One of the most common questions I get asked is, “Should I write this or should I write that?” Should I write my aliens invade earth script or my biopic about Geronimo? Should I write a horror script or should I write an action-comedy? Should I write a script that I’m passionate about or should I write something designed for Hollywood?
The answer to these questions is never easy.
I mean, if you send me two loglines of ideas you’re thinking about writing (carsonreeves1@gmail.com for a logline consultation – they’re just $25!), I can tell you which one is the better concept. Or which one has a better shot on the spec market. But what I can’t tell you is how well you’re going to execute that idea. I don’t know that. If you’re more into one idea than you are the other, chances are you’re going to put more effort into that idea, which means the technically “worse” idea will end up being the better script.
So today I’m providing you with an equation that helps you decide which idea to write next. It requires you to focus on four key variables. Let’s go through them.
CONCEPT
The first, and most important, thing you need to take into consideration is your concept. Does the concept leap off the page? Does it sound compelling? Is it a big idea (even small movies can be big ideas)? Does it have some clever irony embedded within it. This is the most subjective of the four variables, which is why you want to get others’ opinions. But I think we can all agree that there are certain ideas that have more potential than others.
A movie pitch that just sold yesterday is “Universe’s Most Wanted.” Here’s the logline: When a spaceship carrying the universe’s most dangerous criminals crash lands in a small town, the local sheriff must help an intergalactic gatekeeper find the fleeing aliens before they escape and take over the world.
Meanwhile, here’s a movie idea I was pitched a few years ago called, “Oregon Spirit”: After an aging logger is severely injured on the job, he becomes a vociferous reader and a regular at the local library.
One of these ideas is not like the other. And when I say not like the other, I mean, in no way is it a good enough idea to become a movie. However, writers still make the mistake of writing ideas like Oregon Spirit. And there’s a reason for that. It’s hard to objectively see an idea if you’re emotionally attached to it. For example, if the writer of the logging concept is a logger himself, he doesn’t see that there’s no where to go with the story. He only sees the experiences he had as a logger that he’s going to be able to write into his script. It’s for this reason why you need an outside opinion. Try to get at least five people to rate your ideas on a scale from 1-10. That will give you a good feel for where they are.
GENRE
The second thing you want to take into consideration is genre. There are genres that sell well, genres that sell decent, and genres that rarely, if ever, sell. Genres are usually set in stone but do change depending on current trends. Currently, here’s where we’re at…
BEST
Horror
Thriller
Action (within a manageable budget)
Comedy (which is trending)
True Story
Biopic
World War 2
NOT BAD
Sci-Fi (mid-budget)
Crime
War (non World War 2)
Adventure
Romantic Comedy
Mystery
Boxing
WORST
Western
Period Piece (unless based on a true story)
All sports besides boxing
Fantasy
Sci-Fi Fantasy
Drama
Musical
Noir
ARE YOU ACTUALLY GOOD AT WRITING IN THIS GENRE?
One of the most overlooked aspects of choosing an idea is, are you actually good at writing this kind of script? Not long ago, I was talking to a writer who’d been writing for over a decade. We were trying to figure what his next script should be. He started pitching me all these ideas and I noticed that they were all over the place. A Western, a science fiction script, a sports movie. I stopped him and I said, hold on. What are you actually GOOD AT WRITING? Let’s start there. And he was kinda shocked by the question because nobody had ever asked him it before. But it’s such an important question. You don’t want to go write whatever wily idea you come up with. If you don’t understand the genre and the world and all the specifics that go into writing that type of movie, it’s not going to be good. If you’re good at dialogue, write a dialogue-heavy movie. If you’re really imaginative, write a sci-fi movie. If you love history, write a World War 2 movie. Write in the genres you’re the most comfortable in. It shows on the page.
PASSION
Finally, you need to evaluate how passionate you are about the idea. This is where screenwriting gets tricky because what usually happens is that your least commercial ideas are the ones you’re the most passionate about. Which puts you in a quagmire. On the one hand, you have this great idea for a movie. On the other, you’re not passionate about it at all. The reason passion matters is because 99% of the best scripts I’ve read have gone through 20+ rewrites. And the only way a writer gets to 20 rewrites is if they love the idea. You may be able to write five drafts of a cool idea you don’t care about. But rarely will you have the energy to write a sixth. So those scripts die before they ever reach a draft they need to get to to become great. Meanwhile, you’ll do whatever it takes to perfect your passion project. So those scripts often end up better.
Okay, now that we’ve identified the four categories, we need to see where our ideas fall.
CONCEPT 1 – 20
GENRE 1 – 10
CAPABILITY 1-10
PASSION – 1-10
Figure out the rating for each. Add them up. That’s the concept’s numerical score. You now have an easy way to compare ideas in regards to potential. You’ll notice that concept has a 1 – 20 score and there’s good reason for that. The concept is the most important variable. It outweighs everything else. So if you have a great concept, it should heavily influence the score. Let’s take a recent film as an example.
GODZILLA VS. KONG
CONCEPT: 19
GENRE: 9
CAPABILITY: 9 (I’m assuming the guy they hired to write the script was good at writing these types of movies)
PASSION: 5 (They may have hired someone who absolutely loves these movies but I’m thinking you can only be so passionate about a big mindless Hollywood movie).
TOTAL SCORE: 42 out of 50
One last thing I’ve noticed is that some writers just don’t care. They get locked in on an idea and it doesn’t matter how weak it is. They want to write that movie and they’re going to write it. I wouldn’t advise this but I get it because this has happened to me numerous times. But learn from my mistakes. It rarely ends well. The only scenario whereby I’m okay with it is if you’re starting out. If you’re still writing your first five scripts, go ahead and write whatever you want.
But if you’ve been at this for 6, 7, 8, or more years, you owe it to yourself to be more strategic about which ideas you choose to write. You have to look into the future and imagine sending that logline out into the world and be realistic about how people would respond. If your big pitch is, “I know the logline isn’t exciting but the execution is really good,” people don’t like that. They don’t care. What they’re thinking about when you tell them your idea is, “Do I see this as a movie?” They need to imagine that before they read the script. Not after. The script is about delivering on the potential of that idea.
I hope this helps you with your next script. Good luck!
Genre: Action
Premise: A mercenary takes on the job of tracking down a target on a plane but must protect her when they’re surrounded by people trying to kill both of them.
About: Writer Brooks McLaren wrote the 2018 Netflix movie, How it Ends. Co-Writer DJ Controna is an actor who was most recently in Shazam as one of the grown up super-kids. The script was picked up by Thunder Road. It doesn’t have a director or any actors attached yet. It finished with 9 votes on last year’s Black List.
Writers: Brooks McLaren & DJ Controna
Details: 107 pages
A couple of promising things going on with today’s script. First, the script is co-written by Brooks McLaren, who wrote one of my favorite early scripts on Scriptshadow, How it Ends. It was a super fast read with a determined hero shooting across a United States which was quickly becoming overwhelmed by a mysterious apocalyptic event. The movie would go on to be subpar, unfortunately. But I loved that script.
Also, I love plane movies! You guys know this. And this one’s got Thunder Road attached to it, the production company I want making Kinetic! (You hear that Scriptshadow readers working at Thunder Road? Let’s make it happen). I don’t see how I’m not going to like this. But the Black List has been on an extended Scriptshadow losing streak so who knows what’s going to happen. Let’s find out together.
CIA agent Aaron Hunter gets a call from headquarters to get the hell to work! They’ve got a problem. That problem is “Ghost,” an infamous assassin who’s been off-grid for a year, but who has just taken out an entire team of CIA agents in Malaysia! Since Ghost is so hard to find, this is one of the few times they’re close enough to track him. And they track him to Singapore where he’s getting on a plane.
Lucas Reyes, a contract killer in the area, is called by the CIA and told to get to Singapore Airport immediately. They believe Ghost (who nobody’s ever actually seen) will be on a plane to San Francisco soon and they want him on that plane STAT! He has to kill this guy! Lucas isn’t in the mood but he’s so low on cash, he doesn’t have a choice.
Once the double-decker A380 is in the air, Lucas gets a text that they made a mistake. Ghost duped them and got on a flight to London instead. So you can relax, they say. Uh-huh. Riiiiight. We know something is up because this is a movie! Immediately, Lucas’s seat-mate tries to poison him. So he kills that guy and stuffs him in the first class bathroom.
Then Lucas starts looking around for Ghost. When he gets attacked by another passenger, he suspects this job is more complicated than what he was told. Lucas finally tabs the charming stewardess, Isha, as Ghost, and just as he does, they’re BOTH ATTACKED. After a little recon, Lucas finds that these assassins on the plane have both his AND Ghost’s pictures on them. They’re trying to kill them both!
Still with no idea what’s going on, Lucas and Isha make a temporary alliance to fight off all these assassins together. What they ultimately learn is the CIA may have tricked all these assassins to be on this plane at once so they can all kill each other off. Will Lucas survive that plan? Will he spare Ghost if he does? You’ll have to jump on this flight to find out. And make sure to wear a mask!
Friends, lovers, fellow script readers. Quick SPSA here (Screenwriting Public Service Announcement)
If it all possible, don’t put a peanut allergy character in your screenplay. I encounter a dozen of them a year in the scripts I read. It’s far too frequent a choice.
And you don’t want to get in the habit of including gimmicks in your screenplays anyway. Gimmicks are things you know will work but have a very low ceiling of effectiveness. These include peanut allergies, asthma inhalers, the lovable little deaf girl, insulin injections, stuttering. Strive for better. Strive for originality.
Fight or Flight is basically Bullet Train in the air.
I love comparing scripts like this because you get a direct comparison of how different choices affect a screenplay. Both of these scripts are about assassins on a moving public vehicle. But Bullet Train took a more artistic approach, backing up a few hours at a time to introduce characters before they got on the train. It felt like there was a clear plan in place. And that structure worked well.
Fight of Flight engages in a messier approach where chaos reigns supreme, both in how the villains operate and how the plot unfolds. We’re sort of stumbling from one section of the plane to the next where battles ensue. For example, when Lucas gets into the first class section, he’s attacked by a team of Chinese Triads. After that, he must take on a service dog who’s had half his skull replaced with metal, which means he has steel teeth.
There’s also this sort of wild mystery of who Ghost is, and then, once we find out who Ghost is, why all these people are trying to kill Ghost AND Lucas. This question keeps pinging back and forth between our plane and CIA headquarters as we learn bits and pieces about who’s really in charge and who’s screwing who over.
The script moves fast and has an undeniable energy to it. But it’s that messiness that kept getting in the way. I was constantly stopping to ask, “Wait, what’s going on right now?” I still don’t entirely know why they’re targeting Lucas and I’m not sure you can have that. It leaves too much up to interpretation. I wanted clearer answers sooner so I could engage with what was happening.
All of this is a reminder that while I love plane concepts in theory, they’re incredibly difficult to pull off. I would even say they’re harder than simplistic contained locations such as basements. Cause you have to explain what’s going on in the cockpit and why they don’t get involved. You have to account for the 200+ clueless passengers. If people start killing each other, surely the passengers would find out. And they would freak out. And now you’re dealing with rogue passengers running around.
Just to give you an example of this in practice, once Lucas and Isha couldn’t keep their killing a secret anymore, they had to go up and tell the pilots what was going on. Of course, by doing this, you run into the issue of how this event would be treated in real life. The pilots would call for a military escort and be forced to land at the nearest airport. But you can’t have that happen or you don’t have a movie. So, instead, we get a conversation with the pilots where they think this might be good for their careers. They could get a book deal, “like Sully.”
Once you make a decision like that, it has seismic repercussions. Since the pilots wouldn’t really make that choice, you have to slide your script from “action” over into some version of “action comedy.” With the tone now shifted, not everything feels as scary as before because we’re all just having a good time with a goofy plane comedy-action flick.
There’s nothing wrong with that. Arnold Schwarzennegar and Sylvester Stallone made an entire decade of those movies, some of which I still love to this day. All I’m saying is that you don’t want your script to control you. You want to control the script. If the script is taking you in a direction you don’t want to go in because you have to explain away some difficult things, take a step back and figure out how to keep the tone the way you envisioned it. This used to happen to me all the time. The script would keep pulling me away from my original vision. And even though it felt wrong, I’d let it.
Even as I type this review, I’m still not clear what the tone is. Sometimes it seems goofy and sometimes it feels serious. Comparatively, I understood the tone of Bullet Train within five pages.
If Bullet Train does well, expect this to be rushed into production. It’s one of the operating procedures in Hollywood – luck. You must depend on things outside of your control to get your project through the system.
This was a tad too messy. Feels 4-5 drafts away from its best life.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: It’s not uncommon to finish a first draft with an unclear tone. The script feels serious sometimes, goofy others, an action movie sometimes, a drama others. One of your jobs in rewriting is too establish which of those tones you’re going for and taking the stuff out that doesn’t fit. This can be very hard for writers who fall in love with their stuff. For example, a writer who LOVES a joke he wrote may refuse to get rid of it, even if he’s going for a full-on dark drama. He’s like an addict when you bring it to his attention, coming up with a million reasons why the joke “still works.” Don’t be that guy. Understand what tone you’re going for and get rid of anything that doesn’t support it.
What I learned 2: Just to be clear, when I said to avoid writing gimmicks (peanut allergies, asthma inhalers, the lovable little deaf girl, insulin injections, stuttering), I’m not saying they NEVER WORK. They can work under two conditions. One, it’s organically infused into the concept/story. If you have a movie about a family that struggles with diabetes, an insulin injection character is a natural extension of that. Two, if you can find some spin on the gimmick that people haven’t used before, by all means include it. If you’re bringing us a stutter in some new fresh way we’ve never experienced and it works for your story? Hell yeah put it in there.
Week 0 (concept)
Week 1 (outline)
Week 2 (first act)
Week 3 (first half of second act)
Week 4 (second half second act)
Many a time people have asked me, “Carson, what’s the key to a great third act?” And I answer, “A good retirement plan.”
But seriously, writing a great third act is all about planning. And planning out your third act isn’t that difficult. You only need to hit a couple of key beats and the rest of the ending should write itself.
On last week’s episode, we brought you right up to the third act of your comedy screenplay. And, as astute students of the screenwriting profession know, that means we’re at our hero’s LOWEST MOMENT (known as the “All is Lost” moment). Through the eyes of our protagonist, everything is f$#%@. He’s given it his all. But his all wasn’t good enough. He. Has. Failed.
The reason you do this is because at the end of your movie, your hero will win. We, then, want to create the largest emotional leap that we can. We can only do that if we start at the bottom. If our third act ends with our hero only at a ‘sort of low’ point, there’s a much shorter distance to success and, therefore, the emotional payoff isn’t as intense.
You know those movies where you’ve had the biggest emotional reaction at the end? You’re either crying with happiness or flush with emotion? That emotion came because, 20 minutes prior, you were CONVINCED your hero had failed. That’s the power of going from the bottom to the top.
But let’s start at the beginning (of the third act)
We’re at our hero’s lowest point. You can’t go straight from a character’s lowest point to immediately defeating the bad guy, or winning the tournament, or getting the girl. You need the ‘feel sorry for yourself’ scene and you need to follow that up with the ‘pick me up’ scene.
“Feeling sorry for yourself” is not literal, by the way. It can be. Your hero has just failed to achieve his goal. He thinks it’s over. Technically speaking, this is the single worst moment of his entire life. It’s only natural that you would feel down in this moment. But the ‘feeling sorry for yourself’ scene is more about giving your character a moment to process what’s happened and emotionally recover.
This scene is almost always followed by a “pick me up” scene. That pick me up usually comes from a friend or a family member. They tell the hero, “Hey, it’s not as bad as you think.” And, often times, they’ll say something in the conversation that inadvertently gives the hero an idea they can use to TRY ONE LAST TIME.
From there, it’s a quick scene where they go over their plan, and, off they go!
This brings us to the final sequence. If it’s an action-comedy, like Spy, it’s when everybody squares off against each other to stop the bomb. If it’s Popstar, it ends at an awards show with a big performance. If it’s Happy Gilmore, it’s the final day of the tournament. If it’s Neighbors, it’s the big end of the year frat party.
By the way, if you’re ever unclear on what your big ending sequence should be, your concept will tell you. The writers of Wedding Crashers couldn’t figure out their ending at first. Until they realized… this movie is called Wedding Crashers. It needs to end at a wedding. In the movie, Notting Hill, they could’ve ended at an airport like every other romantic comedy. Instead, because the movie was about a regular guy dating a movie star, it ended at A PRESS CONFERENCE. Your movie’s concept will tell you how to end it.
Naturally, your ending is going to work best if your character has a strong goal with high stakes attached to it (going after the girl, defusing the bomb, taking down the bad guy, nailing the performance, getting the time machine to send you back to the future). This will make your hero ACTIVE, which is ideal.
And since everyone here is writing a Hollywood comedy as opposed to a dark comedy, I don’t see any scenarios where you should have a passive final act. I’m thinking of something like “The Kids are All Right” – character driven comedies that are more about sitting around tables and talking. None of you should have anything like that. There’s a way to do those endings but we’ll cover that another time when it’s relevant.
From there, you want to frame the ending in a way where IT’S IMPOSSIBLE to succeed. Your entire third act should be dictated by the audience’s doubt that the hero will succeed. If the audience has mild doubt or no doubt that the hero will succeed, you’re writing a boring third act.
In screenwriting, we talk about being cruel to our heroes – throwing a lot of bad shit their way. Your ending should be that x10. Lean into making things impossible for your hero. The more impossible it seems, the more doubt we’ll have that they succeed, the more ecstatic we’ll be when they finally win.
Another thing most of you will be doing is having your main character arc in the final sequence. It’s not necessary. But, when done well, it elevates the experience. The thing about comedy is that the arc should be extremely simplistic. You shouldn’t be doing complex arcs in comedy. For Happy Gilmore, it’s about a guy who always lost his temper things got tough. The final day of the tournament, then, has Happy given the chance to, once again, lose his temper. But he’s learned from his mistakes over the course of the movie and, therefore, stays calm, which allows him to win the tournament.
And that’s pretty much it, guys. Don’t make things overly complicated for yourself.
I do want to offer one final warning. Don’t fall for the 3RD ACT DRAMA TRAP. I remember when I first noticed this. It was in the movie, Keeping the Faith, a comedy about a priest and a rabbi who both fall for the same girl. That movie has some really funny scenes. However, once it gets to the final act, they straight up ditched the comedy label and went full drama. I remember watching it and thinking, “Why aren’t they being funny anymore?”
It’s because, in the process of wrapping up everyone’s story, there are naturally going to be some emotional moments. But never forget that you’re still writing a comedy. People came to laugh. And since a final act should be the ultimate embodiment of what you promised with your premise, you need to deliver laughs first. Laughs first laughs first laughs first. Always with comedy. Don’t let anybody tell you differently.
Okay, so, you have until next Monday to finish your first draft. But you actually have a few extra days because next week is about taking a few days away from the script and then going back in with fresh eyes to prepare for your rewrite.
Congratulations to everyone who’s kept up. And for those of you behind, don’t get down. Keep writing! If all you get out of this exercise is a first draft, that’s still huge. :)
Genre: Comedy
Premise: Two high school friends that had a falling out reunite and become superheroes as adults to take on the growing supervillain problem in the city.
About: Thunder Force is the latest collaboration between Melissa McCarthy and her husband, Ben Falcone. The two have made several movies together, including Superintelligence, Life of the Party, The Boss, and Tammy. Falcone does not contain any writing or directing credits that don’t include McCarthy except for The Looney Toons Show, which he wrote 12 episodes of. Possibly the biggest leap in the business without proving one’s self since Barbara Streisand’s infamous hairdresser, Jon Peters, made the leap to producing.
Writer: Ben Falcone
Details: 105 minutes
One of you made a good point the other day.
You said, “You should review Thunder Force because all of us have had some version of this idea at some point.”
Great observation. We’ve all had the ‘regular people become superheroes’ comedy concept before. We finally get to see what comes of that idea when you turn it into a movie.
Now you’re probably saying, “Really Carson? You’re going to review Thunder Force? What’s the point? All you’re going to do is bash it and marvel at how the untalented Ben Falcone gets to make stinker after stinker while much more talented writers are forced to wait on the sidelines.”
That’s true.
But, believe it or not, Thunder Force is a great movie to learn from. Not because it’s bad. That would be easy. No, Thunder Force is a great movie to learn from because it’s the most average average movie ever.
There’s an old saying in life. Play to win. Don’t play not to lose. Ben Falcone plays not to lose. And it’s going to teach all of us a lesson on how to be better comedy writers.
If you haven’t seen the film, it follows two girls who meet in high school and become fast friends. There’s Lydia Berman, a hard-partying scatterbrain who doesn’t take school seriously enough. And Emily Stanton, a geeky girl whose parents were killed by a supervillain. Because of this, Emily plans to dedicate her life to becoming a genius who can turn regular people into superheroes so they can beat the supervillains.
Oh yeah, regarding superheroes. Currently, the only kinds of superheroes there are in the world are villains, who the media have tabbed, ‘miscreants.’ This is why Emily must succeed at her job. If she doesn’t create superheroes, the miscreants will take over the planet.
Lydia and Emily had a falling out at the end of high school and, now that they’re adults, Lydia is finally ready to repair their relationship. She heads over to Emily’s gigantic tech-lab and, after reminiscing about old times, accidentally injects herself with Emily’s life’s work – a super-serum. Once the super-serum is in you, you can’t go back. Which means Lydia is permanently a superhero now. And Emily is forced to train her.
While Lydia trains (a process that basically involves getting stronger), Emily injects herself with her own superpower – invisibility. Once that takes hold, it’s off to fight the miscreants. The plot then boils down to a secret miscreant who’s running for mayor and Thunder Force (their new team name!) trying to take him and his miscreant team down before it happens. Oh, and just in case you were wondering, hi-jinx ensue!
Like I said at the beginning of this review, Ben Falcone is not bad at his job.
He’s average.
He gets away with it because he’s got a movie star wife. But there’s no getting around the fact that he’s mind-numbingly average.
What does that mean, average?
How can you make sure that you, the aspiring comedy writer who does not have a movie star spouse, are not average?
Simple. DON’T MAKE AVERAGE CHOICES.
Every decision you make in a screenplay is a choice. That line of dialogue you’re writing is a choice. The character you choose to play opposite your hero is a choice. The situations you put your characters in, they’re a choice. Bad writers make bad choices in these moments. Good writers make good choices. And average writers make average choices.
There is a formula for making sure you don’t make bad choices. It goes something like this.
Your talent level + Offsetting effort = good choice.
If your talent level is high, most of your initial choices will be good. If your talent level is low, you will have to work much much harder to create good choices. That means never going with your first or second choices, always digging deeper. And it means a lot more drafts than the talented writer. This is because more drafts means more opportunity to spot your subpar choices and change them.
But what does an average choice actually look like?
The most common average choice in comedy is a *dated joke.* In Thunder Force, because Emily doesn’t have a real superpower, Falcone gives her… a taser. Yes, that’s right. The taser joke, a joke that has literally been around for 12 years (remember it in The Hangover), is used prominently in Thunder Force as it is Emily’s main weapon. Ironically, the first character it’s used on in the movie is played by, you guessed it, Ben Falcone.
But the failure of this choice actually goes much deeper. You are writing a comedy about superheroes. WHY THE F&%$ ARE YOU GIVING ONE OF THEM A TASER?????? The operating principle of every script is mine your choices FROM YOUR CONCEPT. A taser could be in any movie. ANY MOVIE. Why are you using it in a superhero movie? This choice is unforgivable.
It also leads us to the movie’s main problem.
Emily.
Falcone came up with a solid dynamic between Lydia and Emily EMOTIONALLY. One of them was the big wild crazy one. The other was the reserved quite introverted one. That dynamic worked great when they were kids.
But it doesn’t work at all for the comedic purposes of the film.
Instead, the comedic dynamic is one-sided. It’s Melissa McCarthy doing her Melissa McCarthy thing and Octavia Spencer off to the side occasionally mumbling “Okay, so where do we go next?”
Whenever you write a comedy two-hander, you need to get three things right. You need to make the first character funny. You need to make the second character funny. And you need to make them FUNNY TOGETHER (see Rush Hour, The Other Guys, 21 Jump Street, The Heat). Falcone appeared to be so focused on getting the emotional dynamic right that he forgot to make Emily funny, which, in turn destroyed any chance of a funny dynamic between his leads.
There’s an early scene in a convenience store where Thunder Force is taking on some bad guys. Emily literally disappears and Lydia takes down all the bad guys herself. It’s such a one-woman-show that when Emily reappears, I’d forgotten she was still here. If you have an entire set piece in your comedy where your co-star doesn’t have a single joke, you’re doing it wrong.
I know exactly how Falcone stumbled upon this mistake.
He fell in love with this idea that Emily has always been “invisible” in life. Therefore, it would be the PERFECT SUPERPOWER TO GIVE HER! Right? Cause theme? Invisibility for the invisible girl! YES!!!! – I got news for you, sweetie. If you’re making choices in critical parts of your comedy that favor theme over laughs, you lose. I know some people are going to push back on that. They’re wrong. If we’re not laughing, YOUR COMEDY IS A FAILURE. Appeasing USC film professors doesn’t make up for a theater full of people not laughing.
Emily is a disaster of a choice. And since she’s in 85% of the movie, that means your movie isn’t funny. You can recover from an unfunny side character. You can’t recover from an unfunny co-star. And these are the choices average writers make.
The best way for average writers to play above their pay grade is to get tough feedback. You need people telling you, “These are average choices. You need to do better.” Melissa McCarthy doesn’t seem like the kind of person who’s going to tell her husband that Emily is the most boring character ever. I’m guessing he gets a lot of encouragement from her. Encouragement is THE WORST THING YOU CAN GIVE AN AVERAGE WRITER. They start living in dream land. They believe their stuff is better than it is. That they don’t have to try as hard when the opposite is true.
Recently, I’ve been getting a lot of feedback on the tennis script I’m producing and the feedback is HARSH. Stuff like, “THIS ENTIRE SUBPLOT WAS LAME.” I LOVE that. When you’re not one of the geniuses, you need people calling you out. It’s the only way you’re going to push beyond your skill level.
This is probably more analysis than Thunder Force deserves. Most people will watch this movie and forget it a day later. But I read a Thunder Force-like screenplay every couple of weeks – an average spec where the writer isn’t talented enough to write a half-baked execution of his idea. The bar is much higher than you think it is. On all scripts, but especially comedy. Unless, of course, your wife is the biggest comedy actress in the world.
[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the stream
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Make structure work for you, not against you. If you’re using a screenplay structure that divides your script into sections (for example, eight 12-page sequences), don’t stubbornly keep to that if it’s not working. One of the early sequences in Thunder Force is a training sequence. That training sequence starts at minute 30 and ends at minute 42. It’s exactly 12 pages. The problem? Falcone only needed half of those pages. Within six minutes, we were already repeating beats. It was at this moment that I first started losing interest. So, look, don’t dogmatically stick to a section page count just because the structure says you have to. If it’s not working for you, rework it until you need all those pages or MOVE ON TO THE NEXT SEQUENCE.
And how can we steal their secrets for features?
The only thing that matters right now is that they’re finally building a real lightsaber. Not those fakey glorified glow-sticks but a real live lightsaber that rises up from the handle. I will be the first one to buy this when it comes out, even if it means dipping into my retirement fund. There are some things that are more important than long-term financial security. Five Guys French fries and lightsabers are near the top of the list.
In non-lightsaber related news, I was recently thinking about how rare it is to find a funny movie. Yet there are a ton of funny television shows. That got me wondering why television seems to be such a better format for comedy. I was hoping that, if I examined that paradox today, I might be able to discover a few things about why TV is better for comedy and steal those lessons for the feature world.
Let’s get into it!
The sit-com seems to be the master laugh-generating format. From The Jeffersons to Cheers to Seinfeld to Friends to Modern Family to South Park to Broad City to Curb Your Enthusiasm. These shows figured out a formula to keep you laughing for 30 straight minutes. And they do it week after week after week.
Meanwhile, how many great comedy features did we get last year? The most recent comedy studio release was The War With Grandpa. Anybody see that? I didn’t think so. 2020’s comedy behemoth was Like a Boss, a movie with a trailer so unfunny, it reportedly killed the editor’s ability to laugh. 2019’s big comedy was Goodboys, which is, arguably, the best studio comedy of the last three years. If that doesn’t tell you where we are in the feature comedy world, I don’t know what does.
Part of the problem is that all the things that make movies great don’t transfer well to comedies. With Hollywood movies, the sets are always bigger. The effects are always bigger. The locations are always bigger. The overall production design is stronger. This is what helped them create Titanic, The Avengers, Terminator 2, Fast and Furious, The Dark Knight Rises.
But none of those things matter in comedy. I suppose bigger locations and bigger sets are important for action-comedies like Spy. But there has never been a correlation between bigger budget and bigger laughs. In fact, I’d argue the opposite is true. The more expensive a gag, the dumber it usually is.
There’s a scene in Spy where Susan is on a private plane that gets hijacked and we get a five minute “comedic” sequence where they’re going in and out of zero gravity. There wasn’t a single laugh in the scene. And I’m guessing the sequence took 4-5 days to shoot and was one of the more logistically complicated scenes. I wouldn’t be surprised if the price for that scene came out to 4 million dollars. For zero laughs!
A good laugh usually costs nothing but the the actors you’re paying and the writer who wrote the joke.
One big advantage TV has over movies is that, other than the pilot episode, TV doesn’t have to set up its characters. That is huge. Character set up is public enemy number 1 for feature writers. Before you can laugh at a character, you must understand who they are. You must first understand the contradiction of George Costanza (neurotic, dim-witted, yet oddly entitled) before you can appreciate his interaction with the soup nazi, a man he’s been told never to question, yet when he’s not given any bread with his soup, he can’t help himself. He must bring up the injustice.
But that George is not present in Seinfeld’s first five episodes. It takes a while for us to understand that that’s who George is. Unfortunately, movies don’t give anywhere near that much time to establish a character. You have two, maybe three scenes, to convey to an audience exactly who your character is. And that creates some limitations. Out goes complexity. Out goes subtlety. This forces you to create one-dimensional on-the-nose characters who don’t feel like real people.
That’s a key detail that a lot of people forget about comedy. Yes, almost every comedic character is an exaggeration. However, they still need to be based on people we feel like we know. In other words, they have to be based in reality. We all know someone like George Costanza who can’t help himself. He *must* die on that hill, even when all the data suggests it’s not a hill worth dying on.
So, character is the first hurdle feature comedy writers must leap. Spend as much time as possible coming up with really funny characters then figure out how you’re going to convey that particular brand of humor in a few short scenes at the beginning of your screenplay. I mean who doesn’t know who Annie in Briedesmaids is after her first scene?
That’s the scene where Annie’s having sex with a douchebag character played by Jon Hamm and even though the sex is horrible, she’s desperate to be his girlfriend, sneaking into the bathroom before he wakes up the following morning to do her hair and make-up so that when he does wake up, she can pretend this is how she always looks. That desperation to find someone helps us understand Annie’s jealousy issues at her best friend getting married AND having to share maid-of-honor duties with the bride’s new best friend. Annie’s jealousy is the engine for almost her entire comedic performance and the setup of that character was a big reason why that worked.
The second big difference I noticed between comedy in TV and film is the way they go about their laughs. TV is mainly about creating a series of comedic situations. “Situation” is the “sit” in “sit-com.” “Situation-comedy.” So as a sit-com writer, you’re basically looking to find funny situations. Plot isn’t that important. There obviously needs to be some setup involved and that requires exposition and, possibly, an earlier scene or two. But if something requires too much setup, you don’t want to mess with it in television.
I’ve noticed that a lot of comedic TV situations are based on misunderstandings. One of my favorites occurs in Modern Family when Phil (the well-meaning but clueless dad) befriends a guy at the gym (played by Matthew Broderick) who he has no idea is gay. Phil invites the gym friend to his house to watch a basketball game (they share the same alma mater), having no idea that the friend is interpreting this as a hook-up opportunity. The *situation* plays out with Phil cluelessly rooting his basketball team on while high-fiving and hugging the gym friend, who keeps attempting to escalate the physical contact into something more (signals that Phil always misses).
Meanwhile, feature films, for some reason, shy away from situational comedy. Instead, they replace this with “set-piece” comedy. Set-pieces such as the famous dinner scene in Meet the Parents where Greg attempts to tell Jack that anything that has nipples can be milked. This both sort of makes sense to me and sort of doesn’t.
It would make sense that, because a movie is longer, you have the opportunity for longer scenes. But longer scenes require more setup to make them work. And setup is often unfunny. You try and make it funny, of course. But the underlying purpose of a setup scene ensures that it always feels like setup. And those scenes are always the most boring. One of the things that separates A-list comedy writers from everyone else is the ability to construct their setup scenes so that they’re individually funny scenes themselves and the audience doesn’t realize they’re being set up.
Think about that dinner scene in Meet The Parents – how much setup that required. You needed to establish that Greg had a ‘wussy’ job. This will be important later when you set up that Jack had a ‘manly’ job. You need to setup that Greg was just about to ask his wife to marry him before learning how important it is in their family to get the father’s approval first. You need to have Greg lose his suitcase on the flight. You need to set up her family and the wedding that’s going on that weekend. All of that stuff works its way into the dinner set-piece.
If you don’t do that or don’t know how to do that, you won’t have enough jokes to pay off. A joke punchline needs a joke setup and a set-piece is often the climax of a bunch of joke setups.
However, there’s something deeper going on here. I’m trying to imagine putting the Modern Family situation I mentioned above into a movie. Could you do that? I’m not sure you could. There’s something about a movie having a bigger overall theme and plot that would make a surface-level misunderstanding like that seem insignificant. And yet I don’t want to deprive comedy writers of such a strong comedic device. Obviously, something is wrong with the feature comedy format. We should be getting more than one funny studio movie every three years. Is the fact that it is so set-piece driven, and set-pieces are so much harder to pull off than situational comedy, the problem?
I need more time to study this but something tells me we can blend both situational comedy and set-piece comedy into a hybrid ‘situational set piece’ scenario that offers the best of both worlds. I’m sure some of you will point out movie scenes that do just this so I’m all ears. I’m ready to learn.
For now, though, those are the two lessons I want you to take away from today’s article. You need to put an insane amount of focus on figuring out your comedic characters and then even more focus on introducing them in a way where the audience immediately understands them AND what’s funny about them. Some sit-coms benefit from the fact that they’ve had two seasons to fully discover a comedic character. You don’t have that luxury so you need make up for it by nailing the introductory scenes.
The second lesson is that situational comedy is easier to pull off than set-piece comedy. And situational comedy is used so frequently in television shows that when a situation doesn’t work, you immediately have a shot with another one. Meanwhile, there’s so much time between set-pieces in movies that if even one of them doesn’t land, it could be the difference between a good and a bad comedy. Because who wants to wait 25 minutes for the next big laugh? For this reason, you must nail all the setup for your upcoming set piece so that you have a lot of jokes to pay off. And if a set piece isn’t working, you need to get rid of it and find another one. You don’t have the flexibility, like sit-coms do, to fail. Your set pieces all have to be the best you’re capable of.
I hope this helps!
I’m thinking of reviewing Stone Thunder or whatever that dreadful new Melissa McCarthy Ben Falcone superhero comedy on Netflix is called this Monday. I wouldn’t normally bother but it is a comedy and it’s obviously terrible so maybe we can learn something from it? Vote in the comments below!
