to worry that he could lose his career.
But that’s TV. A movie has to be big.
So a brainstorming challenge for the GITS community: What would you do with the conceit — a married couple loses a sex tape — to make it a movie? Screenwriter Kate Angelo did the hard work and cracked a script resulting in a seven figure deal. What if you could roll back the clock three months and you had just came up with this idea: Where would you take the story to make it a killer spec script?