Living the Romantic Comedy

First Thought: Best or Worst Thought?

So many seeming contradictions show up when you read Screenwriters on Screenwriting that it can make you crazy.  One ever-unresolvable debate concerns starting points and end results.  We could posit this as a literary duel in the sun that's also applicable to screenwriting -- call it the Hemingway-Ginsberg Paradox.

Allen Ginsberg: First thought, best thought.

Ernest Hemingway: All first drafts are shit.

Obviously, Ginsberg is right.  And so is Hemingway.  Are we clear?  Now, back to your draft!

Seriously, though, there is a way of looking at these apparently opposite stances that honors them both, if you think of "first thought" as primarily having to do with idea, and "first draft" as having to do with execution.  

Except, of course, when the first draft represents the best thought.

If you feel like flattening me with a frying pan right about now, get in line: my forehead's already flattened from me bashing it against my desktop.  I've been working on a personal essay for weeks now (a week past its deadline and counting) and as beaten-up as my brain may feel, the piece in question has in no way been beaten into submission.  A big part of the problem - besides the fact that it's supposed to be 2,500 words in length, and my first draft was over 10,000 - is that I'm still trying to define what the damn thing is about.

That's the essence of this issue, I think.  And I may have been working at my day-gig for too long, because I think what I've been doing is replicating an endemic studio system problem.

Readers of this blog may know that I work for a certain studio which only a couple of years ago had five winning opening weekends in a row, but has recently released a string of tankers.  Some of this is just the vagaries of the game (most studios go through such cycles) but in the Story Department, where we are by nature analytical, a Certain Tendency has been observed.

A script is bought.  The project goes into development, and over time, in the thicket of often competing ideas, in the name of "improvement," something gets submerged and even lost - namely, the original point of the story.  Thus, as the old "Does it have to be a lightbulb?" syndrome takes effect (i.e. the answer to the question, How many development executives does it take to screw in a lightbulb?), what gets lost sight of is what the movie is meant to be about.

It's for this reason that so many studio projects go through so many writers, and that often enough, after a string of rewriters have come and gone, the original writer is brought back in to finish the job.  Easy for me to ask, but...  Maybe sticking with the first take could've saved everyone a lot of trouble?

Obviously in moviemaking, a plethora of unavoidable X-factors come into play (read this hair-raising chronicle of one upcoming studio release's torturous gestation to see how that goes).  And it's not like those many screenwriters hired to help don't do their job (and get paid well), as this info-filled look at the contemporary rewrite game explains.

But from my writer/story analyst point of view, the ball that too often gets dropped is the specific, well-defined answer to "What is the story about?"  And keeping your eye on that ball ought to be any writer's primary order of business.

In this regard, even a shitty first draft often contains the seed or the essence of the story's best idea.  Most rewrite-and- development problems stem from trying to improve other elements, but neglecting to keep that essence intact.  The initial idea for a screenplay (or play, book, song, et al) is the heart of a given project; if you don't locate that organ and nourish it, after all the many transplants and other surgeries, you may find yourself working on a corpse.

This is why, more often than not in the writing of a spec script, "second act problems" turn out to be first act problems: it's all about the setup (first thought).   Nonetheless, ironically, often it's not until you're done with a first draft that you really do know what it is that you're writing (shitty first draft).

In the case of my personal essay, my first thought was too vague, and so my first draft suffered accordingly.  I'm currently about to throw the whole damn thing out and start from a better-informed scratch: I think I finally understand what I want to write, so I'll begin again, with that.  With knowing what the story is about as my starting point and through-line, I ought to be able to put a better foot forward.

Once in a blue moon, a writer does get lucky - not that she or he necessarily knows this.  I was amused to read in this NY Times profile of The National, one of my favorite bands, of how they spent exhaustive time and effort trying to perfect a certain song for their upcoming new album - employing everything from string sections to rebuilt drum kits, ceaselessly re-recording and re-mixing over months of angst-filled work - only to end up at the beginning: their producer decided to release the original first demo of the song, untouched. 

As songwriter Matt Berninger said, "We tried so hard and it always seemed to fail as a rock song. It lost the charm of the ugly little demo. Now it’s the ugliest, worst-mixed, least-polished song on the record, and it took the longest to get there.”  Or as T.S. Eliot said, We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.

Thus, to revisit the Ginsberg-Hemingway debate, I'll posit the following:  A first draft is just something to change...  Unless it's been proven to represent your best thought.

Wouldn't it be great if certain Industry People in High Places would observe this principle?  Well, we can always hope.  That's my first thought, and I'm sticking to it.

10 Screenwriting Clichés That Refuse To Die

Occasionally one does see a new movie cliché in formation.  Given the impact of Kick-Ass, we may now be in for a decade of "pre-teen curses like a sailor before kicking a villain's butt" moments.  And I can remember, long, long ago (i.e. before The Matrix) when action sequences didn't always have those "characters hang in mid-air while dodging extreme slow-motion bullet trajectories" bits in them.

Yet once they're created, some clichés never die.  Does it matter that most people (discounting hipsters and DJs) don't own turntables and play records in 2010?  Not to movie trailer-makers, who continue to use that hoary "sound of the needle scratching across vinyl" as their standard comedic "someone just screwed up a good time" device.  The ubiquity of say, "Cover me - I'm going in!" or "We've got company!" as uber-clichés of dialogue is evidently timeless (take a look at this great compilation video to see the latter line in all its eternal glory).

Movie clichés abound - pick a genre or element like dialogue or character; here's a recent cliché exposé, and an entire site that has encyclopedia-ized them.  Nonetheless, I'm incredulous when I see a cliché in a new spec script, implying that the writer must be a wit-free hack (e.g. in rom-coms, one dead climactic routine still appears with bewildering regularity).  Here's a short list, compiled with the help of my fellow story analysts at Uni, of clichés found in contemporary studio submissions, despite for-the-love-of-God, Monsieur! evidence that by now, they should really be long gone.

The Fired & Cheated-On Setup

Apparently it's never enough for a protagonist to be fired from her/his job as the catalyst for a story.  No, they have to come home from being fired and find their lover in bed with another woman or man (with both would be nice for a change, but that would suggest a modicum of originality).

The First-Time Stoner Set Piece

Yes, some states in our union are flirting with legalizing marijuana, but that's no excuse: Why do so many spec screenwriters think that the "unlikely straight person eats pot brownies by accident" routine is something new (or beloved) under the comedic sun?

The Unbearable Failure of Engines

Just as any protagonist who's beginning a new life by driving off in a car must inevitably suffer the car's backfiring, if a character is desperate to escape peril and jumps into a car, you can bet your Fire the Writer bumper sticker that the engine will not start at first, whatever the auto's make, year or model.

Worst Screenplay Opening in the World

Used to be "Protagonist wakes up in the morning," but Screenwriting For Dummies must've put the kibbosh on that one.  How-To books have not succeeded, however, in exterminating The camera soars over the city/town/countryside...  The shot inevitably ends up landing on our protagonist's yard/window/hairpiece, and despite this being as tired a camera direction as the arcane We pull back to reveal..., it begins 2010 spec scripts on a weekly basis.

The Obligatory Ethnic/Gender Stereotype Support

Since My Best Friend's Wedding, the heroine's buddy must be gay.  This has given way to The Gay Huddle (i.e. group of gay confidants gather round the heroine's phone/computer with her, see He's Just Not That Into You).  All black women - invariably friends of white heroines - must add "Girl!" at the end of declarative sentences (just as all gay men still gesture/say "Snap!"), and the most popular other ethnic character is The Feisty Hispanic or Black Female Detective (e.g. Date Night).

The Eating After-Hours Rule

When's the last time you ate your Chinese food out of the cartons, perhaps with chopsticks?  No matter: Anyone staying late at the office/precinct/home kitchen counter is required to do so, despite the common sense "Chinese food is for sharing" rule known to the civilized Western world for decades (See: Single women always eat ice cream out of cartons, in your typical zombie rom-com).

Most Unimaginative Music Cue

There's nothing cheaper than invoking a "Soul Classic" for a montage of good times, yet this too still crops up with numbing regularity.  Awhile ago, James Brown (e.g. I Feel Good) was the go-to soul music cue, but Early '70s fare (usually Sly) and a little later (We Are Family) have become the brain-dead norm.

The Big Video/Digital Reveal

The evidence is on tape (or on DVD, zip-drive, 8mm, et al), which means that at the eleventh hour, our hero or heroine will slip the incriminating footage onto a screen - the bigger the better - in front of the rest of the cast and/or public, and - well, you know the rest, right?

The #1 Most Over-Used Image

No competition here, and no exaggeration: This phrase turns up in about one out of every three spec scripts I read.  Not sure who got it started (and I'd like to know, just so I can deck 'em) but Like a deer in headlights is the hands-down most ubiquitous clichéd screenwriting simile in existence.

Finally, in terms of Definitive Screenwriting Fail, there's one physical comedy routine that makes any reader's mind go Tilt! when it shows up on the page:

The Chain-Reaction Scream

We do know who started it: blame Melissa Mathison and Mr. Spielberg for the moment - fresh and funny in 1982, groan-inducing now - when young Drew Barrymore saw E.T. and screamed and E.T. screamed in reaction, and she screamed again, and... "one screams, the other screams" has been with us for 18 years.  So you oughta have your screenwriting license revoked if you're still using it (Runner-up: The Dog Cocking Its Head Like "Huh?" Reaction).

Living the RomCom will be curious to hear of any more recent screenwriting abuses that you'd like to add to the current canon.  Meanwhile, take it from a guy who sits on one of the first lines of resistance in Spec-Land: As you're about to type a phrase, a riff, or a scene on your screen, if you even think you've seen it on another screen before?  Think, "Is that all you've got?" and "It's a trap!" and...  Don't even go there.

Good Enough?

The writer Randall Jarrell once defined the novel as "a prose narrative of some length that has something wrong with it." 

So what is a movie, then, but a filmic narrative of feature length that could be better?

Everyone really is a critic by now (see this and all blogs, Facebook and Twitter, et al), which makes my job as a studio reader all the more painful.  Practically anyone I talk to can - and will - tell me what's wrong with a given movie and how it could've been improved (you can count your carp-free classics on one hand - Tootsie or Empire Strikes Back, anyone?).  Yet due to my perch inside the belly of an often dysfunctional industry beast, I'm in the odd position of being amazed when any movie a) gets made and b) is actually pretty good.

That's why my thoughts on the movie that won this weekend (with a respectable $27 million and counting) are a little... conflicted.  So let's put it this way: Date Movie isn't awful, and Steve Carell and Tina Fey are amazing.  Need we say more?

Well, yeah - Living RomCom can't come back from hiatus and leave it at that.  For one thing, Date Movie proves me right in something I've been pontificating about for years: that one of the best ways to get a romantic comedy made (and to make it a success) is to combine it with another genre. 

In Writing the Romantic Comedy, I discussed over a dozen "hybrid" romantic comedy genres, from adventure (Romancing the Stone) to supernatural/fantasy (Splash) to teen (American Pie).  While I did discuss action/crime rom-coms, as well as citing the marital rom-com as a sub-genre of its own, it's really only in the past decade or two that the action comedy marital rom-com has solidified into its currently familiar form.  As Jonah Weiner points out in his perceptive NY Times article:

"Date Night" is the latest in a long line of films in which a man and woman liven up the extended sigh that is their marriage with a joint stint as sleuths, crime-busters and action heroes. Recent examples include  "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" from 2005, "The Incredibles" from 2004 and "True Lies" from 1994, all films in which middle-class suburbanites suffer a crisis of comfort — their domestic contentment breeding an anxious inertia — and in which no amount of couples counseling can equal the restorative effects of, say, teaming up to thwart a terrorist, as Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jamie Lee Curtis do in “True Lies.” In his 1981 book “Pursuits of Happiness,” Stanley Cavell wrote about “comedies of remarriage,” movies in which marital commitment is threatened but ultimately reaffirmed. “Date Night” and its kin are the action-comedies of remarriage.

What he said.  To which I'll add, speaking to the screenwriters in the audience: If you're looking for a way in which to enliven your romantic comedy spec, make it more of a movie that can fill the big screen, and thus convince studios that it'll appeal to a wider audience...  Have you considered a car chase?

Removing tongue from cheek, I'll note that the need for car chases in mainstream movies is something that's always bothered me, since it's been the bane of many a mediocre project.  In Date Movie, the car chase takes place with the speeding lead car made up of two cars that have crashed into each other and are thus attached, grille to grille - and this sums up the movie's method: if it has to borrow a cliché, it at least tries to pay it back with some comedic interest.

But the interest in Date Movie is almost wholly supplied by its leads.  Carell and Fey are a match made in movie heaven, and in the old days of the studio system, they'd have promptly been forced to make another half a dozen movies together - not so much fun for the stars, perhaps, but great for us.  I'm not alone in making the William Powell/Myrna Loy comparison - rarely, these days, do we get to see a cinematic married couple that's this convincing, nor as smart and sharp.  Ironically, it's our delight in their sophistication (and consummate comedic timing) that makes Date Night kind of a drag.

A question that hovers over the movie is: Has screenwriter Josh Klausner written such a formulaic and fundamentally predictable script because he thinks he's doing what he's supposed to do, or because it's really the best he can do?  You don't expect cutting edge from director Shawn Levy (he of the horrible Pink Panther remakes and the mediocre Night at the Museum 1 & 2), but brother: given the powerhouse pairing of Steve & Tina (and a crackerjack cast that employs Mark Ruffalo, Ray Liotta, the ubiquitous Kristen Wiig, and Mark Wahlberg), is this the movie we want to see? 

Not really, though don't get me wrong: for its occasional flashes of brilliance (again, when Carell and Fey are let loose on a decent joke, such as their brief, ace impersonations of NYC arty-snob types) and its few witty running gags (e.g. the ever-shirtless Wahlberg), the movie earns a solid "B" - you won't feel your money was entirely wasted.  But stick around for the credits, and the by-now de rigeur blooper reel gives you a sense of what might have been, if the lead couple had been given a chance to make hay with loopier, more imaginative material.

Like I said, a movie is almost always something that could've been better, but this one's disappointments are bittersweet.  It's so enjoyable to watch Tina Fey and Steve Carell work together that you wish you could see them in something truly great, as opposed to a movie that's only good enough.