Jun 03

Comedy Screenwriting: Set Pieces

“Stories are about fucked up people.” – Judd Apatow

When I first started writing scripts, in the early ’90s, I was really into Buster Keaton and The Marx Brothers. Which is great from a comedy history/geek perspective, but not so much when it comes to screenwriting.

Keaton’s philosophy was figure out the beginning, and the end, and the middle will take care of itself. Spoiler alert, it will if you’re Buster Keaton. The Marx Brothers on the other hand, used story as a springboard for their shenanigans. The story would stop for Chico to play the piano, Harpo to play the Harp and chase women, and would stop for Groucho to be Groucho.

So I had to learn how to write a screenplay for the present day.

But I think there can still be room for a little comedic detour, as mentioned in my last post.

I think it depends on the style of comedy.

I think ones that require stronger character development tend not to have jokes that interrupt the plot, but instead are borne out of it.

A cartoon-y comedy (early Will Ferrell and early Adam Sandler), can have jokes that interrupt the plot.

From what I’ve read (I forget the source right now) Broadly, you need a minimum of 1 joke per page.

And then there’s the comedy set pieces. The definition of a set piece:

“a sequence or scene with escalated stakes, and production values, appropriate to the genre”. 

Here are notes I took from interviews with Tim Dowling (Pixels, Role Models, Just Go With It) & Joe Nussbaum (dir. American Pie Presents: Naked Mile).

They suggest 3-6 major set pieces.

Douglas J. Eboch (Sweet Home Alabama story writer) suggests 5-8 set pieces.

Judd Apatow (writer, director, and producer of Knocked Up, etc) suggests every 10 minutes or 10 pages.

John Hamburg (Meet the Parents franchise) doesn’t focus on set pieces. He just writes the scene. He also doesn’t believe in plot points having to be on specific pages. But that’s a post for another day.

Whichever way you look at it, it’s all about how the comedy continuously builds. E.g.: Meet the Parents (dinner/urn), There’s Something About Mary (zipper), American Pie (pie scene).

But, again, for screenplays that require stronger character development, the set pieces don’t interrupt the plot.

This then make me wonder if a comedy screenplay should have frequent  jokes per page and set pieces, how would I, or another screenwriter ensure the humor remains fresh and doesn’t become repetitive?

I guess these aren’t  strict rules, they’re more of a guideline. As I said, John Hamburg doesn’t follow these rules.

Perhaps a way to think about it is the frequent joke suggestion is an average. So maybe in reality, there can be 3 jokes on a page, and 1 on the next. That way you can break up the rhythm and the audience doesn’t come to expect it.

It can also be varied by the type of jokes. Not everyone is going to be strong. Like stand-up, you need to open strong and end strong. And then the middle can vary, like music.

Sometimes, a character could make a sarcastic quip, or say something out of place, or the joke could be visual, or maybe physical. It all depends on the character and plot.

For example, in The Hangover, the sarcastic asshole comments Bradley Cooper’s character says, wouldn’t work coming out of Zach Galifianakis’s character’s mouth. They’re two different archetypes. Cooper is the leader/straight man, Galifianakis is more of the comic role, from a traditional double act, sometimes described as a cloud-cuckoo lander. Although they are (minus Doug) a comic trio similar to The Marx Brothers or The Three Stooges.

Jun 02

Comedy Screenwriting: Story vs. Jokes

“In that moment what would you say? Forget the joke. What would you say?” – Garry Shandling.

When it comes to comedy screenwriting, sometimes (but not all the time by any means) story can take a backseat to spectacle or humor. Whether or not it should I think comes down to personal taste. 

So I wonder to myself, what separates a good screenplay from a great one? Is it just having a strong story, or is there another ingredient that elevates it further?

I think there has to be a good marriage between story and plot, and there has to be specificity in the story, good detail. Sticking with the comedy example, as that’s my genre, I don’t think you need original jokes necessarily. You need original execution.

In comedy, forever, we have had a chair being pulled away from another person and them falling down. In Neighbors (2014), we had a fresh take on this joke. Seth Rogen’s character sits on a chair in his office, but Zac Efron’s character has concealed an airbag from a car on it. Once Rogen sits, he’s shot into the ceiling, before crashing back onto the chair.

If originality in execution is more important than originality in concept (like with the chair gag), does that mean structure and tropes are more flexible in comedy than in other genres? Or do comedic screenplays still need to follow a strict structure to work effectively?

For example, lets look at examples from Mel Brooks. Spaceballs, was the joke where Yogurt talks about the merchandise. They could quite easily be cut from the film and the film would still work as it had no baring on the story. But should it have been? Absolutely not, it was funny as hell.

I would say the same for the scene in Spaceballs where Dark Helmet is getting the toys to make out with each other, Puttin’ on the Ritz in Young Frankenstein, and the scene in Blazing Saddles where it’s obvious they’re on a movie set at a studio. All unnecessary for the story to work, all hilarious so they stay. But then again, not everybody is Mel Brooks.

I think tropes are more flexible. And I also think today, you need jokes that are borne out of character, story, and plot. They’re just more cohesive. Going back to my previous example, at that point in Neighbors, at the point Seth Rogen is shot into the ceiling, we know he’s “at war” with Efron’s character and friends.

The joke works because we’ve not seen it before, and surprise is a key element of comedy. That said, in South Park’s cutaway jokes “it was like that time Mother Theresa was overdosing in my car”, can be funny, but for me, it can be a little same-y or repetitive. “It was like that time…” kinda works, but can be exhausting as it’s not borne out of character, story, and plot.

I do think that jokes work best when they’re rooted in character, story, and plot.

Comedic screenplays should prioritize character development just as much as drama.

I think comedic screenplays definitely should prioritize character development just as much as drama. Although it can be a little more forgiving. I do also think it depends on the style of comedy and the character. The Marx Brothers had more leeway to stop the progression of the film, in order to do a routine. The sequence with Chico, Harpo, and Edgar Kennedy in Duck Soup. I only vaguely know what’s happening, but it’s still funny because of the conflict.

When Austin Powers is trying to escape in the first movie, and he gets the little van stuck in the small corridor trying to do a 25-point turn, is funny, but completely unnecessary to the story.

In Beverly Hills Cop, Axel Foley doesn’t change. He’s the lead character, but not the protagonist. I think the protagonist is split between Rosewood and Taggert. They change the most by the end of the story. Comedies that are more grounded in reality, I think are less forgiving than comedies that are a little more cartoon-y.

I think comedy movies from the early 20th century were more forgiving the progression of the story for a good gag. I am not entirely sure if they are today. But I do think more comedy sub genres have more leeway than others.

Jun 02

Story vs. Plot

I’ve been thinking about the difference between story and plot when it comes to screenwriting. And, if I’m honest, I sometimes use those words interchangeably. I tink this comes from learning about script structure so I often end up conflating the two. But they are different. And I don’t just mean in the spelling.

If we are talking about Western/Hollywood films, and that’s then only type I can talk about really, I would say that story is the single most important element of a great screenplay.

Everything should come from story. Theme, characters, dialogue, and later all the visuals come from story.

I define story in the context of a screenplay as what the screenplay or film is about. For example, in Star Wars: A New Hope the story is about the family that we create. The plot is what happens, or how the story is told. The events.

If story is about what the screenplay is about could a screenplay succeed with a strong plot but a weak story? Or is a strong story always necessary for a successful screenplay?

I think story is still important. Although, I hope it’s rare for a film to succeed with a weak story. And we would need to look at how we’re defining success (box office, reviews, audience reactions, or all of the above).

For example, one of my favorite films growing up was Enter the Dragon. It’s essentially a weak James Bond-style story with a splash of revenge. But it was how the story was told that made it work. Most Western audiences hadn’t seen a martial arts film, let alone one that was closer to realism and grittier than most kung-fu films coming out at the time.

I guess this makes it sound like execution can elevate a weak story, therefore, story isn’t always the most important element.

But I think story is still important.

Going back to Enter the Dragon, the acting was average as was the cinematography. What helped it was the plot and, perhaps, the untimely death of its star. Would it have been as big had Bruce Lee lived? Maybe, maybe not. But how much better would Enter the Dragon have been if the story was better and less cliched? The scenes between the fight scenes were ok.

Let’s look at comedy. The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! The first 45-ish minutes are wall to wall jokes. And then it feels like it runs out of steam and the story has to take over. Similar thing happened with Airplane! an earlier movie that had even more jokes per minute. That wasn’t enough to sustain it for its running time, so story had to take over.

You definitely need story, if you’re writing comedy. I used to run into that issue when I first started as a teenager. I was trying to write from joke to joke, without story. Even with The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! I cited earlier, Nordberg is shot by drug dealers and Frank and Ed need to solve that crime.

Western action movies begin with a story. Even though spectacle takes over. For example, Mission: Impossible 1 is about avenging the found family we lose. Whereas the last Mission: Impossible movies (Dead Reckoning and Final Reckoning) were about loss. I only vaguely remember the plot because the stunts took precedent.

What this has made me realize, and I still don’t have firm conclusions really, is that I need to make sure I’m clear about the difference between story and plot in my own scripts and films. Especially with comedy.

My conclusions haven’t full formed yet. So I may end up coming back to the post at some point in the future and editing it.

Jun 01

The Children’s Entertainer

Clown. Red nose, white mouth, black hat, tan jacket, purple balloon flower

The author as a clown, circa 2003

Between 2004 and 2005, I was recommended to work as a
children’s entertainer.

A friend of a friend was working for a company, mostly performing magic for kids. I auditioned, got in, and was invited to do an all-day training session. Halfway through, they announced that one of their entertainers couldn’t make it to a party. They normally sent two, and they couldn’t leave one by himself. The owner of the company looked at me and said, “It’s going to be you.”

“Hmm? What? Come again? Lil’ ol’ me? Why, I do declare…”

But I kept that all inside and just said, “K.”?They gave me the address, ordered me a cab, and that’s how I began my career as a children’s party performer.

That first party went well. I stuck with it and eventually ended up doing a few corporate gigs too. I taught myself balloon animal modeling from a book and learned a few magic tricks as well.

There were a lot of themed parties: pirates, wizards, that sort of thing.

During the week, I had a day job, But on the weekends, I did parties. I was minted.

Once, I had to dress up as an elf and entertain kids as they waited to meet Santa Claus. Very David Sedaris. Although, I’ve never read The Santaland Diaries, never really felt the need. I lived it.

At no point did a child ever ask about the second cave entrance, the elf over there, or who might be down there.

Spoiler alert: another Santa Claus.

My Santa seemed nice. He looked the part, at least, close enough to the image of Santa that lives in my head. My neighboring elf wasn’t so lucky. Her Santa smelled of Scotch and had a beard that looked… a little ropey, even though it was real.

A lot of kids at the time wanted Beyblades for Christmas. I had to pretend I knew what those were. Smartphones weren’t really a thing yet.

Eventually, when “hey man” moved in with me, I found out he was a children’s party clown too. He mostly did freelance gigs through word of mouth, probably with a different company.

He suggested I create my own clown costume. Until then, I’d just worn whatever the party company supplied. He was right. I was interested in Chaplin and Keaton, and clowning, sort of adjacent to all that.

There are three types of clown: Whiteface, Auguste, and Character, sometimes called Tramp or Hobo. Chaplin’s Tramp came from the Character clown. There have been clown figures going all the way back to Ancient Egypt. Modern clown evolved from Commedia dell’arte, an Italian form of professional theatre dating back to the 15th century.

I figured the best way to minimize the risk of kids being scared was to go the Character route. No bright colors, no clown shoes, no outrageous makeup. Just white around the eyes, blacked-out eyebrows, pink cheeks, and a red plastic clown nose.

At some point, my friend whom I shall call “hey man” who also performed as a clown started dating a woman who had coulrophobia – a fear of clowns. Which didn’t make sense to me.?His dating her, I mean. Not the fear part. The fear I understood. I could even see why he was attracted to her. But she couldn’t be around him when he was in costume.

And the thing is, he was in costume a lot.

When I did parties, I’d arrive early, meet the hosts, find a bathroom I could change in, and get ready for the show.

“Hey, man” preferred to arrive on time. Which meant getting into costume at home and using public transport, already fully dressed as a clown. And if his girlfriend was over, they’d say goodbye, she’d go into a different room, and he’d get ready and leave.

I tried to talk to her about it once. I asked her to imagine me putting on clown makeup.?She said, “See, you’re becoming a clown now, and I don’t want that.”

Around this time, I was experimenting with character monologues instead of just stand-up. I wanted to draw more from my background in theatre. I had taken my solo show Please Stop Trying To Kill Me, Dad to the Edinburgh Fringe in 2004 and was itching to go back.

I’d seen Whoopi Goldberg’s one-woman show, Whoopi Goldberg: Direct from Broadway, and it really inspired me.

So I developed this piece about a clown who’s in the middle of performing a show when he gets a phone call from his girlfriend, and she breaks up with him.

I took the monologue to a comedy club, one of those rooms-above-a-pub type places. I was in full clown makeup. At one point in the piece, I take an unused condom out of my pocket by mistake. Then I pull out a balloon animal from another pocket and start pumping it up. My phone rings. I launch into the breakup part of the monologue.

After I, as the character, gets dumped, in the world of the piece—I smear off the makeup across my face, like tears.

Most of the audience sat in stony silence, not really sure what they were watching. But there was one guy, somewhere near the back, laughing continuously. He was my guy. I performed for him.

I did that monologue twice. The next time I came back to the club, I was planning to do a regular stand-up. The booker looked at me and said, “You’re not going to do that clown thing again, are you?”

Some years later, I felt that monologue was my strongest piece. So I focused on that.  As I said, I had planned to go back to the Edinburgh Festival, but I realized my heart wasn’t in it, and neither was my bank balance.

I abandoned the idea of a one-man character show. And realized that there was probably something in this clown break-up character.

Over time, this became the source material for what ended up being my first feature film, Falling for You.

 

Jun 01

Please Stop Trying To Kill Me, Dad

In September 2001, I watched a one-woman show by London-based performer/theatremaker Peta Lily. The stand-up theatre show, Topless, was about ‘life and death and love and hate and sex and sticking plaster and breasts.’ It was fantastic, very funny. I thought to myself, “this! This is the sort of work I want to be doing. Handling serious subjects with equal parts laughter and poignancy.

I said to myself, “I wish I had something to talk about.”

Two months later, my father died. Then I said to God, “No, not like that.”

After his passing, I spent a lot of time writing. Not with a view to doing anything, but I found it helpful to try to process my feelings. I wrote about anything and everything—a lot of stream of consciousness stuff.

I re-evaluated a lot of stories from my childhood. Experiences I shared with my dad. It helped me find some humor again, and that was valuable.

It was around this time that I was living in a flat in East London and my then-girlfriend broke up with me. This was exactly the sort of emotional fallout I needed to add to my grief. It was 9 months after my father passed away. It’s only now that I realize, in a way, this moment gave birth to a new version of me.

It was somewhere around this time that I thought about ending it. This might seem like a bit of a gear shift, but it was for me when I was experiencing it. I felt like a failure. I’d failed in my romantic relationships, failed in my career, and I’d lost my dad through no fault of my own.

But I had a moment when I was looking out my living room window at a luscious, dark green bush in the front garden. I thought to myself, “I could be dead, and that bush will continue to grow. The bees will continue buzzing around.” And I also figured that I wouldn’t be very good at it. I seemed to suck at everything else, so I’d probably suck at that too.” That would be embarrassing. This may sound like I’m trivializing this moment, but this is how I felt about it at the time.

I decided to take an acting workshop. Giving myself something positive to focus on might help. I got there, and the teacher was stuck in traffic and so the class got cancelled. Great. One of the staff members from the professional development organization where the workshop was being hosted suggested that we put our names on a list so they can contact us to reschedule. So I did that.

Not long later, I received an empty email. So I replied, “Hey, I attended your workshop when you got stuck in traffic. Looking forward to arranging a time when I can attend in the future.” Then I got another reply:

“Who are you, and how did you get my email address?”

This was a moment that really stumped me, as I’d opted in for this teacher to have my email address, and she had emailed me first.

So I replied:

“You emailed me. I put my name on the list for the recent acting class. And I received an empty email that I thought I had to reply to.”

“What acting workshop? I have no idea what you’re talking about. I’m based in San Diego and you?”

San Diego? No wonder she had issues getting to London for the workshop.

Turns out she was a student at a university in San Diego. And she wasn’t the acting teacher whose workshop got cancelled. This didn’t make any sense. Somehow her Hotmail address had spammed mine. It was so odd, and a moment that was ripe to read a lot of meaning into.

For this story, I’ll call her Sandy Iego. We got to emailing a little more frequently. I began to share my recent experiences, and she shared about her struggles.

I felt a lot of negative thoughts and emotional weight during this time. Years later, I learned the term “head trash”, and that seems to fit what I’m describing here.

I decided I needed to go out of London and go traveling. Get away from things. Even though I couldn’t get away from myself, a change of scenery might help me. Some people go traveling before college or immediately after graduation. I figured this was my time to do that. Travel around Europe. I’d been to France, Italy, and Germany before, so maybe I’d do that again. Go to Austria this time. Maybe Spain, even though I see Spain as a hot country, and I’m never really a fan of hot weather. The opposite of a lot of people who like to go on holiday. I’m more of a city break person, not a beach person.

I shared that with Sandy Iego, and she said, “If you go traveling and don’t come and see me in San Diego, I’ll be very upset.” That was an unexpected reply from someone I’d only met via email and the occasional video chat. Also, that wasn’t exactly the direction I was thinking about traveling in. I was essentially going to go backpacking around Europe.

So traveling around Europe became a two-week holiday in San Diego.

Seems a little weird as I reflect that I would embark on this journey without really knowing anything about Sandy. I saw it as an adventure at the time, but it was also just a teeny tiny bit reckless.

I stayed in a motel and would occasionally get together with Sandy Iego and hang out with her university friends.

But I also spent a lot of time in coffee shops and diners.

I had some questions I wanted to answer for myself. What the hell did I want to do with my life? Did I want to keep acting? So, I found myself writing again. I needed to sort through a lot.

I reconfigured my goals. Even though I thought about that John Lennon line about making plans. I needed to cling onto something to try to haul myself out of my quagmire.

What did I want to do? I wanted to create my own work. I had somehow lost track of this. I had worked quite a lot during my first two years and changed out of drama school. But I was no longer in my creative circle I was in before drama school. And I didn’t have a new one. My friends from drama school were off doing their one thing.

So I had to try to forge something on my own. But what did that look like? Forming my own theatre company? Bringing back Group Hug? I thought about the Peta Lily show I saw. Maybe I could do something like that. I think that’s the answer. I had these stories and this loss, so why couldn’t I?

When I got back to England, I managed to take a class with Peta Lily called Delivering Comedy. There were some valuable tips I picked up as Peta came from a mining and clowning background, not a stand-up background.

We also had a few minutes where we spoke about solo shows. I shared some of the stories I had so far in really rough form. A prominent one was about my dad accidentally running me over when I was nine. I suggested calling the show Please Stop Trying to Run Me Over, Dad. Peta suggested kill instead of run me over. Ok. Please Stop Trying to Kill Me, Dad.

I started trying out some of the funny elements in comedy clubs. I didn’t have a good way to monitor and track the effectiveness of the jokes. How do I know if they’re going to land? If they don’t, was it the joke, or was it me? Or was it the audience? I did the best I could and rewrote endlessly.

I somehow decided to perform the show in the village I grew up in. I rented out a village hall, put posters and flyers up around the place, and did a one-night stand in 2003.

I pulled in an old piece of stand-up, as that made me feel confident, as I was so unsure about the rest of it. Stupid decision as it threw me for a loop and I had to improvise and get myself back on track.

It was pretty well received. Someone I only vaguely knew suggested that if I was any good, I’d be performing it in London, not in a small village.

What she didn’t realize was that first, it was emotionally important to me to do the show where I grew up. Second, shows don’t always open in the West End or on Broadway first. They get worked on out of town. But I didn’t need to justify myself. So I just said: “uh huh.”

Somehow, I decided to take the show to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Among the ways I managed to raise some money through jobs, to fund the entire Edinburgh festival run and had a small amount of money to hire Peta Lily to give me some directorial assistance. Not enough money to call her my director. But it was a win and a nice full-circle moment for me.

Edinburgh went ok. Nothing spectacular. Got some audiences. A couple of average reviews. I think part of the problem I had was my writing. Instead of honestly telling the stories and trying to uncover the humor, I was so desperate to be accepted as funny that I ended up forcing a lot of the jokes. Jokes where they didn’t need to be. And some of them, quite frankly, weren’t that great.

What didn’t help me was that I took suggestions from multiple people, and it ended up being a patchwork of my voice and the voices of others. I failed to see that at the time.

The other thing that let me down, I think, was my performance. I think stand-up, even though this was kind of a hybrid between stand-up and theatre, works best when it’s delivered like you’re a person who is real.

Told simply and as straightforward as possible.

I was too over the top is the best way I could describe it. In my years before drama school, my secondary school drama teacher was big into German Expressionistic theatre. The actors employed exaggerated physical gestures, stylized movements, and heightened vocal delivery to convey the inner turmoil and psychological distress experienced by their characters.

This fit with my teacher’s areas of interest. He liked actor and playwright Steven Berkoff, whose works combined elements of physical theatre, mime, and expressionism.

My teacher was also into Devised theatre. This is a collaborative process where theatre is created without a script and is created by actors, designers, and directors, who work together to develop the show through improvisation and other creative techniques.

He was also into the French artist and theatre director Antonin Artaud and the German director Bertolt Brecht.

Artaud’s work and theories called for a communion between actor and audience using gestures, sounds, unusual scenery, and lighting. He wanted to abolish the stage and auditorium. He was a leading voice in the Avant-Garde movement.

Brecht, on the other hand, believed an actor should present a character in a way that wasn’t an impersonation, rather a narration of the actions of the character. So no method acting there. The aim was to not let the audience get invoked so they could analyze the themes of the play and know that they were watching a play.

So this was my background. It really heavily influenced my style of performance. When I got to drama school, I didn’t realize I was doing things differently from how they were expected. I didn’t have the language to communicate what my background was. So it looked as though I couldn’t act and was over the top. Which, I guess, by film and TV acting standards, I was.

This meant I had to unlearn everything or, at least, set it to one side and learn to act like you might see on TV. It was hard to unravel and it all in my head.

This is what I defaulted to when I did my show. It’s where I was the most comfortable and what I knew and what I felt the piece called for. So instead of just being me, a person, I was some amped performing pretzel.

In retrospect, I think I was wrong.

There was a moment during my Edinburgh run when I was up there early, by myself, and I ran into a group of drunk guys, and they were headed for Chinese food. We got chatting, they invited me along. So I went. I think they ended up paying for my meal. Not quite sure how that happened.