Today’s screenwriters take on MIT’s obsession with pranking. Is the script the next Real Genius or just a giant prank gone wrong?
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Genre: Comedy
Premise: (from writers) An MIT reject crashes the school and discovers his greatest challenge isn’t getting caught by the administration — it’s surviving the high-tech hazing of a brilliant and jealous rival.
About: According to the authors, this script is inspired by true events. Every week I include 5 amateur screenplays in my newsletter and let the readers determine which one to review (sign up for newsletter here to participate). While the feedback for Crash Course was all over the place, it easily got the most interest of the bunch.
Writers: Steve Altes & Diana Jellinek
Details: 107 pages
I was actually discussing college comedies with a friend the other day and we agreed that if all you do is focus on the basic everyday drunken madness that is college, you’re going to bore your reader to tears. Just like any idea, you need an angle. Drunken madness at MIT? THAT sounds different. Even better when you focus on the unique world of genius pranksters. These guys don’t simply draw a penis on the university president’s picture. They download the picture, animate it complimenting Osama Bin Laden’s thoughts on his jihad, and play it on the basketball jumbotron in the middle of the homecoming game. No doubt, there’s lots of potential for comedy here.
18 year-old Jim Walden is making his way to MIT for his freshman year of college. Well, sort of his freshman year of college. You see, Jim’s not really a student at MIT. He’s a freeloader. Jim plans to get a degree at MIT without paying for it. He’ll go to all the classes. He’ll take all the tests. He just won’t be officially enrolled!
Jim quickly finds out that MIT is a campus full of pranksters. As in, when he makes his way past the main building, he sees that a car has been taken apart and reassembled on top of it (packed full of ping pong balls to boot). It appears that MIT students are so uninterested in doing real work (or so smart that they have tons of extra time on their hands) that they spend all their free time coming up with pranks. Whereas at the University of Texas, the receiver with the most catches might be the most heralded man on campus, here, it’s the guy who’s pulled off the biggest most complicated prank (or “hack” as they like to call it around these parts).
Jim soon finds his way into a local fraternity where he makes a bunch of new friends, plus reconnects with an old one, Luke. The group starts doing a bunch of “hacks” around school (that don’t really have much significance) and Jim is pretty good at them, which starts to make his old pal Luke jealous. At a certain point, word gets out that Jim isn’t really enrolled at the school, which puts all of the fraternity in danger, and gets everyone really mad at him. This delights Luke to no end, who doesn’t like playing second fiddle to anyone.
In the meantime, Nick meets a Shakespeare-obsessed young woman who works at a sperm bank. She helps him overcome all this newfound adversity, but soon she too learns of his lies and wants nothing to do with him. Eventually the story culminates in Luke having to pull off the ULTIMATE HACK at school, which I believe will make all his troubles go away.
Crash Course is a screenplay that FEELS fun. It has all the makings of a hit comedy. You got a bunch of goofy characters thrown into a bunch of goofy situations. Clearly, you’re updating some of those 80s classics like Revenge Of The Nerds and Real Genius. Which I think is a good idea. 80s comedies had an effortlessness to them that we haven’t seen for awhile.
But a few things crashed this course before it could get started, the biggest of which were the dueling concepts. You essentially have two ideas here. The first idea is about a guy illegally sneaking into college. Then you have the concept of a fraternity attempting to create the biggest “hack” of the year at MIT. Once you try to combine those two, the movie becomes confused. And that’s how I saw it. I was constantly trying to figure out what Jim sneaking into this school had to do with creating a giant school prank. Those two things didn’t organically fit together.
Not only that, but I couldn’t figure out how the “fake degree” thing made sense. Was Jim just coming to MIT to get educated or to get a degree? Because those are two different things. Just illegally taking a bunch of classes so you can learn I guess SORTA makes sense. But isn’t an MIT degree without an ACTUAL MIT DEGREE kind of worthless? You wouldn’t have any official documents to say you that you went to MIT which would severely limit your job options (in this case, becoming an astronaut). Which begs the question, what’s the point of going through this whole sham in the first place? And granted I didn’t go to a big university so I don’t know what it’s like, but I’m assuming it’s difficult to just sneak into a bunch of classes? And even harder to take tests? How does one take a test if they’re not even listed as a student?
A lot of people think this kind of stuff isn’t important since it’s a “comedy.” But it is. The details have to be solid. You can’t skim over the rules. If the rules aren’t clear, the stakes aren’t clear. Most of the best comedies come from stories with high stakes. We have to know what can be gained or lost in order to laugh. If I’m sitting there going, “Uhhh, so wait. He’s taking classes but he’s not really taking classes?” the whole time, I’m not going to be laughing.
The kind of fix you’re looking for here is one that simplifies the plot. First off, decide which is the more important idea to you. Is it a guy who fakes a college career or the MIT HACK plotline? I feel the MIT HACK plotline has a lot more potential so let’s go in that direction. Now create a plot that exploits that idea. This is admittedly hack-y since it’s off the top of my head but maybe Jim gets to MIT only to find out that his scholarship has fallen through. The school gives him a month to come up with this semester’s tuition, and if he doesn’t, he’s gone. His fraternity puts so much importance on winning the annual hack, that they say if he helps them win it, they’ll take care of his tuition.
That would be DRAFT 1 of the idea. You’d need to smooth it out and not make it so “screenwriting 101,” but that’s pretty much how most comedies work. Give your main character an important goal with high stakes attached within the context of a funny setting (in this case, sophisticated college pranking). Reading this draft of Crash Course, I kept forgetting what the point to everything was. He was trying to get an education. He was trying to help people create a great prank. But why? Why was it so important that he did these? So he could become an astronaut? I don’t know. I just didn’t care if this guy became an astronaut or not. It was so far away. A million things could go wrong between now and then that could derail his astronaut career (in other words, there’s no IMMEDIATE need for him to achieve his goal).
Most importantly, when the reader is focusing on all this unnecessary stuff or asking all these questions, or is confused about the purpose of the script – THEY’RE NOT LAUGHING. And that’s what you gotta remember as a comedy writer. If you set up an easy-to-understand plot with a clear protagonist goal, then you can have fun. Then you can throw all the jokes in there. Then your reader is going to be ready to laugh because they don’t have to think. They can just sit back and enjoy.
Look at the Hangover. They set up the situation – Friends needing to find the groom by x o’clock – and then just had fun.
Since too much of the plot and purpose and stakes were muddled here, I didn’t laugh that much, and obviously, you gotta laugh a LOT in a comedy – I’d say a reader should be laughing between 30-40 times out loud during a comedy-spec for it to be sale worthy. I do think this idea still has potential. A Real Genius update would be nice. But the plot needs to be simplified, as do the stakes and the protagonist goal. I wish Steve and Diana the best of luck!
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Comedy scripts should be the easiest scripts to read OF ALL THE GENRES. They need to be fun. I mean, of course they do – they’re comedies! So keep the prose sparse. Move things along quickly. Keep the reading style relaxed. And just have fun with it. Beware of overly technical writing or too much detail. Those things trip up and slow down a script, which you cannot afford when writing a comedy.
What I learned 2: Always beware of dueling concepts. Movies aren’t good at balancing two strong concepts. They tend to be best when focused on one thing. For example, The Hangover isn’t about guys looking for their missing friend in Vegas AND trying to win the World Series Of Poker tournament. Knocked Up isn’t about a couple trying to deal with an unplanned pregnancy stemming from a one-night stand AND the effects of their sex tape that accidentally got released to the public. In my opinion, you gotta pick one or the other.
