The “Frank and Beans” scene in There’s Something About Mary is in the argument for funniest movie scene of all time.
And since we’re trying to write a great comedy script of our own, it’s imperative that you study scenes like this.
Let’s start with the basics of comedy. Every good joke needs a setup and a punchline. The way it usually works is that the shorter the amount of time there is between the setup and the punchline, the less funny the joke is. Or, maybe I should say, the less *impactful* the joke is.
The reason for this is obvious. You have less invested in the punchline. Imagine the best knock-knock joke in the world. The most you’ll get out of it is a big laugh. You will never get a long extended laugh out of a knock-knock joke.
That doesn’t mean quick setups and punchlines don’t have their place in comedy. Of course they do. In fact, while you’re setting up your big comedy scenes and set-pieces, you should be using short and medium length setups and punchlines along the way.
With There’s Something About Mary, a big reason the Frank and Beans scene is so funny is that the Farrelly Brothers spent the previous fifteen pages setting the punchline up. Fifteen pages is a lot of screenplay time. It’s one-eighth of your entire movie. So if all you’re doing is setting this scene up in that time, it *better* be a funny scene.
What does set up look like? As I’ve stated here before, “setting up” comedy is about BUILDING UP THE STAKES. Making the stakes as high as you can make them. The higher the stakes are during the scene, the more we’re going to laugh, because it’s important to us that the character succeeds.
Once your stakes are in place, your goal should be to destroy your character. Throw him in the worst situation imaginable. Make it look like it’s impossible for him to succeed. And then keep bombarding him with obstacle after obstacle.
Comedy, probably more than any other genre, requires you to be awful to your main character. Humor comes from struggle. So of course you want to make things bad for your hero. That’s the way to make them struggle. If you’re nice, there’s nothing for them to overcome, and, therefore, less opportunity for funnies.
What’s been Ted’s focus in the first fifteen minutes of the movie? He’s fallen head over heels for this girl from school, Mary. Your first love is a big deal. But the Farrelly Brothers know that the more of a fluke Mary liking Ted is, the higher the stakes will be. Getting a cute girl to go to prom with you is one thing. Getting the most beautiful girl in the world, the kind of girl Ted will never ever have a chance with again ups the stakes dramatically. So the Farrelly Brothers come up with this clever idea that Ted helps out Mary’s mentally disabled brother, which is the main reason she falls for him.
Let me be clear. This scene isn’t one-tenth as funny if Mary is just some cute girl Ted is going to prom with. By shaping all the variables to make this a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for Ted, it sets us up for the scene we’re about to watch, where Ted goes into the bathroom, and then, when he zips his pants up, accidentally catches his special parts in the zipper.
The combination of high stakes and “what’s the worst thing you can do to your character right now” are what ignite the series of laughs that follows. What’s the worst thing that can happen? He can’t unzip himself. What’s the next worst? The family learns what’s happened and comes to the door.
Now here’s the thing with a comedy set piece, like this one, which you’ve spent the last fifteen pages setting up. You can KEEP THROWING THINGS AT YOUR CHARACTER to your heart’s desire. You can’t do this scene with a short setup. There’s not enough meat on the joke to keep milking it. But when you’ve set things up as much as the Farrelly Brothers have here, you can KEEP THROWING INCREASINGLY DIFFICULT OBSTACLES at your hero.
So first the dad comes in. Okay, that’s not what Ted wants but at least it’s a guy. But then the mom comes in. Oh god, his prom date’s mom is seeing him in the most vulnerable state he’s ever been in. The Farrelly Brothers smartly realize that, while new people coming in is funny, you have to find jokes in other places as well. So they add this whole segment where the parents aren’t even sure what they’re looking at and need some explanation. After they’re unable to convey to Ted what their question is, the dad makes the analogy, “Are we looking at the frank or the beans?” This then sets off the special needs brother, outside, who starts yelling, “Frank and Beans!” repeatedly.
We’re using a very simple comedy tool here. ESCALATION. We’re making things WORSE and WORSE for your hero. Every time we think it can’t get worse, it does. Now the policeman shows up in the window. Now the fireman shows up. Again, this doesn’t work with just any setup. It only works because we’ve spent 15 minutes setting up this scene.
Another brilliant thing that the Farrelly Brothers do is they don’t show us what’s happened at first. They, instead, show us EVERYBODY’S REACTION to it. Reaction comedy is some of the funniest comedy out there. Watching somebody do something stupid can be humorless until we see the baffled reaction of someone else nearby. So every time somebody looks at Ted’s zipper situation, they’re beyond disgusted. And, every time we see their disgust, we laugh.
Also, like any good comedy writer, you’re not just relying on the setup to do the work. You’re still looking for secondary jokes to occasionally throw in there. One of my favorites happens when the dad brings in the wife and justifies it by saying, “Don’t worry. She’s a dental hygienist. She’ll know exactly what to do.” The line isn’t funny if the dad says, “Don’t worry, she’s a nurse. She’ll know what to do.” It’s the “adjacent profession” aspect of her job that makes the line funny.
That’s another thing about comedy. You have to turn your logic brain off a lot of the time. Your logic brain sets up your plot for you. But some of the funniest lines don’t make complete sense, like this one. What would a dental hygienist know about this situation? You tend to find those lines when you turn the logic off.
Another funny line comes from the policeman: “What’s going on in here? The neighbors said they heard a lady scream.” As if things weren’t humiliating enough with Ted’s literal manhood dangling by a zipper, now he’s being mistaken for a woman.
Another small but funny joke is that the dad isn’t taking the situation as seriously as he should. He thinks it’s kind of funny and begins treating Ted like a prop. “Come here,” the dad says as he grabs Ted. “You gotta see this,” he says to the cop, showing him Ted’s zipper fiasco. This is a subtle but important detail in comedy: Contrast leads to laughs. When someone is in extreme danger and somebody else recognizes that danger and tries every way they can to help them, there’s nothing comedic about that because both characters are on the same wavelength.
But when a character is in danger and another character is casual about it, now you’re going to find comedy because there’s a big contrast between what’s happening and how it’s being responded to.
The Farrelly Brothers do that with another joke as well. What is a cop supposed to do when someone is hurt? They’re supposed to help, right? What’s the first thing this cop says to Ted? “What the hell were you thinking??” There’s a contrast in what he’s supposed to say compared to what he does say. There’s no joke if the cop starts acting really concerned.
In fact, that’s a great way to find jokes. Think about how a character SHOULD ACT and then have them ACT THE OPPOSITE WAY. It doesn’t always work. But when it does, it’s hilarious. The fireman comes in. They show him Ted’s situation. He does not say, “Oh my god. Are you okay?” He just starts laughing at Ted.
A joke that’s kind of interesting here is the mom with the bactine spray. She occasionally sprays Ted’s penis when he’s not looking. I’ve found that these types of jokes don’t work well on the page because they’re “visual gag” jokes. Visual gags can be funny. But they tend to be stuff you find on set. I wouldn’t waste script pages on them. Spend that time trying to come up with lines like, “What the hell were you thinking?”
The scene ends in a funny way as well. The Farrelly’s take all the power away from Ted. This falls in line with the rule: Make things as bad as possible for your character. Ted’s trying to convince them that he’s fine and he can deal with this himself. They ignore him and tell him what they’re going to do to him (unzip it).
So, to summarize. Your set-piece comedy scenes need to be well set up. The more set up you do, the higher the stakes will be. The more we’ll care about the character’s situation. The more engaged we are, the more we’ll laugh. Once you have them in the situation, treat them terribly. Keep throwing obstacles at them. Keep asking, “What’s the worst thing I can do to them in this moment?” In between big jokes, look for clever secondary jokes. You’ll find a lot of jokes through contrast. Also, play with what is expected versus what you actually do to them.
If you follow this blueprint, you too will write a hilarious scene.
And make no mistake, one great comedy scene can make a script. It really can. Because if somebody dies laughing during a big scene of yours, they will want to make your movie, even if the rest of the script isn’t perfect. Because they know they can try to make the rest of the script funny. So there’s a lot of incentive to writing that big hilarious set piece scene.
Good luck!
Genre: Comedy
Premise: (from Black List) A depressed, progressive woman stuck in a conservative small Texas town starts micro-dosing the entire town with marijuana to make them all get along.
About: This script finished with 10 votes on last year’s Black List. Noga Pnueli has written one of my Top 25 scripts – time loop comedy, “Meet Cute.” So I’ve got high expectations today!
Writer: Noga Pnueli
Details: 112 pages
I think the above video best conveys how subjective comedy is. It’s one of the reasons I don’t review a lot of comedy scripts on the site. I always feel like the x-factor of whether I, personally, believe the writer is funny, gets in the way of me being able to accurately assess the script.
A comedy script can be perfectly executed in terms of structure, theme, and character. But if the comedy’s not my cup of tea, I’m still going to hate it. And things get even trickier when you’re trying to assess whether the writer’s not funny to you or not funny period. Because it would be nice if you could definitively say, “Comedy is not your strong suit. You should write in another genre.” But then someone would have to explain to me how people enjoy The Trevor Noah Show and Adam Sandler movies.
The good news is, I *KNOW* today’s writer is funny. She’s got a script in my Top 25 called “Meet Cute,” a time loop rom-com. So I know we’re going to get some mad comedy lessons. At least I hope so. When in doubt, place your faith in Noga Pnueli.
30-something Estee lives in Jacksboro, Texas. Estee is a “lifer.” That means you’re one of these people who gets stuck in the small shitty town you grew up in because you’re too afraid to leave.
But it’s even worse for Estee because she’s the only liberal in town. She works at a bakery where her boss won’t even bake a cake for a gay couple that comes in. This infuriates Estee so much that she gets in an argument with her boss and he fires her.
While stumbling through town hating life, Estee sees that Jacksboro just opened up their first marijuana dispensary. Estee’s never smoked pot in her life so she tries it out and “ohmmmmmmm,” all of a sudden she’s as relaxed and happy as she’s ever been.
So she gets an idea. She makes pot brownies and starts handing them out to people so that they can experience the same things she did. And they do. Which inspires her to make bigger batches of pot brownies. And then pot cookies. And then pot cakes. Which she delivers to everyone. Except, they don’t know they’re all being drugged.
Amazingly, when they figure it out, they’re not mad. They want her to continue low-key dosing them up. You see, as God-fearing Christians, they can’t be seen buying marijuana in town. This way, they get to to get high without the stigma.
When the pot store owner, who kind of has a crush on Estee, realizes what she’s doing, he informs her that he can no longer take part. Which means her entire operation of “Make Town Happy” will fall apart. Which means everyone will be angry and miserable again. Including Estee. So she has to figure out if there’s any last-minute substitute that can provide people with true happiness. What she ends up finding is the last thing she expects.
Initially, I liked High Society. When it comes to comedy, you want a writer who’s actually comedic. I know that sounds obvious. But you can tell a comedic writer by the way they write. For example, here’s an early excerpt from the script….
ESTEE, 30’s, is what is locally referred to as a LIFER, aka a woman who never left her pathetic hometown and whose wasted potential has made a home atop her shoulders like a ton of bricks.
She is currently avoiding her existential woes by baking complicated SOURDOUGH RYE BREAD in her kitchen.
Pay particular attention to that second sentence. Because there are thousands of ways you could’ve written it. You could’ve written, “Estee is currently baking bread.” “A miserable Estee shoves bread dough into her oven.” “Estee kneads the dough for some bread she’s making.”
You get the idea. These sentences convey the same thing Noga wrote. But they do so in a non-comedic manner.
The phrase, “is currently avoiding her existential woes” is a lot more clever, thoughtful, and funny, than simply saying, “is currently baking bread.” The word “complicated” is also relevant here. “Complicated” paints more of a picture for the reader than if the word wasn’t included. It creates a bit more of a comedic edge, particularly when you combine it with the phrase preceding it.
Funny phrasing and word choices, as long as they’re not overused, are a great way to “write funny.”
Unfortunately, despite Noga’s inherent comedic talent, she runs into the most common comedy problem of them all, which is that she doesn’t have a potent enough premise.
Comedic premises can be deceiving. They can seem funny. But a funny logline doesn’t mean you have 100 minutes of funny. It may only mean you have 30 minutes of funny. And the only way to learn this, unfortunately, is to write a handful of crappy comedies. Only through the process of failure do you get a feel for how long a comedic concept can last.
High Society is a 30 minute premise. How do I know this? Because it’s a South Park episode. They have a very similar episode on South Park. And even they struggled to get their concept to the 23 minute mark.
Why doesn’t this concept have legs? Well, we get to the part where everybody is consuming marijuana and chilled out before the midpoint of the script. So, then, what’s left? We’ve already achieved the funny part mentioned in the logline. What now?
The next plot development is: will the town realize they’re being drugged? Is this a funny development? I would argue it isn’t. There is some conflict involved because there are consequences to what Estee has done. So there’s a dramatic reason for us to keep reading. But I wouldn’t say there was any *comedic* reason for us to keep reading. The script isn’t presented in such a way where this reveal will be treated with a laugh.
Then, we finally get that reveal and guess what? Nobody has a problem with Estee doing this. In fact, they all like it. So, ummmmmm, where is the conflict in the movie? Estee literally has zero problems now. She’s drugging people. They like it. Why, exactly, are we still watching this movie? There’s nothing left to be resolved!
Noga seems to realize this so she comes up with this minor conflict whereby the marijuana shop owner says he’s not going to sell her pot anymore. But, at this point, I don’t care. Too much conflict has been sucked out of the story.
If there’s one thing to learn about comedy today, it’s that if you don’t take care of your plot, your comedy won’t matter. If your characters aren’t engaged in some level of compelling conflict that has genuine stakes attached, then we don’t care what happens to your characters. And people won’t laugh if they don’t care what happens to your characters.
I don’t even know what Estee wants in this movie. Why is she even doing any of this? It’s an important question because, if we don’t know, then we don’t know why it’s so important for her to succeed. And without a need to succeed, there are no stakes. The guys in The Hangover cannot, under any circumstances, lose their friend eight hours before his wedding. The stakes are so high that we’re extremely engaged in their mission.
Not so with this one. I get that it’s pot comedy and that this type of comedy is a little more chill. But I’ve seen pot comedies with high stakes and lots of activity (Pineapple Express). So while I’ll give High Society a puff. I’m not giving it a pass.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Make sure that your comedy concept provides stakes that will last 100 minutes. I see too many comedy writers who dive into a comedy script with stakes that get you to page 40. And then they spend the rest of the movie flailing about trying to be funny. This is important, so pay attention. Characters are the most funny when they have something to lose. Therefore, if it’s muddy or unclear what your characters have to lose, chances are, nobody’s laughing. I wasn’t ever clear what Estee had to lose in this movie.
Genre: Horror
Premise: (From Black List) Summer on a secluded campus takes a dark turn for three college girls when a supernaturally sexy mystery man begins haunting their dreams.
About: This script finished on last year’s Black List with 12 votes! The writer, Shea Mayo, has written a couple of short films. But this is her big breakthrough screenplay!
Writer: Shea Mayo
Details: 108 pages
I originally picked this one because I thought it was a comedy and I wanted to analyze some comedy to get us all in the right mindset to write our own comedy. But about 25 pages in, I realized this was more horror than comedy. By that point, it was too late to stop. So what did I think?
All-female college student, Indi, has just been informed by the administration that her sexual assault case by a male staff member at the college isn’t going to move forward. Angry and exhausted, she meets up with her uptight friend Samantha and her cardio-obsessed pal, Gabby, for a little girl support.
That night, Indi has a lucid dream where a dreamboat named Cal emerges from the woods and wants to love up on Indi. Still recovering from the assault, Indi says no thanks. Cal looks confused. You get the sense that no one says no to him.
The next day, the girls decide they’re going to spend the summer here on campus instead of going home. It’s going to be Girl Power for the next three months. Except then it isn’t Girl Power because, all of a sudden, Samantha’s got no time to hang out. She always seems to be… sleeping.
That’s okay because Indi still has Gabby. Maybe they can run a marathon or something. Nope. Gabby – who never has a boyfriend – is all of a sudden talking about a new mysterious secret boyfriend. And then Gabby is asleep all the time, too. What’s going on here??
The answer comes when a fourth girl, Bridget, shows up on top of the local bell tower naked and jumps to her death. Bridget, it turns out, was always sleeping as well! That’s when Indi realizes they’re all connected! It must be that lucid dreamboat Cal sucking her friends into his clutches and controlling them.
So Indi sets off to learn about this dream demon, who, it turns out, makes women become obsessed with him so that he can control their every thought. But that’s not even the most evil thing he does. His existence is designed to not only torture women with how sexy he is, but to make sure that nobody they tell believes them. Since Indi is the only person who knows Cal is real, it will be up to her to somehow infiltrate her friends’ dreams and save them!
It’s pretty clear why this made the Black List.
It’s not just a horror script. It’s a horror script with a social message.
Although I’m not sure that message is as clear as the writer intended it to be. Cal is a stand-in for women not being believed. But what’s weird is that Indi, the one character in the script who’s been assaulted, is also the one person not involved with Cal. It’s the friends, who haven’t had any such experiences, who get stuck with Cal. And they both like him a lot. So while there is a message, it must go through several translation apps before we understand it.
As I’ve stated before, it doesn’t matter how noble your message is if your reader isn’t engaged. And that’s another issue this script had. The first half of the movie is people sitting around talking. You guys all know how much this bothers me. Characters waiting around and sitting around doing nothing outside of talking to each other – that’s narrative death.
You need your characters to be active. And all three of these characters have been constructed to be the opposite of active since the central concept of the movie is about going to sleep. Which means you’re constructing your narrative around putting people in bedrooms so they can sleep. I would’ve recognized that right away as an issue and made sure I had a plan to tackle it.
A critical mistake was setting this during the summer. By setting it in the summer as opposed to the semester, you strip away the only thing that’s keeping your characters active. If it’s the semester, they have to go to class, they have to study for tests, they have to do loads of extracurricular college activities. You need that stuff so that your characters always have something to do.
Which makes your central concept better as well since Cal is sucking away the girls’ energy, which would make them less productive, which would upset their studies, which could potentially make them lose scholarships or drop out of classes. The stakes become much higher.
The stakes aren’t high when the only thing you have to do that day is prepare for that nights’ bonfire party.
Had there been higher stakes and more activity from the characters, I would’ve liked this story more and resonated with the message more. But, as it stands, it felt like people hanging out, talking, sleeping, and then, in the last 40 pages, a mad dash to save the hero’s friends. Wasn’t my cup of tea.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: If you’re having to come up with places for your characters to go in your story, there’s a good chance your narrative is broken. Characters should always have goals. If not end-of-movie goals, more immediate goals. These will dictate where your character needs to be and what they need to do. Naomi Watts, in The Ring, is following clues in the haunted video tape because it kills whoever watched it in seven days and her son watched it. So she always has something to do. She always has another lead to follow. If you’re constantly having to come up with locations for characters to meet in their next scene – coffee shops, bonfires, bars – that means your hero isn’t active. They do not have a goal to pursue. And while skilled screenwriters can sometimes get away with this, it tends to be the equivalent of a plane in a full-on nosedive. There’s no way to recover.
We’ve got three months until the Comedy Showdown deadline (June 17). Three months is plenty of time to write a script. And that’s what I’m going to help you do. Every Monday, until June 17th, I will be guiding you along in the process. This way, you don’t have to think about when and where to work. I’m going to provide you with every step. All you have to do is do what I say.
By the way. I don’t want to confuse anyone but I already know what the next Showdown (which will take place in September) will be. It will be a Sci-Fi Showdown. I’m not officially announcing it yet. I’m just letting you know, in case comedy’s not your thing, you can use this time to write your sci-fi script, and then have a whole extra three months to make it perfect.
So, what is going to be required of you? A minimum of two hours a day of writing. And, yes, you’ll be writing seven days a week. You have that time. You may think you don’t. But I promise you you do. Chris Dennis, who wrote Last Great Contest winning script, Kinetic, has three children. And he still managed to write two screenplays over the past year. So you have time. Just stop watching so many stupid Youtube political videos.
While I’ll be stressing comedy during this exercise, I’m basically going to act as a script-writing motivator. I’m going to give you tasks and your job will be to complete them. So even if you’re not going to enter Comedy Showdown, feel free to write a script in another genre. When else are you going to have an angry website owner standing behind you with a whip?
Last week, I gave you your first task. Come up with a concept. If you failed at that, I’m going to offer you a last second comedy concept hack. One of the easiest ways to come up with a comedy idea is to take a movie in another genre and simply turn it into a comedy! Take John Wick… and turn it into a comedy! Take a heist film, like Triple Frontier… and turn it into a comedy! 1917 made hundreds of millions of dollars on top of the one-continuous-shot gimmick. Why can’t you make hundreds of millions of dollars on a one-continuous-shot comedy!? The possibilities are endless.
Okay, so we’ve got our concept. Now what?
I need you to brace yourself.
And make sure you’re sitting down.
This week… IS ALL ABOUT OUTLINING.
Your outlining will be broken into two sections. The first section will be three days and consist of getting to know your characters. The second section will be four days and consist of writing a physical outline.
Day 1 will consist of getting to know your main character. Specifically, you’ll want to know what their fatal flaw is. While the need for a fatal flaw in every movie is debatable, it’s not debatable in comedy. In comedies, your main character needs conflict within himself about SOMETHING. Something needs to be unresolved. Your hero may be aware of what that something is. Or they may not.
Happy Gilmore has anger issues. That’s his flaw. That’s what he needs to resolve. Seth Rogen in Knocked Up isn’t ready to be an adult yet. That’s what he needs to resolve. Columbus in Zombieland struggles to connect with others. That’s what he needs to resolve.
Your concept will usually tell you what your hero’s flaw is. Bridesmaids is about a bridesmaid who has to compete for attention with the bride’s new friend. The flaw we give to our main character, then, is pretty obvious. Jealousy. Kristin Wiig has to resolve her jealousy by the end of the story. That’s the thing with this stuff. It’s not rocket science. The answers are often right in front of you.
Next, you’re going to do a character biography. I know that all of you hate character biographies. So I’m going to give you an option. But, first, for the purists out there, I want you to write between 2-5 pages of some key details in your hero’s life. I want to know where they were born, where they grew up, what their relationship with their parents was like, their first kiss, their first sexual encounter, their religion (or lack thereof), their best friends, the most traumatic thing that ever happened to them, their current relationship (or marriage), their education, their job, and finally, whether they’re happy or not in life. And, if they aren’t, why?
What you write isn’t important. In fact, you may never look at this document again. The idea is to get you thinking about your character. And that’s what this exercise will do. I guarantee you’ll come out of it learning something exciting about your hero.
If you don’t want to write a biography, go ahead and open up a new document in Final Draft. And I want you to write out, in script form, the beginning of your main character’s day. The more detailed you are, the better. This will achieve the same thing. It will make you think about who your character is. You can learn a hell of a lot about someone by how they start their day. Is it timed to the second and perfectly ordered? Or is it wake up whenever you want and figure out what to do on the fly? Have fun with this. We’re writing a comedy.
Day 2 will be focused on your secondary characters. I need you to write down two things about everyone outside of your main character. I need to know their fatal flaws. And I also need you to assign them a DEFINING CHARACTERISTIC. Almost all the characters in a comedy are funny. What you’re doing now is deciding HOW THEY’RE FUNNY. And you do that by assigning them a defining characteristic.
If we’re to use The Hangover, Alan’s defining characteristic is that he’s the world’s most socially unaware person. Stu’s (Ed Helms) is that he’s paranoid about everything. Phil (Bradley Cooper) is selfish and hates his life. If that sounds like a weak defining characteristic, that’s because it is. Of the three main characters in The Hangover, Phil is the most forgettable. Which is why getting the defining characteristic right is so important. It will decide how funny and how memorable that character is.
Day 3 will be focused on whichever one of the first couple of days you weren’t able to finish. If you still don’t feel like you know your main character, get back in there and write more of that biography! If you still have secondary characters to figure out or don’t feel like your defining characteristics are strong enough, go back in there and keep working.
Day 4 is going to be about about figuring out your structure. You want to know what your first act is going to be about, your second act, and your third. If you need help, remember that the nicknames for these acts are the SETUP ACT, the CONFLICT ACT, and the RESOLUTION ACT. So I want you to think about how your concept can be extended out into this construct.
Let’s look at the famous Chevy Chase comedy, Vacation. The first act is going to be setting up the members of the family and the family dynamics. The second act is going to be the drive. This is where the characters attempt to get to their destination. You’ve going to want to come up with a series of obstacles that get in the way (this is the CONFLICT ACT and obstacles create CONFLICT). And then the final act is them getting to their designation, only to find out it’s closed.
Days 5, 6, and 7 are going to be physically outlining as much as you possibly can about the movie. Your starting points should be the inciting incident (usually, this is the thing that causes the problem that the main character must now deal with – like Seth Rogen getting Kathryn Heigl pregnant in Knocked Up). The first act turn (page 25 in a 100 page script) is when the character goes off on their journey. The midpoint shift (page 50 in a 100 page script) is when something major happens that changes the entire dynamic of the plot. In The Hangover, this is when Chow informs our protagonists that he has Doug and will kill him if they don’t pay him back his 80,000 dollars. The end of Act Two (page 75 in a 100 page script). This is always an easy plot point to figure out. It should be your hero’s lowest point where he’s given up on achieving his goal. And, finally, your ending. You don’t have to know your ending just yet. But it helps to know it early because then you can start writing “set up” scenes throughout the script.
If all you accomplish is figuring out those pillars, you should be good to go. But I would encourage you to add as many checkpoints to your outline as possible. Checkpoints are any scene idea or plot development that you come up with. If you’re writing Borat 2 and you know you have a scene where the daughter goes to a doctor for breast implants, that’s a checkpoint scene. If you know you want Borat and the daughter to split up somewhere around page 67 (midway between the midpoint and end of second act), that’s a checkpoint scene. This is how they write Avengers movies. The writers just figure out where all the checkpoints are so they know where to write to.
Another option for outlining is the sequence method. This is where you divide your script up into eight sections. If the script is 100 pages long, each section will be roughly 12 and a half pages. Some writers like this because it turns this big endless 100 page black hole into more manageable chunks, each of which are, essentially a “mini-movie.” So instead of writing one big movie. You’re writing eight mini-movies.
And you’re using the exact same methods as you would in a big movie. You want to come up with a goal, some stakes, and some urgency for the first mini-movie. Then you come up with a new goal, stakes, and urgency for the second mini-movie. And just keep doing that all the way down the line.
Guys. Comedy is one of the most structured of all the genres. It is in your best interest to spend 14 hours this week outlining. It will make everything so much easier when it’s time to write.
And that’s it.
Next Monday, we’ll start writing the script!
Genre: Black Comedy/Thriller
Premise: When a freak storm hits a couples therapy retreat and turns all men in its path into predatory killers, a devoted wife and her new female allies must fight to save their lives, as well as their relationships.
Why You Should Read: MAELSTROM is a satirical contained thriller that takes the idea that the weather has the power to negatively affect our behaviour and amplifies it to 11. But what if we took it one step further still? What if it only affected male behaviour? And what if the affected men’s behaviour sorta, kinda, a teeny bit mirrored the behaviour displayed by asshole men the world over, resulting in a social commentary that explored themes of self-love and emotional independence in a battle royale of the sexes? Welcome… to MAELSTROM.
Writer: Stephen Thomas Parker
Details: 95 pages
It’s here!
After three months of non-stop writing and 300 entries, six of which were chosen for the High Concept Showdown, you guys voted Maelstrom the winner. I was happy to see Stephen Parker get the win because he’s been a LONGTIME reader of the site and the championship belt couldn’t have gone to a nicer guy.
However, you guys know how it is with me.
I don’t give free passes to anyone. If I’m going to give your script a ‘worth the read’ or higher, it’s got to be good. And thusly, the High Concept Showdown Winning Script Review begins!!!
After a fun opening scene where an old man turns into a psychopath who attacks his wheelchair-bound wife, we meet married couple Ash and Beth, who are escaping the city to experience a little R&R for the weekend. Well, that’s what Asshole Ash believes, anyway. In reality, Beth hasn’t told Ash that she’s taking him to… duh duh DUHHHHH – COUPLES THERAPY!
After they get to the therapy grounds and Ash yells at Beth for tricking him, we meet the rest of the couples. The retreat is led by 50-somethings Donna and Jean-Pierre. There’s Eleanor and Colin, who are so tied to the hip they complete each other’s sentences. We have masculine Christina and her beta husband, Brandon. We have Monique, who always puts her husband, Devon, in his place. As well as a few other couples.
Mere seconds after everyone introduces themselves, a storm rolls in, and with it, some sort of agent that turns men ——- CRAAAAAAAZY!!!! Instantly, the men begin trying to kill the women. Beth and every other woman who manages to survive charge into the mansion and slam the door behind them.
As the women try and grasp what’s happening, the men attempt to get inside, climbing up the side of the house to get in the windows. That’s when staff member and certified badass Chen arrives with a gun and starts shooting men dead!!! Unlike these women, who all have attachments to these rabid killers, Chen has no one. And that makes her a mean killing machine.
Believe it or not, it’s Beth who argues that Chen – and everyone else for that matter – needs to calm down and figure this out. If the men are under a spell, that means the spell can be broken and they’ll get their husbands back. But when the men go into full-on attack mode, Beth loses her sister soldiers, who confirm their belief that the only way out of this clusterfuck is to kill all men!
Normally, after I finish an Amateur Friday winning script, I don’t want to know what anybody thought because I don’t want those thoughts to influence my own review. But the second I finished Maelstrom, I went right over to the High Concept Showdown comments because I had to see what people thought of this script.
But, before we get to that, let’s talk about what worked here. My favorite part of this script, by far, was the first 20 pages. Stephen did an amazing job setting up the story and the characters.
After a fun teaser, he did a great job with the first scene, which has Beth and Ash driving to the marriage counseling retreat. Whenever I encounter a familiar scenario in a script, I’m looking for whether the writer is going to approach it the same way everyone else does or find a new angle.
A married couple going to counseling is a common scenario. I’ve read it in dozens, if not hundreds of, scripts before. Usually, the scene is written with a lot of tension in the air. You can feel that there’s something broken in the marriage. And while it’s an effective way to set broken couples up, it’s the same scene every time.
What Stephen did, instead, was clever. He made it so that Beth hadn’t told Ash they were going here. She’d tricked him into believing they were going on a weekend getaway. Then, Stephen informed the audience of that piece of information before Ash was looped in. All after setting Ash up as the world’s biggest asshole. What this did was create a dramatically ironic scenario by which we’re dreading the moment that Ash realizes they’re on a marriage counseling retreat. We know he’s going to go apeshit. Yet, we have to see what happens when he finds out so we keep reading.
Not only did Stephen give us a fresh angle with this setup, he created a situation that hooked the reader, forcing them to continue on to see what happened next. Brilliant.
The next big sequence is the introduction of all the couples at the retreat. I’ve been encountering this strange new trend whereby writers barely introduce characters. They’ll say something like, “Long brown hair and stocky.” Something that gives zero insight into the character. They’ll then follow that up by NOT giving the character an introductory action. Introductory actions are what allow us to remember characters. If you introduce someone yelling meanly at someone else, we’re going to remember them as a meanie. If, however, you introduce someone and don’t have them do or say anything, they are instantly forgettable. And yet so many writers do this.
Here’s how Parker introduces one of the couples.
You’ll notice that, even though the character descriptions are short, they’re informative. We instantly get a feel for this couple. That’s followed with actions from both characters that reinforce those descriptions and, as a result, cement the characters in our head. Stephen did a great job with all the characters in that regard.
And then our movie takes a sharp turn. The storm moves in and all the men become psychopaths. The shift is so severe that it literally feels like someone picked us up out of one theater and dropped us down into an adjacent one. It’s pure crazed violence to the extreme. And I’m not sure I ever recovered from that.
The beginning of the script felt so thoughtful. I could feel the writer meticulously setting everything up. Then it’s, “AHHHHHHHH!!” “BANG BANG!” “STRANGULATION!” “KNIFE TO CHEST!” Over and over and over again. When action gets repetitive – no matter how intense or fun or exciting that action is – returns begin to diminish. And returns were diminishing quickly. Within ten pages of being inside the mansion, I was already exhausted.
But I hadn’t give up on the script yet. That would happen on page 33. This is when we learn that there’s a man in the house somewhere. Now, on the surface, this is a good idea. There’s a man on the loose somewhere, hiding in the house. Not only does that create tension and suspense, but it changes things up a little. We finally get a break from the crazed violence. And yet, something about it didn’t work for me and I couldn’t figure out what it was.
It was only once I read Brenkilco’s comment that it became clear. He pointed out that Stephen had established that this disease turned everyone into manic crazed psychos. Why, then, has one of them turned into a careful plotting stalker? Out of nowhere, the rules had changed. And in a movie like this where you’re asking the audience to buy into a pretty out-there concept, it’s imperative that the rules behind that concept be consistent. Once you break a rule, it now feels like the writer is making things up as they go along.
Which is the whole reason that I liked the beginning of the script. It was so well planned out. You could tell that Stephen had a reason behind every choice he made. That seemed to disappear once the storm hit. And, unfortunately, the script never recovered after that.
I’m not quite sure what advice I’d give to Stephen on this script. The central problem – the outrageous repetitive action – is a big enough issue that a lot of this script would need to be rewritten. And, unfortunately, I don’t know what I’d put in its place. Maybe you guys have some ideas. I’d be curious to hear them.
Oh, and one last thing. I want to give Stephen props for this line, which made me laugh out loud: “And suddenly, this fight looks very different… because Beth’s on the attack and hell hath no fury like a woman whose husband googled his wedding vows!”
Script link: Maelstrom
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: You get one moment in your script where everyone’s running around like chickens with their heads cut off. Otherwise, you need structure to your set-pieces. What does ‘structure’ look like in a set piece? Check out the final backyard party in Parasite. Check out the trash compactor scene or the trench run in Star Wars. The talk show in Joker. The dueling ferry boats in The Dark Knight. The Pamela Anderson book signing kidnapping in Borat. You need a clear directive. Physical boundaries. A set of rules the audience understands so they can participate. And, finally, a little imagination to make the scene fun. Randomness is okay once. But if it’s the primary formula for your movie’s action, the movie’s going to feel messy.
