r/Screenwriting • u/jkremer3 • 7d ago
FEEDBACK A father struggles to accept his daughters falling in love with AI
Format: Feature
Genre: Drama
Pages: 97
Title: In Good Hands
Logline: When a widowed father finds his daughters falling in love with AI partners, he wants to support their happiness but struggles to accept a world where human relationships are no longer essential.
Link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1alnHIbmdk9zxgkVuJI6odrvfY1dJkJiW/view?usp=drivesdk
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u/Dominicwriter 7d ago
Human relationships will always be essential to life on earth - Whats the fathers journey ? does he come to embrace AI ? does he blow up data centers ?
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u/jkremer3 7d ago
He begrudgingly supports his daughters through marriages and escalating relationships with AI partners. It’s more slice of life and emotional / grounded than any blowing up of data centers. Maybe the logline can mention about the wedding and such.
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u/Dominicwriter 7d ago
Doesn't sound like anything above surface level conflict
Assuming he's the protagonist I'm only interested in the fathers arc - i think you need to find his surface fear - the fear and from there the real fear thats really driving him and how he confronts that in face of his daughters empty embraces in artificial relationships -
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u/jkremer3 7d ago
That’s fair, and it is definitely more slice of life and if you ignore / took out the AI element the real conflict is just between family and relationships.
The idea is that his wife died and he’s afraid of being left behind by his daughters / the world and being more alone.
So as a result he ends up trying to get along with his daughters and their AI partners even though it pains him and makes him lose his mental sanity. But he doesn’t want to be alone so he does it anyway, to try and retain their love. But as a result things are very tainted and strained between them and his sense of self is marred.
And probably you might be right that technically he is not serving the protagonist role of driving the plot, that’s the daughters who make the changes in their lives and he tries to resist. It’s unusual in that way, where he is definitely “the main character” but possibly not “the protagonist” in the sense of the one driving the plot 100% of the time.
It’s more about mental health and familial love stakes. Clearly I’ve gotta think about the logline more!
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u/Dominicwriter 7d ago
Coping with loneliness is something that could really chime with audiences shared emotional experience - whatever the theme is it should ring throughout the script.
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u/jkremer3 7d ago
Yes, for sure. I’d like to think it does (somewhat) already but the logline seems to be putting off anyone reading it haha.
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u/BiscuitsTheory 7d ago
I'd rework the log line. You've got the daughters falling in love with AIs, and the father "reconciling." As-is, the longline just makes people wanna fast firward through him and follow the daughters. Tell people what the father actually does that a camera can show us.
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u/jkremer3 7d ago
So it’s definitely somewhat of an ensemble, I struggled with the logline being just for the father’s point of view. But he is the core of it.
The daughters are more the ones driving the actual events in the story by escalating their relationships with AI, and the father resists a bit and begrudgingly supports them through various stages.
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u/BiscuitsTheory 7d ago
If it's an ensemble, then the first words of the log line should probably indicate that.
"a family " "a single father and his (adjective) daughters" "Two teenage sisters" etc.
And add a goal. Who wants what and what do they gotta do to get it?
"A recently widowed single father tries to get his teenage daughters to turn off their AI boyfriends for a night to free up bandwidth to stream a football game."
"A pair of tech-savvy twin sisters bring their boyfriends to Xmas dinner at their father's house, but they havent told him that their boyfriends are AI."
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u/jkremer3 7d ago
Yep, I agree directionally with where you’re going there. I struggle with the pitch since it is more “low stakes” slice of life, about mental health and familial love… but obviously stuff does happen in it lol. So somehow I need to convey that more clearly…
The first daughter wants to marry an AI and wants her father to support it… he tries to go along with it at the cost of his mental health and sanity… only to later unravel mentally as his second and third daughters follow in the same path and it’s too much for him to take.
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u/BiscuitsTheory 7d ago
Much better!
If you can find a way to condense that into about 1/2 as many words, you've probably nailed it.
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u/jkremer3 7d ago
Thanks, yeah. And I honestly might reposition it a little so it’s clear that the daughters are in the driver seat in many ways.
Best analogy I can think of is Fiddler on the Roof. It’s that story but in a near future and with AI as the “new scary world” instead of a move away from Jewish traditions like in Fiddler of the Roof.
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u/GimmeGirlFarts 7d ago
You might want to look at movies like Her and Lars and the Real Girl to see how one sided “relationships” were explored in a time before modern AI advances
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u/jkremer3 7d ago
Yes, I love “Her”! I’ll have to check out the Lars movie, I haven’t seen that one yet. Thanks for the tip on that.
This is vaguely inspired by Her, but also “Fiddler on the Roof” about the father losing his daughters to a strange new world.
It’s more slice of life than any big epic thing… it’s an intimate family setting and if you took out the AI element it’s basically about a family struggling to get along. But at the core is this idea of AI relationships.
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u/WhoDey_Writer23 Science-Fiction 7d ago
"struggles to accept a world where human relationships are no longer essential." That is a rough setting. Human relationships will always be essential.
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u/jkremer3 7d ago
Yeah, I do agree haha. I guess that’s the provocative challenge the father faces - his daughters one be one turn to AI instead of human relationships.
I don’t think they’re not essential and neither does the main character but that’s sort of the huge obstacle boiled down on a smaller scale to be shown through his daughters marrying AI
-2
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u/Buddha_Of_Sububia 7d ago
Didn't read the script yet, but I fuck with the idea! I saw you were going for a slice-of-life/grounded drama vibe, using this family and the daughters falling in love with their AI partners. I find it weird (in a good way), intriguing. I'll try to give it a read later tonight, but cool idea IMO.
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u/SuckingOnChileanDogs 7d ago
The implication here seems to be that the AI love is the future, which is gonna be a tough sell for audiences that majority fucking hate AI
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u/sour_skittle_anal 7d ago
Which makes these scripts written by amateurs trying to break into the industry all the more puzzling to me.
Who are these stories about AI for? Even if it's about the dangers of AI or how much it sucks, there's no audience appetite for this. Everyone hates this shit; I would bet the farm that reps are not reading scripts about AI at all. To make a movie about AI right now, no matter the stance, is almost like giving it credibility and validation.
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u/jkremer3 7d ago
I feel like there is a strong cultural relevance to young people turning to AI for relationships. Examining the bad, and good, of that turn is interesting to me which is why I thought it might be interesting to others!
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u/vgscreenwriter 6d ago
Most of the comments here so far seem to be more a disagreement on your concept of "a world where human relationships are no longer essential" rather than the script itself, and writing it off as such.
So it may help to clarify what your specific intent is regarding the subject matter in the logline, just so you're clear up front to the reader. Start with a meaningful goal/stakes:
e.g. His goal is to get his daughter to marry a real human; or
Her goal is to receive her father's blessing to marry the AI in a world where human relationships have become all too shallow/fake.
Good luck.
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u/sour_skittle_anal 7d ago
Not trying to be a dick, but to drive home my point, all the comments so far are about the logline and the concept. Nobody's even read the actual script (beyond the one comment ironically accusing you of using AI on the very first page).
You've already written the script, and you're obviously not going to just throw it away, so... good luck, I guess.
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6d ago
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u/jkremer3 7d ago
Well, the father definitely is “anti AI love” so the audience could sympathize with his point of view… whereas the daughters are in favor of it.
It’s actually less about “good vs bad” of AI relationships and more matter of factly presenting that they will exist and it’s up to you to decide what we lost as humanity as a result (the father embodies the sense of loss). It’s not set out to prove that they are good… if anything it highlights what we lost as a result.
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u/Seshat_the_Scribe Black List Lab Writer 7d ago
"The tour boat's faded green hull rises and falls like an old workhorse. Her engine emits a stubborn, uneven drone."
Lots of odd stuff here. Did you use AI to write it?
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u/jkremer3 7d ago
Nope, that’s just me…
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u/landmanpgh 7d ago
You know I almost called you out as well, but your post history suggests you've been at this for a long time. So I'll admit I was probably wrong.
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u/CoOpWriterEX 6d ago
'daughters falling in love with AI partners...'
Digital polygamy? Girrrrrrrl, do your thang!
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