An excerpt from my script review for Ingrid Goes West which will be available 08/28/17:
2.) Plot Stability
Starting off, I don’t get the whole “Instagram Celebrities” thing.
Personally, I use Instagram for marketing purposes for one of our side businesses (and on a single occasion contacting an acquaintance which I will no longer be doing thanks to this script).
Putting it in a screenwriting analogy, we can relate it to the contest route, in that we’re hoping to hit the lottery and be discovered, so too are these “celebrities” hoping to find a shortcut to fame and justification of their somewhat off putting lives.
(Again, there are always exceptions, just know that the odds are against you.)
The issue I took away from this script wasn’t the overall plot, but how things wrapped up.
Ingrid has a serious issue, finding random strangers on social media and wanting to become best friends with them.
It was creepy, and made for an interesting story, but she never really deals or gets help with this problem.
In fact, the ending seems to advocate for attempting suicide as a way to gain minor internet popularity.
What a horrible lesson.
As much fun as was had at Ingrid’s expense, she is a fictional character, but there are probably people out there( most of them still fresh to adulthood and figuring out who they are) dealing with issues similar to this, and we want to show them that leaving an online suicide note leads to followers?
That’s shitty.
I had similar reservations during my Jem script review, that implied uploading a video to YouTube would make you an instant hit worldwide, but the worst idea implied there was that you could cut corners to becoming famous.
This though…it leaves a bitter taste in my mind as I finished it, because this new technologically savvy generation seems extremely dependent on social media and how others interpret their lives.
(Part of me really hopes the script was changed for the film, giving some sort of “come to Jesus” moment for Ingrid where she at least starts down a path of feeling okay with her life.)
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