Living the Romantic Comedy

To Kick or Not to Kick?

You may have been following the latest Kickstarter controversy, which is already feeling a bit, well, moot: Not surprisingly, Zach Braff has successfully kickstarted his new movie, not long after Veronica Mars and co. got theirs into gear.

Personally? I think celebrity use of Kickstarter subtly undermines the ethos of the thing. There's an edge of entitlement that defeats the fun in such a campaign, especially when the celeb is self-promoting, as opposed to raising awareness for someone else's creative project or cause. I prefer kickstarting the unheard-ofs and heretofore unseen. I'll be curious to hear how you folks think about this.

At any rate, it's possible that we are seeing the start of a paradigm shift in how movies get crowd-sourced. And why should the romantic comedy lag behind such a trend? I just received my first invitation to help kickstart a rom-com, from enterprising filmmaker Greg Bowyer, who would like us to help him get his funny love story off the ground.

I know Greg not, though he says nice things about me, so I can't vouch for the quality of his project, beyond noting that its premise is at least... unusual. But if someone's asking Living the RomCom for a kickstart, we all may be in for a lot, lot more of this sort of thing. Apres Greg, le deluge?

The Only Safe Thing

Believing as I do that it's more fun to celebrate people when they're with us than to eulogize them after they're gone, I'm wishing the legendary Elaine May a happy birthday (4-21).

If you're familiar with May - and any sincerely dedicated comedy writer should be - you know all about the trailblazing work that Nichols and May did, back in the day. This post from Dangerous Minds provides a goodly selection of that unique comedy team's video clips, and this more recent print interview from Vanity Fair gives you an insightful look back from the reunited duo.

Since her best work as a screenwriter and director exists back in the mists of time (i.e. pre-Tina Fey), you may have never had the pleasure of enjoying her classic black comedy/rom-com A New Leaf, which Elaine May wrote, directed, and co-starred in with Walter Matthau. Remedy that, will you? Also worth a look (or second, third, etc.) is the original Heartbreak Kid, written by Neil Simon, in which Ms. May directed her (subsequently Oscar-nommed) daughter.

Because much of May's screenwriting work has been co-credited (Heaven Can Wait, The Birdcage) or uncredited (she famously supplied some of the best laughs in The Great American Comedy, Tootsie), she's tended to be described of late as "mysterious" and "elusive." Her historic industry debacle Ishtar is probably largely responsible (though I think its first act - i.e. before Beatty and Hoffman go to Ishtar - is pretty damn funny).

This post from Jonathan Rosenbaum nonetheless makes a good case for May as a Hiding in Plain Sight auteur. As an actual sighting, this clip of her appearance on the AFI Tribute to Mike Nichols should give you a fine idea of her comedic sensibility.

 

May can enliven an interview with other comedians and even a questionnaire; she'd probably get laughs out of reading a train schedule aloud.

Above all, the takeaway from Elaine May's formidably fearless career, one that subtly but irrevocably helped to redefine the role of women in comedy, can perhaps be best summarized in her most famous quote:

I Love You, Now Get Lost

Consider this post a public service announcement: I'm writing it to pass along a wonderful post from someone else's blog, Stephanie Palmer's Good in a Room. Palmer's "The Lie Most Frequently Told in Hollywood" is one of the most helpful and informative pieces about the industry that anyone hoping to work within the industry can read.

I was tempted to say, the most important piece of advice ever given about Hollywood, except that I agree with John Fugelsang that "hyperbole is worse than Hitler" (in our household, we're fond of saying that "of all the evils in the world, the absolute worst is hyperbole"). But anyway, read Palmer's piece, because: useful.

It reminds me of my favorite Hollywood experience of this kind, one that happened to me many moons ago. I had given an executive at a studio a copy of a spec script I'd written, one that she had specifically asked me to show her after hearing the gist of its story idea in a casual conversation. What followed was an increasingly exasperating and (in retrospect) amusing "Perils of Scriptine" in which my little pile of pages went through all manner of adventures, only to survive... unread.

The exec - I'll call her Jane - took the script home with her. Work got in the way, and she had to leave town. In one of our early conversations, she proudly informed me that she'd had her assistant print up another copy so she could take it with her (this occurred back in the mists of time, a dark, dark age when, Little One, there was no such thing as an iPad Mini).

My script accompanied Jane to Sundance, only to be left behind in a hotel room. It was recopied to join the pile upon her studio desk. Finally, encountering Jane in the hallowed corridors of the studio months after she had first asked me for a copy, I decided to let her off the hook. "I totally understand," I told her, "You're just way too busy."

"It's true," said the executive, with evident relief. "I guess I never will read your screenplay... but I will always want to."

Yes! The truth, my friends - it's the kind of sentence one could print up on a poster: I'll never read your script, but I'll always want to. This may be the most honest sentence a movie exec has ever said to me (or, as John Fugelsang might say, "The only honest thing ever uttered in the history of civilization").

Anyway, read Stephanie's post. The best thing ever written about Hollywood! Or something like that.

(graphic by Carla Rozman)