Living the Romantic Comedy

Rom-Com Lessons Learned

You may've heard about the disappointing performance of The Five Year Engagement, which was bested at the box office this past weekend by Think Like a Man.  Full disclosure: I work at the studio that released this Nicholas Stoller-directed, Judd Apatow-produced comedy, but I come here not to praise Engagement, nor to bury it.  I just think that anyone who's currently writing a romantic comedy can draw a few helpful lessons from the movie.  Call it a teachable moment.

1) Nobody likes too long.

With the inevitability that its self-fulfilling prophecy title suggested, reviews from all who saw the movie led with the obvious: "Dude, it felt like five years!"  This is what happens when you neglect the hoary adage, Get in late and get out early.  It's also a pitfall with titles this specific, i.e. The audience knows that it's in for this long a stretch, so a "we're ahead of you" impatience is bound to set in.  But generally, comedy should be fast in pace and short in length: leave 'em laughing, and leave 'em wanting more.

You could easily cut half an hour out of Engagement's two hour and four minute running time by making judicious edits from start to finish.  So why didn't the guys who made it do that?  Blame Judd Apatow.  Yes, he is a comedy genius, and the most influential (for better and worse) auteur of the comedy and rom-com genres today, but all of his movies are overlong.  2005's 4o Year Old Virgin is 116 minutes; 2007's Knocked Up is 129; 2009's Funny People is a whopping 146.  The latter tanked, but last year the Apatow-produced Bridesmaids clocked in at 125 and was a smash.  So in Apatow's world, long still rules.

Good for him - usually- but not for you.  Today's comedy spec script has a page count sweet spot of 105.  Steve Carrell and Tina Fey's Date Night was a brisk 88 minutes.  Hangover Part 2? 102.  Keep it quick and short, and your buyers and audience will love you.  Nobody likes too long.

2)  Date night audiences want to feel good.

You'd think this would be obvious.  At their core, romantic comedies are propaganda for procreation, serving as stimulation for the romantically-inclined.  Opening weekend, most folks who show up for a rom-com would like to get laid and/or to fall in love, and if both or neither aren't a likely outcome for them after the show, they'll settle for the vicarious thrill of romantic arousal (Those were the days..!).

This is one reason why most successful rom-coms are upbeat adventures with a steadily escalating story arc.  They energetically track the trajectory from like to love; they ascend, constructed to maximally exploit the fun of the chase.  We're on our way, we're almost there, we're going to get it and oh-no!  We might not make it... the infamous "dark moment" - and then, Score!  We're Mr. and Mrs. Happy.

Let us give screenwriters Jason Segel and Nicholas Stoller their well-deserved props.  I heartily, genuinely applaud them for a kind-of brilliant story concept: Engagement begins at the point where most romantic comedies end, with a happy marriage proposal, and then has the temerity to ask, What might happen next, in our conflicted, contemporary 20-30-something's world?  It was a brave and risky idea to pursue.  And by the way, there are some great laughs in this movie, most of them in the more enjoyable first half (though a late set piece, which has Emily Blunt and Alison Brie channeling a couple of Muppets, may be destined for Classic status).

But Engagement's "dark moment" is nearly ninety minutes.  What we're witnessing is the slow, increasingly dark dissolution of a fine romance.  And whether you like or dislike the movie as a movie, this is date night romantic comedy poison.  Way to bum out our pot trip, man - despite the eventual happy ending, by going so graphically against the rom-com grain, you've effectively harshed the audience's romantic mellow.  And given that the movie's downward trajectory is telegraphed in its trailer, as this canny article from Jezebel points out, it's no wonder that the mainstream dating crowd opted for the upbeat swing of the into-the-chase, who'll win the gender-battle? movie Think Like a Man.  Even though it's all about, like, you know... black people.

3)  It's the characters, stupid.

I return, predictably, to Living the RomCom's favorite hobby-horse.  Jason Segel was great in Forgetting Sarah Marshall (by Engagement's same creative team), but while his character is named Tom this time around, he's essentially... Jason Segel.  Emily Blunt knocked my socks off in The Devil Wears Prada, but while she's incandescently sexy-lovely as this movie's Violet, she's also kind of a drag.

It's not just that the actors' chemistry is wanting, it's that on the page, there isn't a whole lot to them.  The story's deck is stacked against poor Violet, while Tom is often reduced to repetitious mopery.  So it's hard to root for either one.  Tellingly, their central conflict isn't specific to character - the problem is mostly her career versus his, as opposed to something more distinctive having to do with who she is, and he is.  Which in this character-driven genre isn't good.

Tellingly, the supports register with far more force - the over-used Chris Parnell, even a wasted Mindy Kalling.  Alison Brie's Suzie and unlikely mate Alex (Chris Pratt) nearly walk away with it. 

If the supports in your rom-com are stealing the show, consider Engagement as a cautionary tale.  If the down side of the romance is taking all the focus?  Reconsider.  And if it's time for your story to move on, get on with it and be gone.

Rom-Com Archetypes: The Buddy and the Buddy Group

One of the most useful tools in the romantic comedy screenwriter's shed is the Buddy.  The Buddy acts as the lead character’s support and sounding board, and gives us a bigger window into this protagonist’s inner life.  Though lesser Buddies exist merely to crack wise and provide exposition, the best of them have a key function in the plot: They help move the story forward.  Tom Hank’s buddy (Rob Reiner) in Sleepless in Seattle goads him into dating again, while Meg Ryan’s buddy, played by Rosie O’Donnell, makes Meg realize she’s more into Tom than her actual fiancé, and helps her pursue him. 

Seeing how stock and stereotypical a Buddy can be, the alert screenwriter is obliged to come up with intriguing variations.  Writer-director Steve Gordon nabbed Sir John Gielgud an Oscar by casting him as an inspired Buddy, the butler Hobson in Arthur.  A precocious kid sister (Chloe Mortez) served a buddy function in (500) Days of Summer, and a Russell terrier speaking in subtitles made a distinctive buddy in Beginners. 

One popular variation on the archetype that’s also flourished on the small screen is the buddy group.  Friends, essentially a serial ensemble romantic comedy, gave all of its characters turns at buddy-ing (more recently, How I Met Your Mother has followed suit), while in Sex and the City, the three supports represented projections of the central protagonist’s personality: pragmatic cynic Miranda (ego), idealistic nice girl Charlotte (super-ego), and sexually avaricious Samantha (pure id) are the isolated and magnified attributes of heroine Carrie Bradshaw, who’s a bit of all these things and more (the neurotic creative type). 

But generally, the friends trio or quartet represents an audience surrogate version of company.  The movie’s romantic sufferings and joys become a communally shared subject for our various points of view.

Richard Curtis holds the British patent on this Greek chorus-like construction, having launched his international career with the support-centric Four Weddings and a Funeral, developed, according to Curtis, when he noticed that he kept running into his same group of friends at various weddings.  At the top of the 21^st century, the sixteen-limbed extension of the Buddy was honed by Curtis into a fine-tuned comedic empathy machine. 

The best of these clans is found in Notting Hill, where the buddies’ blend of personal discontent and vicarious enjoyment of the hero’s entanglements – it’s Hugh Grant in crinkle-eyed dear-me! mode – is given unusual gravitas by the presence of real, un-mollified pain, exemplified by the sad but brave Bella, a woman unfairly wheelchaired in her prime, and her embittered loving husband, William.  Thus the problems of a movie star in love are countered by, as Grant tells Julia Roberts at one key point, "a normal amount of perspective."

Bridget Jones's Diary had another ideal friends quartet: prone-to-crying-jags Jude, the one with the “fuck-wit boyfriend,” foul-mouthed journalist Shazzer (based on the film’s director, Bridget author Helen Fielding’s friend Sharon Maguire), and gay Tom, “Eighties pop icon, who only wrote one hit record, then retired because he found that one record was quite enough to get him laid for the whole of the Nineties.” 

You’d like to have Tom as a friend because his limited celeb status is leavened with just-another-bloke ordinariness.  The running gag of his being perennially recognized by admiring men in restaurants is paid off when Tom, in a fit of pique, exasperatedly tells a dining couple trying to get his attention that yes, he is That Guy, only to learn that they merely want him to move his chair off the woman’s coat.

It’s hard to tell if the rom-com’s Buddy Group reflects real life humans who prefer to travel in packs, or is an ideal imagined by those of us who feel companion deprived.  Meanwhile, I've noticed a more recent trend in the land of Buddies.  It may be an outgrowth of bromantic comedy - movies that are tacitly or overtly focused on the de-sexualized love between two heterosexual men (e.g. I Love You, Man) - but a number of rom-com specs submitted to studios these days are splitting the difference in protagonist focus, i.e. Two male or female leads are getting nearly equal story attention.

Movies of this ilk provide us with two romantic comedy story lines for the price of one, while not tipping into total ensemble movie turf.  Wedding Crashers comes to mind as rom-com/ bromantic comedy where one's hard-pressed to decide who's the "buddy," and who the ostensible "primary hero" is meant to be.  (Commenter Rob has subsequently pointed out that Owen Wilson's character is the hero, in the end.)

Perhaps the Buddy is finally beginning to achieve autonomy.  What I find appealing in this trend is the notion that all the characters in a given story can be fully dimensional.  And it presents an interesting challenge for any pre-pro screenwriter currently working on a romantic comedy. 

Do you want your protagonist to have one sidekick as support, or a posse?  What's the purpose and advantage of either option?  Might your supposed sidekick have a subplot that's nearly as important as the main event?  Before you simply plug in a buddy as the obligatory support for your hero or heroine, give it some extra thought.  Making this choice can have a global effect on the very structure and spine of your story.

How to Write Groundhog Day

Longtime readers of this blog know that today we traditionally celebrate the classic American comedy Groundhog Day, but this year is... different.  Today (cue jazz band and break out the ice sculptures), screenwriter Danny Rubin is publishing his new e-book, How to Write Groundhog Day. 

Yes, that's right: Long-awaited even if you didn't know you were waiting for it, this is the book that tells you everything you've ever wanted to know about how this beloved masterpiece came to be.  The book is full of insightful info, it includes a masssively annotated version of Danny's original draft (differences between his version and the finished film are a fascination in itself), and it is, of course, funny as hell.  Questions about all things Phil are answered, so hie thee to this link and get yourself a copy - especially because February 2nd, it's on discount sale.  Today is The Day.

Ever since writer Rubin, director Harold Ramis, and star Bill Murray created what's now generally acknowledged as one of the great American movies of all time, February 2nd has become synonymous with romance and comedy.  In fact, when people ask me to name a couple of my favorite romantic comedies, this one invariably comes to mind.

What, you've never thought of this cinematic classic as a romantic comedy?  For shame.  I have it on unassailable authority that the film qualifies.  For starters, it says so right on the DVD box's cover ("A romantic comedy fantasy that is Bill Murray's best screen performance" --  Gene Shalit).  But look up the definition of romantic comedy in the definitive text on same, and you'll find (p.12) that "a romantic comedy is a comedy whose central plot is embodied in a romantic relationship" and that (p.13) "the central question posed by a romantic comedy is: 'Will these two individuals become a couple?'"

As you well know, when TV weatherman Phil Connors (Murray) gets inexplicably trapped in the same repeating February 2nd, his sole recourse to getting out of it becomes the object of his affections, producer Rita (Andie MacDowell); his salvation lies in the answer to their coupling question.  (Screenwriting theorist sticklers may point out that the story's central question is really, Will Phil ever get out of February 2nd?  To this I say, also true, because the movie is a rom-com hybrid -- ibid, pp.21-28 -- a romantic comedy/high concept fantasy, and thus the couple/escape conflicts are intertwined.  But let's stop boring our civilian readers, shall we?  Thanks.)

Strange but true, there still exist deprived people who have not seen the movie Groundhog Day.  If you are one of those poor souls, what better opportunity to improve the quality of your life, than to view it on the official Day itself?  And even if you're one of the many enriched individuals who's seen it, this is a movie that you can watch over and over, and over, and over...

Major Groundhog Day fans might even consider journeying to the scene of the crime: the town of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania is having its annual celebration, and it promises to be quite a hoot.  Such a trip was actually enjoyed by Day's writer and star before the movie was made, and therein lies a tale that speaks, I believe, to the true spirit of romance, or as we might say, what love's got to do with it.

Danny Rubin recounts the following in his illuminating interview accompanying an early draft of the screenplay in Scenario (Spring '95 issue, regrettably out of print).  He talks of having been hired, fired and re-hired to work on the script, and when he, his wife Louise and kids were preparing to move from Los Angeles to New Mexico, getting a call from Bill Murray:

He says, "Do you realize that the day after tomorrow is Groundhog Day?"--"Yep."--"And do you realize that between the director, the producer, the star and the writer of this film, nobody has been to the festival at Punxsutawney?  Doesn't that seem wrong to you?"  And I said, "Absolutely.  And I think you should go, I think that will be a great thing."  And he said, "I think we should go."  And I said, "Bill, that's a really nice offer, sounds like fun, but I'm moving, I'm moving my family, we're up to our necks in boxes, I can't just abandon them and go off to Punxsutawney."  And he said, "Well, think about it and call me back.  Here's my number."  When I got off the phone, Louise asked who it was.  "Bill Murray," I said.  "He wants me to go to Punxsutawney tomorrow."  And she said, "Cool."  And I said I'd told him I couldn't do it.  She said, "Are you nuts?"  So I talked to [the studio] and they said, "We'll pay for the move, we'll get someone to help pack, we'll fly out a friend of your wife's to help her move in so you don't have to be there."

This level of support was very nice, and I embarked on the most surreal adventure of my professional life.  All of a sudden I'm flying in a private plane from the middle of nowhere to the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night with Bill Murray and we're talking about the script.  We landed somewhere near Punxsutawney at 2:00 in the morning.  And there were fans out there waiting for him--it was supposed to be a secret...

Rubin goes on to say that he used a lot of what he saw there in the script.  He'd originally spoken to the town's Chamber of Commerce and looked at their literature, but:

After we actually saw it, there was a whole different feel to it than we had imagined.  It was delightful, really delightful--a wonderful civic event.  We incorporated a lot of that into the movie...  Everyone there knew it was a goofy ritual--it was almost sophisticated in its hickyness.  What was so much fun about the festival is, it's the middle of the night, zero degrees, they've got bonfires going--and they're playing Beach Boys music.

Sometimes I read this excerpt to a screenwriting class when I'm talking about the inestimable value of research, to illustrate how really being there can make all the difference in writing a given project.  But I quote it now in this pre-Valentine's Day context to highlight my favorite moment in Rubin's story, which is when Louise says, "Are you nuts?"

I just love that!  Gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling every time, because it seems to me that Danny Rubin's wife is the hidden heroine of the Groundhog Day saga.  Love doesn't mean never having to say you're sorry.  It means having someone be able to say "Are you nuts?!" to you at a crucial moment.  Love is sometimes about saving loved ones from themselves -- which come to think of it, is kind of at the core of what the movie ended up being about, don't you think? 

Go watch it again, again, and see if you agree.

Spending my days believing in impossible things and chasing them towards an inner truth, now that's a pretty good gig.

--Danny Rubin

Through a Glass Brightly

Living the Rom-Com in Sweden

Why I love the internet: A few months ago, I opened my e-mail, and there was an invitation from a friendly screenwriter and instructor named Arvid Unsgaard -

- asking me if I'd like to teach romantic comedy to the students at a relatively new film school in Sweden.  We could do it by video-cam, or if I preferred, by my coming over there...?

Well, yuh-huh.  Cut to: On a Sunday evening in the dead of winter, I arrived in Visby, a medieval walled city in the countryside on the island of Gotland - here's the wall - 

- had a nice dinner with Arvid, settled into a cozy little room at a family inn, and then early the next morning was driven to the Story Film & TV school (housed in a former military installation), and met nine students who were preparing to write full-length screenplays that were either romantic comedies or had rom-com elements in them. 

I realize that "Sweden" and "Romantic Comedy" don't seem to go together, but as I kept reminding people, even Bergman made a rom-com (Smiles of a Summer Night, which Sondheim turned into A Little Night Music).  These students were a delightful bunch of bright writers who spoke English very well, and thanks to their buoyant, welcoming spirit (here for example is serious-but-mischievous Sebastian, and fun-loving Caroline, who looks uncharacteristically serious in this photo) -

- I felt very much at home talking about cute meets and passionate characters and why so many jokes revolve around the principle of three. After two days of teaching, we all went out to a restaurant, where I ate reindeer for the first time (sorry, Rudolph, but it was delicious) and got wonderfully shnockered.  Despite what you may have heard, the Swedes are not depressed or depressing (that would be the Norwegians).  But the landscape certainly does look Berman-esque.

And on my last afternoon, we took a trip to the island of Faro, where Ingmar Bergman lived.  Being able to spend some time in the realm of Bergman was really quite moving.  Here is me on the beach where a famous tracking shot from Persona was shot:

Here is the little cinema that Bergman built, and watched films in with his family:

In the editing room on the top floor, there are still rolls of footage and editing records:

Here are two views of Bergman's home, deep in a beautiful forest of Faro:

And here is the grave where he is buried with his wife Ingrid:

A local newspaper published an article about my visit, with a teaser shot of me on the front page ("Filmkung larde ut om romantik") next to a photo of a local girl wearing a Santa Lucia crown of candles, above a blurb about a sports star who abused his wife, and a blurb about pigs from a pig farm getting loose.  Is this romantic comedy, or what?

I fell in love with Visby (even though it was only light out between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m., so I really only ever saw it in the dark) and all of my students, and Arvid and the School, and I hope to return when the sun is shining and the weather is warm.  Sverige är bäst!

The Surprise of Being Human

I loved The Descendants, but the weird thing is, when I think about the movie, I can't remember a line of dialogue, or even a particular shot.  What I remember are the feelings.

I often think of movies as vehicles we use for having our emotions, and in this regard, Descendants is a certain kind of great ride: small and unassuming, a little slow to get into full gear, but handling so smoothly that you don't even realize how fast you're going, then opening up, going full-throttle, and... get out your handkerchiefs, people - you've arrived at an exquisite devastation-destination.

The studio's trying to pitch it as a comedy, but that's not really the deal.  Not as quirky and hilarious as Sideways, or sharp-barbed like Election, Alexander Payne's latest feels more akin to About Schmidt in this writer-director's oeuvre.  It has some great laughs, sure, but it reaches you in a more somber place, deeper than mere melancholia and as profound as any adult's honest contemplation of mortality. 

Don't let that scare you off.  It's a sneakily accessible movie and it sets off the best kind of depth charges in your consciousness; days later, I still find myself thinking about the characters, and wondering about them the way one wonders about people you know.  Which brings me to a point that's directed at the writers and screenwriters in the room.

We always hear that defining a protagonist, getting specific about his or her goal, back story, and most significant distinctive characteristic is a primary concern, and that's certainly true.  But the best people - the most compelling, moving humans, on the page or off - are fascinating because they surprise us.  They disarm us because their inner lives are at times at odds with their outer appearances and behavior.  They're more complicated than they look.

That's The Decendants' brilliance in a nutshell.  Not a single character in the movie, be they lead, support, or brief cameo, is exactly who they seem to be.  Every prominent character takes a turn that makes us see them in a different light, and a few of them keep turning - revealing more feelings, thoughts, and points of view than we'd have expected.

What this does, in terms of its effect on a viewer, is enforce a suspension of judgment.  And isn't that a beautiful thing?  We can't just write a given person off.  We can't form a fixed opinion of someone and hold onto it for long.  Instead, we're seduced into simply looking at a character, looking really carefully, and listening with special attention.  More often than not, we recognize something specific and true, and we connect.

Payne, here collaborating with Nat Faxon & Jim Rash, has always specialized in adaptation (the source novel is by Kaui Hart Hemmings), which may account for what feels like a novelist's love of nuance in his movies.  And he's come up with a fantastic cast (aided by John Jackson, C.S.A.) that's alive to every bit of dramatic/comedic potential in a given moment. 

Shailene Woodley, who plays the George Clooney character's older daughter, is clearly an actress we'll be seeing more of in the years to come.  Apparently Payne saw hundreds of actors before he found Amara Miller to play her younger sister, and his patience paid off; Nick Krause as Woodley's sort-of boyfriend is another great fresh face to contemplate.  It's wonderful to see Judy Greer do more than play second banana to a rom-com heroine, and Beau Bridges is a joy in a small, pivotal role.  Meanwhile Mr. Clooney does some of his best, most vulnerable work to date.  His awesome good looks get subsumed in a role that makes "the star" disappear, and he's got a scene in the back end that floored me with its quiet, pained simplicity.

The Descendants is an object lesson in how to let your characters and your audience have their feelings.  And it surprises us in articulating a truth we ought to know, but tend to forget - that each of us can't just be one thing.  We're multitudinous, y'know - it's the human way to be.

A Third Way to Love

Romantic comedy believes in the transformative power of love, but its sub-genres reveal more specific belief systems.  Not long ago, my post Is There Only One? questioned movies that say, "Every soul has only one mate, chosen by fate" (Sleepless in Seattle, Serendipity, Only You).  Conversely, Second Chances looked at rom-coms that tell us, "Everyone is capable of finding more than one great love in one's lifetime" (Truly Madly Deeply, Love Actually, Forgetting Sarah Marshall).

The Only One movies, all about the chase, sometimes barely acquaint their protagonists with each other, banking on a this-was-meant-to-be philosophy to justify the match-up.  "The One After The One" movies are less about the One After's identity or compatibility then they are about the new mate's message: Get over it and move on.

Being predominately about courtship, romantic comedies don't usually go into the mundane nuts and bolts of how a longlasting union is formed.  The main event here is "how they met and how they got hitched," and it tends to play out in a short span of time.  Meanwhile there exists a small canon of romantic comedies that do focus on the bigger how - not how these two got together, but how their being together gradually blossomed into true love.  These rom-coms, I think, try to get at a more realistic assessment of what actually makes a romantic relationship work.

A Getting to Know You romantic comedy follows two people through a good chunk of their lives, examining the incremental process by which two people become truly intimate.  While most rom-coms enact some version of this in tightly-motored microcosm (e.g. the whirlwind adventure of Romancing the Stone forces its lovers to get closely acquainted, pronto), the Getting to Know You picture takes the longer view, suggesting that a slow-fused romance played out over time may in fact be the best route to a love that can last.

The uber-GTKY rom-com is of course When Harry Met Sally, in which it takes years (more than a decade) for Harry and Sally to get that they've already got what they need and want.  And the ethos of this mini-sub-genre is expressed in its famous climactic declaration by Harry, a detailed list of what he's learned to love in Sally ("I love that it takes you an hour and a half to order a sandwich..."): True love is found by getting to know, accept, and appreciate the other, over time.

Getting to Know You rom-coms are similar to, but set apart from, the more garden variety "The One Who Was Always There" movies, in which a current romance with a Bellamy (Mr. Wrong) reveals that a best friend, co-worker, or otherwise long-on-the-scene character is actually the protagonist's true love (The Proposal, et al) - or not, as in My Best Friend's Wedding.  GTKY sticks with its two central characters over time to showcase how "the little things" in each add up to what only in the end seems inevitable.  He and she, by genuinely comprehending the beautiful and the bad in each other, make an eyes-wide-open commitment based more on empirical evidence than on ephemeral attraction.

Perhaps the earliest example of a GTKO movie, more romantic dramedy than rom-com, is Penny Serenade (1941, Cary Grant and Irene Dunne), featuring a married couple whose love deepens through the years.  In our modern era, When Harry... is bracketed by two darker hybrids (dramedy/rom-coms): 1967's Two for the Road (Audrey Hepburn, Albert Finney) and 2004's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Kate Winslet, Jim Carrey).  Road studies a marriage that seems to be driving toward the rocks, intermingling flashbacks with present-day turmoil, while Eternal, using similar (and wilder) techniques, replays, rethinks, and reboots a long-term relationship.

These two Getting to Know You movies root their stories in the seeming inevitability of a break-up, and work their way, comedically and poignantly, toward a reaffirmation of what was good about this coupling in the first place - tempered by a painful acknowledgement that what's flawed (as well as what's fun) in a mate is here to stay.  While that's not a theme which necessarily suggests the most upbeat date movie experience, such films have more to say to the experienced, real-world romantic than say, Valentine's Day.

An even smaller subset of these films employs a formal device to build up its intimacies: 1978's Same Time Next Year, in which Alan Alda and Ellen Burstyn get to know each other via annual hotel trysts, and this year's tanker One Day (we revisit Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess, whether they're together or not, on the succeeding anniversaries of their first meeting).  Another, more fantastical variant is found in Groundhog Day (Bill Murray gets to know Andie MacDowell via an eternity of February 2nds), and less profoundly, in 50 First Dates (Adam Sandler goes to school on Drew Barrymore, whose peculiar brand of amnesia makes every date their first one).

Are Getting to Know You rom-coms less ubiquitous because their tacit theme is more pragmatic than  romantic?  It may be why they tend towards drama more than comedy.  And what significant members of this small but resonant roster may I have left out? 

Your Mind on Music

Caffeine.  Alcohol.  A toke, a toot.  Everyone's got their favorite stimulant, but when it comes to working on a draft, the overwhelming drug of choice for most writers I know is music.

Four screenwriters interviewed in Karl Iglesias’s fine and useful book, The 101 Habits of Highly Successful Screenwriters talk of their dependence on music as muse: Ron Bass likes to write to jazz; Steven DeSouza uses soundtracks from movies similar to the genre he’s writing in; Scott Rosenberg goes for rock’n’roll; Nicholas Kazan prefers Gregorian chant ("I need something constant and neutral.  I find it’s a wonderful aid that sort of massages the right hemisphere of my brain").

References to writer-as-listener abound in the realm of screenwriting interviews.  My own habit coincides with that of Mr. Bass, who notes: "I like to play the same CDs over and over because I like the music to disappear."

True that.  When I find a piece of music that evokes the sensibility of what I’m writing, I put it on Repeat and play it for hours.  (This method’s only drawback is that when you wear out a piece this way, you really do wear it out; certain songs I used to love are dead to me now, sadly.)  Lately, I've been stuck on a song called Diamond Heart by the group Active Child (fans of Roxy Music's Avalon may enjoy, but if Neo-80s synth and romantic langeurs give you the hives, steer clear, plus this is the only song from the album I've gotten so attached to, so the real hook may be something subjectively idiosyncratic, i.e. the sound of a C# alternating against a C with a D# above it just says HELLO to my heart). 

Diamond Heart is an exception that proves the rule, in that it has vocals, something usually to be avoided, but the lead vocal is so aurally tweaked that it took me a dozen listenings to realize that the words "diamond heart" are used in the lyrics.  Generally non-vocal music serves the task best, and my perennial search for instrumental music that’ll work often unearths great stuff that defies categorization (what exactly do you call Four Tet's Smile Around the Face, which sounds like the union of a benignly berserk robot drummer and the Lollipop Kids on helium in a toy factory?). 

My default fall-back is a pair of hardy perennials that never fail to get the fingers moving: the music of Steve Reich and Johann Sebastian Bach.  The perpetual motion and ethereality of Reich (particulary the more minimal early works) eases my right brain into gear, while Glen Gould playing Bach's keyboard music stokes the left side into more active alertness.  There's just enough muted and/or ambiguous emotionality in both composers' work to keep it engaging, and it abounds in that "constant and neutral" quality that Kazan spoke of.

I did a similar post on this writing methodology some five years ago, and got a lot of good suggestions for Music To Write By, but I've since exhausted those sources (played into its grave are The Tired Sounds of Stars of the Lid's two hours of beautifully spooky, languid otherworldliness, and my first novel thanks you).  Once again, I’m on the lookout for writing-stimulation. 

What music have you found that gets your blood moving and keeps your creative juices flowing, when you're working on a draft?  Living Rom-Com wants to hear.

Do Try This at Home

In the "Line-o-Rama" bonus on the just-released Bridesmaids DVD, a bonanza of alternate takery, there's one sequence where Melissa McCarthy improvises variations on the same brief line, over and over again, trying out a different gag every time.  How many takes?  Reader, I counted them: there are forty-eight.

The last question asked in the Q & A of my Screenwriting Expo seminar on "Comedy Craft for the Contemporary Romantic Comedy" came out of discussing Bridesmaids, which I'd worked on as a story analyst at Universal.  I'd shown some clips from it and mentioned the screenplay's long (3-4 years) gestation, noting how co-writers Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumulo had been in the enviable position of writing and rewriting on the studio's dime, under the guidance of producer Judd Apatow.

"How do you get into a great situation like that?" the woman in the back wanted to know.  "Well," I said, "You might start by being a talented comedic actress who's got a gig on Saturday Night Live..." And we wrapped things up on that wry, we-should-all-be-so-lucky note. 

The Bridesmaids out-takes and deleted scenes tell an intriguing tale, one that suggests luck isn't necessarily the point.  The DVD extras present ample evidence of something I recently discussed in an on-line interview about the movie's development: the idea that honoring any and all ideas, when you're writing a movie, is in fact a great idea.

According to interviews, Wiig & Mumulo wrote their first draft in six days.  But the script got rewritten a dozen times-plus, and all of those in-between drafts embodied the spirit of "Hey, let's try this!"  With Apatow, director Paul Feig, and a passel of (uncredited) talented joke-punchers on tap, there was plenty of inspirational mentorship in the mix.  But writing team's fearlessness was key.  They'd write a draft with one very elaborate ending painstakingly constructed on the page... and then write another which threw that ending out.

Wiig & Mumulo's clear intention was to find the funniest - which often meant the most honest and real - truths about their characters.  And this being an Apatow production, the process didn't stop with a final draft.  Well-known for encouraging improv, Apatow and Feig encouraged their writer-star and her supports to keep going as the cameras rolled.

Here is my point.  We may not all have a studio, an 800-pound comedy-genius gorilla, a canny director and a cast of seasoned comic actor-writers on hand as a support system while we write, let alone the kind of comedy training and improv background that Wiig brought to this party.  But what we do have, all of us writers, are the two most important tools: imagination and time.  Use 'em. 

And then use 'em again... and again... and again.

All too often when I do consults or see students' screenplay work, I encounter writers who are standing with their feet in screenplay cement.  They're married to this plot beat, wedded to this character choice, ball-and-chained to one particular execution of a sequence. Why?  What's to be lost by cutting that shit loose?  There's absolutely no harm in trying to go a different way.  You can always go back to what you had.  And often what you gain by suspending your own judgment, and taking a leap into the unknown is, well, everything.

You don't need a producer's permission to throw it all at the wall and see what sticks.  You don't need a studio's backing to do a table read with some actors and encourage them to do improvs on your material (though you may need a lawyer if you steal too much).  You don't need anyone's help to write a draft of a scene, set it aside, and instead of revising what you just wrote, write the same scene from scratch with a wholly different approach.

Imagination.  Time.  The courage to let go of whatever you've got so far, and let whatever's left inside you rip. 

Do try this at home.

Does Your Character Need a Job?

This past Sunday's NY Times profile on screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna catches the screenwriter saying what writers who haven't tried writing rom-coms won't cop to:

McKenna came to realize that writing a straight romantic comedy — or at least writing an interesting straight romantic comedy — is very, very hard. “Thin people who want to be in love and their concerns about their love life — that’s not a very dynamic want,” McKenna said over lunch near her Hollywood office. “There’s that, and then there’s the nuclear briefcase. There’s a spectrum of urgency, and wanting to find someone is a not-very-directed goal. Whereas, ‘I need to get through this year and then get promoted,’ or ‘If we don’t get the ratings up the show will close down’ — there’s an urgency.”

That urgency - particularly, the stakes and jeopardy that come alive when a given script hones in on its protagonist's professional life (as opposed to her romantic difficulties) - is the big asset that comes with what McKenna has carved out as her own niche turf:

What feels modern about McKenna’s version of the romantic comedy is that, as she explains it, “the women have goals that are not strictly speaking romantic.” When a young news producer in McKenna’s “Morning Glory” is transformed by a stunning dress, it is for a job interview, not a date. “The Devil Wears Prada” concludes with a reconciliation between the heroine and her boyfriend, but it is almost besides the point: the happy ending is delivered by a better job.

“I Don’t Know How She Does It,” which comes out in September, could be considered the third in a trilogy of McKenna work-love movies — a grouping that McKenna refers to as “the BlackBerry 3” because the women in them are forever clutching their phones or chucking them or eyeing them longingly or putting them in the freezer (the relationship maybe be put on ice, but only temporarily).

McKenna can also do straight relationship-centric stuff well, as her effective 27 Dresses of a few years back has proven (while kicking off what's become a full-fledged Katherine Heigl backlash).  Meanwhile, what resonates for me in her success story is a question it poses for romantic comedy scribes: Does your protagonist have a job that really matters?  And is your movie really about a woman and her work (or a man and his) in a way that reflects the importance of a livelihood in real life?

As the McKenna profile points out, female protagonists still seem to be stuck in the sterotype of "job versus romance" - the trope of a woman who can only have a successful career if she's sacrificed her romantic ideals on the altar of commerce.  Meanwhile, given that we're living in a particularly precarious job market moment (one that isn't likely to end anytime soon), the whole question of character employment for either gender has more resonance now than ever.

Nonetheless, I can't tell you how many rom-com specs I read on a weekly basis where "job" is code for "obligatory subplot." All too often the "what the character does for a living" in a given romantic comedy serves as filler - it's something thrown in to open up the movie a bit, to add a little extra action and conflict.  What's missing is that urgency that McKenna has honed in on as her ostensible subject: the idea that the gig defines the character, and that the stakes in one's livelihood are actually the most important stakes in the story.

In real life, how you feel about the work that you do is a hugely significant indicator of your level of personal happiness.  Our work does define us - even if it's in our thinking that what we do every day is nothing but a way to pay the rent. 

Character-driven rom-coms that put their protagonist's livelihoods front-and-center (even broad farces like The Proposal) are grounded in worlds that audiences find relatable and credible.  And rom-com screenplays that place their characters in an intriguing but believable workplace (see the McKenna oeuvre) benefit from the kind of real-life intensity that can connect an audience to that most primal of moviegoing experiences: the sense that those dream people up on the screen are actually up against the kind of quotidian concerns that occupy our own every waking hour.

Does your character have a real job?  How much does it matter to your story?  The more it does, the more your movie is likely to matter to us.

Rom-Com Truisms #8

A theme that resonates with your audience can excuse a multitude of contrivances. 

I was mostly as happy with Crazy, Stupid, Love as the critics and opening weekend audiences who gave this modestly ambitious romantic comedy a good buzz.  CSL delivers an appealing cast, some sharp, savvy dialogue, a couple of solid wish-fulfillment fantasy moments, and enough honest laughs - i.e. the kind that come from truth-telling, as opposed to mere outrageous absurdity - to win over all but the most hardened rom-com-averse moviegoer.

For the record, the movie succeeds in mastering a particularly challenging sub-genre: the ensemble comedy.  Only a handful of respectable rom-coms have pulled this off in recent memory (most notably, that saccherine stealth-bomber Love, Actually, and most execrably, that wholly bogus drek-burger of a wallet-stealer, Valentine's Day).

CSL's screenwriter Dan Fogelman has constructed a Chekhovian roundelay of interlocking story-lines: Cal (Steve Carrell) loves unfaithful wife Emily (Julianne Moore), while their son Robbie (Jonah Bobo) loves babysitter Jessica (Annaleigh Tipton)... who's got a mad crush on his dad, Cal.  And that's not all, though to reveal exactly how co-stars Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone, Marisa Tomei, and Kevin Bacon fit into the larger scheme would be a Spoiler Fest (meanwhile, the movie's a bonanza for Six Degrees Of Bacon charters).

Without giving the game away, I'll note that in the time-honored tradition of planting and paying-off, Fogelman has played his hand perfectly.  Via one deft omission early on, the movie suprises us with a funny, unexpected reveal at the midpoint: someone we didn't expect to see shows up in an unfamiliar context, and high jinks ensue.  Having accomplished this, the screenwriter subliminally sets us up for a far more significant surprise in the climax - we're willing to accept what might otherwise have seemed a credibility-busting, out-of-left-field development, precisely because we've been successfully misdirected (and enjoyed it) once before.

Well done, sir, but even so: Given how bizarrely coincidental the story's entire construct actually is, it's kind of astonishing that we can suspend disbelief and buy into it, and I found myself wondering why CSL's plot worked so well, where that of so many other ensemble rom-coms I've read or seen have not.  The answer lies not in our stars, but in the theme.

The glue that binds ensemble stories is thematic; though movies with ensemble story lines tend to be anchored around one prominent POV protagonist (e.g. Carrell's Cal here, and the Steve Martin character in Parenthood), theme is what holds the disparate subplots together.  Crazy, Stupid, Love has not one, but two predominate thematic threads to do the job.

One is articulated regularly on-screen: the idea that soul-mates exist, and that you have to fight to win them if you believe this (Trope sound familar?  See this post).  The other is never directly spoken of by its characters, but I'll put money on it as the foundation of Fogelman's grand scheme: the idea of forgiveness.

 

Again, to avoid spoilage, you'll have to take me on faith unless you've already seen the picture, in which case, think about it: What is the true connective tissue in CSL's construct?  On close examination, in each and every story line, you'll find a character who has hurt or betrayed another, or behaved reprehensibly in some significant way.  And the means by which a happy resolution is achieved for that character is forgiveness.

Forgiveness as a positive, transformative force is the fuel that powers what would otherwise have seemed a pile of ridiculous contrivances in Crazy, Stupid, Love.  While its soul-mate theme appeals to the idealist and romantic in us (as the sentimental "Love is all around you and you only have to recognize it" idea more or less makes Love, Actually fly), the "positive value of forgiveness" theme addresses our moral core. 

It's hard to forgive people, often hard to forgive ourselves, and this stubborn truth about being human grounds the farcical shenanigans in CSL.  All of its characters struggle with this issue - it's actually what the story is about - and all but one manage to forgive in the end (the one who doesn't, tellingly, remains a comedic write-off).  We accept the absurdities of the plot because we want to believe in forgiveness, ourselves.  On a thematic wish-fulfillment fantasy level, that's why we leave the movie feeling good.

You can pick and choose among the Crazy, Stupid, Love stories as to which ones you love and which you deem merely crazy or stupid (I liked the Ryan Gosling-Emma Stone stuff the best, while finding the adolescents' story borderline horrible), but rom-com screenwriters ought to check this movie out for its use of canny theme-wielding as a license for contrivance.  That's my theme and I'm sticking to it.