It’s Comedy Theme Week everyone. For a detailed rundown of what that means, head back to Monday’s post, where you’ll get a glimpse of our first review, Dumb and Dumber. Today, I’m taking on the best sports comedy ever made, Happy Gilmore.

Genre: Comedy
Premise: A failed hockey player is forced to join the pro golf tour in order to save his grandmother’s home.
About: As not many people saw Adam Sandler as a movie star at the time, Happy Gilmore did only so-so at the box office, taking in 38 million dollars. The movie, however, would later become a huge hit on video and help propel Sandler into becoming one of the highest paid actors in the world. Roger Ebert said of Sandler’s performance at the time, which he did not like, that he “doesn’t have a pleasing personality: He seems angry even when he’s not supposed to be, and his habit of pounding everyone he dislikes is tiring in a PG-13 movie.” As I find Sander’s anger to not only be the funniest part of the film, but an integral part of his character and character arc (and thus organic to the story), it just goes to show how polarizing reactions to comedy can be!
Writers: Tim Herlihy and Adam Sandler

Leave it to Adam Sandler to restore some normalcy to the craft of screenwriting.

Uhhhhh….what?? Did I just mention Adam Sandler and screenwriting in the same sentence? And that sentence didn’t include the words “dreadful,” “incomprehensible,” “horrifying,” “unreadable,” or “brain-cancer-inducing?” I believe I did. Yes, believe it or not, before Sandler and his “writing team” began invading our cineplexes with movies like “Has-Beens Hanging Out At A Cabin” or whatever the hell that piece of crap was with him and Chris Rock and Kevin James, he actually made a few good movies. And Happy Gilmore, by a country mile, was the best of them.

While yesterday’s comedy made all sorts of funky structure-breaking choices that confused and confounded me, Happy Gilmore is one of the most straightforward by-the-book executions of the three-act structure there is. In fact, if I was going to recommend a template for the execution of the single protagonist comedy, I would put Liar Liar first and Happy Gilmore second. As shocking as it sounds, this screenplay is a thing of beauty.

As many of you know, Happy Gilmore is about a lousy hockey player with anger management issues who’s forced to become a professional golfer in order to save his grandmother’s house. Happy’s unique talent is his ability to drive the ball further than any professional golfer in the world. But after his success begins to draw the ire of tour hot shot and universal asshole Shooter McGavin, Happy finds himself not only struggling to win back his grandmother’s home, but trying to defeat the best golfer in the world.

What I love about Happy Gilmore is that it follows all the rules, yet still manages to feel fresh and funny. It starts by giving us a hero with a flaw.  Happy has anger issues. This flaw, while admittedly simplistic, gives our character some depth, something to overcome during the course of his journey.  And even better, in “proper” screenwriting fashion, we find out about this flaw not because our hero or some other character *tells* us he has anger issues. We find out through his *actions*. After not making the hockey team, Happy proceeds to beat the shit out of his coach.

This is followed by the inciting incident, the moment in the screenplay that incites a call to action. Happy’s grandmother loses her house because she didn’t pay her taxes. She owes $250,000 dollars and if she doesn’t come up with it within 90 days, the house will be sold off. So our character goal is set: Get $275,000 before the 90 days is up.

In order to beef up that goal, the writers make sure you know that the grandma is the nicest sweetest coolest most loving woman in the world. And because you love her, you want to see Happy get her house back for her. Also, remember how the other day I was talking about positive and negative stakes? How you want your character to not only GAIN something if he wins, but LOSE something if he loses? We have that here when we find out Grandma is staying at the nursing home equivalent of a concentration camp. If Happy gets the money, he gets her house back. If he loses, she’s stuck in this hellhole forever!

But here’s where the genius really kicks in. For most movies to work, your hero must DESPERATELY WANT TO ACHIEVE HIS GOAL. If your hero doesn’t want to achieve his goal, then what’s the point in watching? He doesn’t really care. So why should we? But if someone’s desperately going after a goal doing something they enjoy, where’s the fun in that? Especially in a comedy. It’s much more fun if they DON’T like what they’re doing. And Happy hates playing golf. So then how do you make someone despereately want to achieve something if they don’t like what they’re doing? Simple. You force them into it. So Happy hates golf, but he HAS to play it. And this conflict he has with the sport is what leads to the majority of the comedy in the movie. Again, CONFLICT BREEDS COMEDY. This is how we get Happy swearing up a storm as he tears up a pack of clubs on national TV while the Tour President tries to calm down the sponsors. Or how we get the classic comedy moment of Happy fighting Bob Barker. It’s the key component to the movie working, that Happy wants desperately to achieve his goal, but still hates what he’s doing.

One commonality we see between Happy Gilmore and Dumb and Dumber is that the writers work really hard to make sure you love the main character. We start out with Happy’s voice over. Voice overs always get you into the head of your hero, breaking that fourth wall and making you feel like you know them. So it’s a great device to create sympathy (though still dangerous!). Through it, we find out that Happy lost his father when he was young (sympathy). Happy doesn’t make the hockey team (more sympathy). Happy gets dumped by his girlfriend (more sympathy). Happy employs a homeless man as his caddy (more sympathy). But what you may not have picked up on, is that there’s a very subtle twist to all of these sympathetic moments to draw our attention away from the fact that the writers are pining for our sympathy. Each moment is cloaked inside comedy. In other words, because we’re laughing, we forget that the writers are blatantly manipulating us. When Happy gets kicked off the team, he hilariously beats the shit out of the coach. When his girlfriend leaves him, he screams at her through the intercom (she eventually leaves and Happy is talking to a young boy and an aging Chinese maid). It’s very cleverly disguised inside comedy, and a neat trick to use in your own comedies.

Another great touch is that Happy Gilmore constructs the perfect villain: Shooter McGavin. A lot of writers think you just throw an asshole into the mix and that’ll be enough. Crafting a villain, even in a simple comedy, requires a lot of work. You have to give us someone we hate, but not in that obvious cliché stereotyped way. The mix here of arrogance, passive-aggressiveness, fakeness, and elitism, along with all those annoying little traits (his little “shooting of the guns” and recycled jokes) makes Shooter just a little bit different from the other villains you’ve seen in comedies.

Even the love interest is perfectly executed here. Usually, the love interest in a non-romantic comedy is unnaturally wedged into the story to appease producers. Here, it feels organic to the story. The romantic lead (who’s Claire from Modern Family btw) is the public relations director of the tour. So when one of the tour players is acting up (in this case, Happy Gilmore), it’s only natural that she be brought in to keep him in check. This stuff sounds like it just happens. But you gotta be on your game to make it feel natural. And you have to admit, you never question it in Happy Gilmore.

Chubbs (the one-armed golf pro) is also organically integrated into the script. Whenever you write a sports comedy, you want to not only have an internal flaw (anger, in this case) that the hero battles, but an external one as well, so there’s something physical they have to fix in order to achieve their goal. Here, it’s Happy’s putting. That’s what’s preventing him from beating Shooter. This is the reason Chubbs becomes essential. He has to teach Happy how to putt. Again, it seems obvious, but that’s because it’s so well done.

Another key that makes Happy Gilmore work – and a requirement for any good comedy – is that it exploits its premise. Whenever you come up with a comedy idea, you want to make sure you have 3 or 4 scenes that showcase that idea. That’s why the Bob Barker fight is genius. That’s why Chubbs taking Happy to the miniature golf course and Happy getting in a fight with the laughing clown is genius. These are the moments that represent the audience’s expectations of the idea. If you’re not including these scenes, you might as well not write the movie.

Happy Gilmore is also an incredibly tight script. That was another reason Dumb and Dumber threw me for a loop. It’s over 2 hours long. Most comedies need to be short. You’re making people laugh. Not giving them a history lesson. So by making Happy Gilmore a lean 93 minutes long, it forces the writer to make every scene count. And indeed, every single scene here pushes the story forward. Even the most questionable story-related scene, the pro-am tournament with Bob Barker, sets up Shooter’s goon/cronie who later tries to take down Happy in the Tour Championships.

This is by far the best sports comedy ever made. And just as a straight comedy, it’s pretty high up there as well. If you’re writing a comedy with a single protagonist trying to obtain a goal (like most comedies), you definitely want to study the structure of Happy Gilmore.  It’s pretty much perfect.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Look to make your villain unique through a combination of traits. Shooter McGavin is clever (sending Happy to the 9th tee at nine), passive aggressive (offering backhanded compliments whenever asked about Happy’s talent), cowardly (backing away from a fight) phony (pretending to care about his fans when all he cares about is himself). This combination of qualities gives him a depth that you don’t often see in comedic villains. Making your villain a straight-forward asshole may get the job done, but layering him with numerous quirks and traits will separate him from all the cliché villains of the past.

So the other day I did an amateur review of “Bass Champion,” a comedy about a Twilight-like actor who becomes a bass fisherman to win a movie role. I liked it quite a bit. The response to the script, however, was divided. Some people liked it. Others hated it. That response got me thinking. Why are comedy scripts so hard to judge?

Take Your Bridesmaid Is A Bitch for example. That was one of my favorite comedy scripts of the year. And yet I actually received hate e-mails afterwards telling me how terrible it was and how bad my taste was. I was like, “Did we read the same thing here?” Or The Escort, which I thought was a great road trip script which was both funny and had heart. I won’t revisit the comments section, but let’s just say 90% of you didn’t agree with me.

The weird thing I’ve found about comedy screenplays is that when the reader doesn’t like them, they actually start to hate the writer. Not just “Oh, I didn’t like it. But good effort!” No.  A rage builds up inside of them like Bruce Banner to the point where they want to find the writer and beat his brains in for making them endure this garbage. No other genre elicits that reaction. And the broader the comedy, the more vitriol you can expect. And I get it. I think Talladega Nights is godawful. The unfunniest piece of garbage I saw that year. I actually stopped thinking Will Ferrel was funny for awhile after that movie. Yet some people think I’m crazy for not liking that film. My best friend says I have no funny bone if I think Nights isn’t funny.

Naturally, a lot of this comes down to humor being subjective. But there are movies out there that everybody seems to find funny (or at least most people). So as much as I’d like to throw up my hands and concede “If it’s funny, it’s a good comedy, if it doesn’t, it isn’t,” I can’t do that. Comedy is the top genre in the spec screenplay market. We have to be able to measure its quality somehow or else we’re writing in the dark.

So what I’m doing this week is taking five popular comedies and trying to figure out what makes them work. Now I’ll be honest with you. I don’t know what I’ll be able to conclude after this. It’s an experiment I’m doing for myself and I’m forcing all of you to come along for the ride. So hopefully something will come of it. But if all the reviews go like today’s, I might be in trouble.

Genre: Comedy
Premise: A pair of dim-witted friends accidentally steal a ransom suitcase full of money. When they try to return the suitcase to its rightful owner, the lovely Mary Swanson, hijinx ensue.
About: The film was very successful at the box office, grossing $127 million in the United States, and $247 million worldwide, an impressive take for a comedy on the world stage at the time, especially from a relatively unknown star (Carrey had only done Ace Ventura before this). There was a huge battle between the producers and the directors (and Carrey) about the ending where Harry and Lloyd are offered to join a bus full of models and they refuse. The producers insisted that they get on the bus. But the Farrelly’s and Carrey would not film the scene, insisting that the characters were too stupid to do so.
Writers: Peter & Bobby Farrelly.

One of my favorite comedies of all time, Dumb and Dumber follows two dimwitted friends, Lloyd (a limo driver) and Harry (a pet groomer), who get inadvertently wrapped up in a kidnapping after snagging a suitcase filled with ransom money and trying to return it to its owner, Mary Swanson, who Lloyd’s fallen in love with (after a ten minute limo ride). The journey takes them to Aspen, Colorado, where they realize the suitcase is filled with a million dollars, which, instead of conserving, they burn through in a matter of days.

I’m already regretting making this the first review of the week. If anything, this script’s served to confuse me more about comedy than help. Let’s start with the lead characters. If you walk into any movie studio and ask any creative person how to write a buddy movie, the first thing they’ll tell you is that the two leads have to be opposites. ESPECIALLY in a comedy. Opposites bring out conflict. Conflict results in humor. I actually can’t think of a single road trip comedy where the two leads didn’t have some key opposing quality which dominated their relationship.

Lloyd and Harry? They’re pretty much the same person. They’re both dumb. So theoretically, you lose out on a ton of comedy. And yet their interactions are funnier than 99% of the comedies out there. You see those question marks on my eyes? They were there the whole time. I mean, there’s no real conflict between these two until we get to the third act, when Harry steals Mary from Lloyd. THREE ACTS until we hit the conflict between our lead characters. Contrast this with the conflict that pops up right away in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. It’s baffling why this works so well here.

Bringing some sanity back to the analysis, the Farrelly’s do place a lot of external conflict on our characters, mainly with a world that keeps shitting on them and hit men who are hot on their trail. If there’s little conflict between your main characters, you should try to lay as much external conflict on them as possible, and they do that here.

But insanity returns when you break down Dumb and Dumber’s structure, which is really wonky. I always say, if you’re going to do a road trip film, make it a road trip film! Your entire second act should be your characters on the road, because that’s what your movie is about.  National Lampoon’s Vacation, Little Miss Sunshine, Planes Trains, Due Date, Road Trip, all follow this formula. Dumb and Dumber starts out this way. But our characters end up getting to Aspen at the midpoint, a full 1 hour before the movie ends.

From there, the movie almost reboots itself. The “Get to Mary Swanson” movie becomes The “Find Mary Swanson” movie. And then it reboots itself again, becoming “The Lloyd/Harry/Mary Love Triangle Movie.” I was surprised to see Blake Snyder’s famous “fun and games” section (where you typically find all your trailer moments) right after they open the briefcase and start spending the money, a full 65 minutes into the movie. This section almost always comes right after the first act.

I would say there’s no precedent for this but there actually is. Swingers sets itself up to be a road trip movie (or at least a “two guys in Vegas” movie) but then reverses itself and brings its characters back to L.A. for the final hour. I would say that there’s something to be learned here but every time I see an amateur try to do something similar, it ends up becoming a wandering mess, where we’re not sure what the movie is about. So I’m squirming in my seat trying to figure how it works here.

I’m inclined to guess that while the overall structure does have a strong driving force (get the suitcase to Mary), our real love for this movie comes from how much we love our protags. The Farrelly’s have said on many occasions that if you make the audience fall in love with your heroes, they’ll go anywhere with you. And they do work hard to achieve this. First of all, Lloyd and Harry get fired. Audiences generally sympathize with people who have fallen on hard times. They’re also extremely unlucky. Everything they touch turns to shit. Another layer of sympathy. But I think the big deal here is something that almost slipped by me. They’re underdogs. Say it with me. Everybody loves an underdog. Everyone! So we’re intrinsically rooting for these guys to overcome their deficiencies and achieve their goal.

Now I know what some of you are going to say. “Well, it’s Jim Carrey! That’s why it’s funny. That’s why we like it. The casting!” Okay, but let me reel off some movie titles for you. Me, Myself, and Irene, Bruce Almighty, Fun With Dick and Jane, Yes Man. Jim Carrey wasn’t funny in any of those movies. A writer must first write a funny character before an actor can come along and bring that character to life.

I have to confess that this is a pretty frustrating way to start my experiment. I love this movie. Really love it. But I was hoping to be enlightened while breaking it down. Instead, I’m more confused than ever. I didn’t even mention some of the other “essentials” the script eschewed. The guy doesn’t get the girl in the end. There are no real character flaws in the main characters (very little character depth).  I’m going to defer to the Scriptshadow Commenters on this one and see if you can’t find something I missed. In the meantime, on to the next comedy.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Dumb and Dumber follows one rule I believe is imperative to making comedies work: Make sure the reasoning for your characters going on their journey is solid and believable. Had Lloyd and Harry just shrugged their shoulders and went, “Why don’t we go find this Mary chick,” I’m not sure we would’ve cared as much. But Lloyd, in one of the broadest comedies of that decade, breaks down in a very real way and, through tears, pleads, “I’m tired of being a nobody. I want to do something.” It’s that real character moment that propels us into this journey and fuels the next 75 pages.

Genre: Horror
Premise: A group of paranormal researchers move in to the most haunted mansion in the world to try and prove the existence of ghosts.
About: One of our longtime commenters has thrown his hat into the ring. Very excited to finally be reviewing Andrew Mullen’s script! — Every Friday, I review a script from the readers of the site. If you’re interested in submitting your script for an Amateur Review, send it in PDF form, along with your title, genre, logline, and why I should read your script to Carsonreeves3@gmail.com. Keep in mind your script will be posted.
Writer: Andrew Mullen
Details: 146 pages (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time the film is released. This is not a definitive statement about the project, but rather an analysis of this unique draft as it pertains to the craft of screenwriting).

Andrew’s been commenting on Scriptshadow forever and I like to reward people who actively participate on the site, so I was more than happy to choose his script for this week’s Amateur Friday. Seeing that Andrew had always made astute points and solid observations, I was hoping for a three-for-three “worth the read” trifecta over the last three Amateur Fridays. What once seemed impossible was shaping up to be possible.

And then I saw the page count.

Pop quiz. What’s the first thing a reader looks at when he opens a screenplay? The title? No. The writer’s name? No. That little box on the top left corner of the PDF document that tells you how many pages it is? Ding ding ding! I saw “146” and my eyes closed. In an instant, all of the energy I had to read Shadows was drained. I know Andrew reads the site so I know he’s heard me say it a hundred times: Keep your script under 110 pages. Of all the rules you want to follow, this is somewhere near the top. And it has nothing to do with whether it’s possible to tell a good story over 110 pages. It has to do with the fact that 99.9% of producers, agents, and managers will close your script within 3 seconds of opening it after seeing that number. They will assume, rightly in 99.9% of the cases, that you don’t know what you’re doing yet, and move on to the next script.

Which is exactly what I planned to do. I mean, I have a few hundred amateur scripts that don’t break the 100 page barrier. I would be saving 45 minutes of my night to do something fun and enjoyable if I went back to the slush pile. But then I stopped. I thought, a) I like Andrew. b) This could serve as an example to amateur writers WHY it’s a terrible idea to write a 146 page script. And c) Maybe, just maybe, this will be that .01% of 146 page screenplays that’s good and force me to reevaluate how I approach the large page count rule.

So, was Shadows in that .01%?

Professor Malcom Dobbs and Dr. Butch Rubenstein are founders of the premiere paranormal research team on the planet. They’re the “Jodie Foster in Contact’s” of the paranormal world, willing to go to the ends of the earth to prove that ghosts do, in fact, exist. And they’re currently residing in the best possible place to prove this – a huge mansion with sprawling grounds known as Carrion Manor – a house many consider to be the most haunted in the world.

But with their grant running out, so is their time to prove the existence of ghosts, so the group is forced to take drastic measures. They head to a local nut house and ask for the services of 20-something Brenna, a pretty and kind woman with a dark past. Her entire family was slaughtered when she was a child, and that night she claimed to have heard voices, whispers, contact from another realm. This “contact” is exactly what our team needs to ramp up their experiments.

Basically, what these guys do is similar to the “night vision” sequence in the great horror film, “The Orphanage,” where they use all their technical equipment like computers, and cameras, and microphones, to monitor levels of energy as Brenna walks from room to room throughout the manor. This is one of the first problems I had with the script. There isn’t a lot of variety to these scenes. And we get a lot of them. Brenna walks into a room. The levels spike. Our paranormal team is excited. Some downtime. Then we repeat the process again.

During Brenna’s stay, she starts to fall for one of the team members, a child genius (now 27 years old) named Dr. Schordinger Pike. This was another issue I had with the script, as the development of Pike and Brenna’s relationship was way too simplistic, almost like two 6th graders falling in love, as opposed to a pair of 27 year olds (“She’s way out of my league. Right? Right. Not even the same sport!” Pike starts hyperventilating). Also, I find that when the love story isn’t the centerpiece of the film (in this case, the movie is about a haunted mansion) you can’t give it too much time. You can’t stop your screenplay to show the two lovers running through daisies and professing their love for one another. You almost have to build their relationship up in the background. Empire Strikes Back is a great example of this. Han and Leia fall in love amongst a zillion other things going on. Whereas here, we stop the story time and time again to give these two a scene where they can sit around and talk to each other. Always move your story along first. Never stop it for anything.

Anyway, another subplot that develops is the computer system that’s monitoring the house, dubbed “Casper.” Casper is the “Hal” of the family, and when things start going bad (real ghosts start appearing), Casper wants to do things his way. You probably know what I’m going to say here. A computer that controls the house is a different movie. It has nothing to do with what these guys are doing and therefore only serves to distract from the story. You want to get rid of this and focus specifically on the researchers’ goal (trying to prove that there are ghosts) and the obstacles they run into which make achieving that goal difficult.

I will say there’s some pretty cool stuff about the eclectic group of former house owners, and the fact that a lot of them had unfinished business when they died clues us in that we’ll be seeing them again. And we do. The final act is 30 intense pages of paranormal battles with numerous ghosts and creatures coming to take down our inhabitants, some of whom fall victim to the madness, some of whom escape.  But there are too many dead spots in the script, which makes getting to that climax a chore. 

So, the first thing that needs to be addressed is, “Why is this script so long?” I mean, did we really need this many pages to tell the story? The simple and final answer is no. We don’t need nearly this many pages. The reason a lot of scripts are too long is usually because a writer doesn’t know the specific story they’re trying to tell, so they tell several stories instead. And more stories equals more pages. This would fall in line with my previous observation, that we have the needless “Casper” subplot and a love story that requires the main story to stop every time it’s featured.

Figure out what your story is about and then ONLY GIVE US THE SCENES THAT PUSH THAT PARTICULAR STORY FORWARD. Doesn’t mean you can’t have subplots. Doesn’t mean you can’t have a minor tangent or two. But 98% of your script should be working to push that main throughline forward. So if you look at a similar film – The Orphanage – That’s a film about a woman who loses her son and tries to find him. Go rent that movie now. You’ll see that every single scene serves to push that story forward (find my son). We don’t deviate from that plan.

Another problem here is the long passages where nothing dramatic happens. There’s a tour of the house that begins on page 59 that just stops the story cold. We start with a couple of flirty scenes between Brenna and Pike as we explore a few of the rooms. Then we go into multiple flashbacks of the previous tenants in great detail, one after another. After this, Pike offers us a flashback of his OWN history. So we had this big long exposition scene regarding the house. And we’re following that with another exposition scene. Then Pike shows Brenna the house garden, another key area of the house, and more exposition. This is followed by another character talking about a Vietcong story whose purpose remains unclear to me. The problem here, besides the dozen straight pages of exposition, is that there’s nothing dramatic happening. No mystery, no problem, no twist, nothing at stake, nothing pushing the story forward. It’s just people talking for 12 minutes. And that’s the kind of stuff that will kill a script.

Likewise, there are other elements in Shadows that aren’t needed. For example, there’s a character named Lewis, a slacker intern who never does any work, who disappears for 50-60 pages at a time before popping back up again. We never know who the guy is or why he’s in the story. Later it’s discovered he’s using remote portions of the house to grow pot in. I’m all for adding humor to your story, but the humor should stem from the situation. This is something you’d put in Harold and Kumar Go To Siberia, not a haunted house movie. Again, this is the kind of stuff that adds pages to your screenplay and for no reason. Know what your story is and stay focused on that story. Don’t go exploring every little whim that pops into your head – like pot-growing interns.

This leads us to the ultimate question: What *is* the story in Shadows? Well, it’s almost clear. But it needs to be more clear. Because the clearer it is to you, the easier it will be to tell your story. These guys are looking for proof of the paranormal. I get that. But why? What do they gain by achieving this goal? A vague satisfaction for proving there are ghosts? Audiences tend to want something more concrete. So in The Orphanage, the goal is to find the son (concrete). In the recently reviewed Red Lights, a similar story about the paranormal, the goal is to bring down Silver (concrete). If there was something more specific lost in this house. Or something specific that happened in this house, then you’d have that concrete goal. Maybe they’re trying to prove a murder or find a clue to some buried treasure on the property? Giving your characters something specific to do is going to give the story a lot more juice.

Here’s the thing. There’s a story in here. Paranormal guys researching ghosts in the most haunted house in the world? I can get on board with that. And there’s actually some pretty cool ideas here. Like the old knight who used to live on the property who was never found. There’s potential there. But this whole story needs to be streamlined. I mean you need to book this guy on The Biggest Loser until he’s down to a slim and healthy 110 pages. Because people aren’t going to give you an opportunity until you show them that you respect their time. I realize this is some tough love critiquing going on here, but that’s only because I want Andrew to kick ass on the rewrite and on all his future scripts. And he will if he avoids these mistakes. Good luck Andrew. Hope these observations helped. :)

Script link: Shadows

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: This script was a little too prose-heavy, another factor contributing to the high page count. You definitely want to paint a picture when you write but not at the expense of keeping the eyes moving. Lines like this, “A dying jack o’ lantern smiles lewdly. The faintly glowing grimace flickers in the dark as if struggling for life,” can easily become “A flickering jack o’ lantern smiles lewdly,” which conveys the exact same image in half the words. Just keep it moving.

So you want to write an Oscar-winning screenplay. Well, I thought I’d have a little fun this week and look back at the last 25 Oscar winners in the best Original Screenplay category and see if I can’t lock down a pattern or two as to what kind of script wins this most prestigious of competitions. If this is, indeed, a collection of the best writing over the past 25 years, it wouldn’t hurt to figure out what these writers are doing. So below, I’ve listed the last 25 Oscar Winners in order (from 1986 to 2010) and afterwards, I’ll share with you nine observations I found from combing through the list. Your Oscar winners ladies and gentleman…

1986 – Hannah and Her Sisters (Woody Allen)
1987 – Moonstruck (John Patrick Shanley)
1988 – Rain Man (Ronald Bass and Barry Morrow)
1989 – Dead Poets Society (Tom Schulman)
1990 – Ghost (Bruce Joel Rubin)
1991 – Thelma and Louise (Callie Khouri)
1992 – The Crying Game (Neil Jordan)
1993 – The Piano (Jane Campion)
1994 – Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary)
1995 – The Usual Suspects – Christopher McQuarrie
1996 – Fargo (Joel and Ethan Coen)
1997 – Good Will Hunting (Matt Damon and Ben Affleck)
1998 – Shakespeare In Love – (Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard)
1999 – American Beauty (Alan Ball)
2000 – Almost Famous (Cameron Crowe)
2001 – Gosford Park (Julian Fellowes)
2002 – Talk to Her (Pedro Almodovar)
2003 – Lost In Translation (Sophia Coppola)
2004 – Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind (Pierre Bismuth, Michael Gondry, Charlie Kaufman)
2005 – Crash (Paul Haggis)
2006 – Little Miss Sunshine (Michael Arndt)
2007 – Juno (Diablo Cody)
2008 – Milk (Justin Lance Black)
2009 – The Hurt Locker (Mark Boal)
2010 – The King’s Speech (David Siedler)

DISPARITY
First thing I noticed about the Oscar winners is how much disparity there is in the genres. We start with an ensemble comedy, move to a romantic comedy, then to a road trip buddy drama, then to an inspirational teacher movie, then to a supernatural romantic drama. Our most recent five are a “wacky family” movie, a teenage comedy-drama, a gay rights leader biography, a war film, and a period piece. Naturally, my first inclination is to say, “There are no patterns in this! The Academy just picks whatever the best script is that year.” Kinda cool. But wait, I looked a little deeper and, what do you know, I was able to find some commonalities…

DRAMA!
Fifteen of the 25 scripts listed are dramas. That’s an even 60%. This would make sense, as drama is the genre most reflective of real life and therefore the vessel most likely to put us in touch with our emotions. Unlike thrillers and horror and action movies, which take us to places we’ll never go in our real lives, drama places a mirror up to us and says, “Hey, this is you buddy.” From losing your job like Lester Burnham in American Beauty to taking a stand for an issue you believe in like in Milk. This is the most affecting genre in film when done right, so naturally, it’s going to result in some of the most affecting films. Now while this DIDN’T surprise me that much. The next trend I saw did. Because this is the last thing you’d expect the Academy to celebrate….

HUMOR!
The Academy has a bad rap for not recognizing comedies the way they do other genres. But take a look at the movies on this list. Almost all of them make you laugh. Sure, most of the time, the humor is dark, but Almost Famous, Rain Man, Moonstruck, Pulp Fiction, Ghost, Fargo, Good Will Hunting, Juno, Crash, Eternal Sunshine, Little Miss Sunshine. There is a lot of humor in those movies. This is a huge revelation for me. Because when you think of the stodgy Old Guard that is the Academy, you think you have to go all drama all the time. This proves that infusing your script with comedy, albeit balanced with drama, is just as important.

DON’T BE AFRAID TO ENTERTAIN
One thing I expected to find when I pulled this list out was something akin to the Nichol Winner choices – since they’re operating under the same umbrella – scripts that specifically focused on a deeper element of the human condition (and I did find a few: Milk, The Hurt Locker). But I was surprised at just how many films wanted to entertain you. Juno, Fargo, Gosford Park, Pulp Fiction, Ghost, Almost Famous, The King’s Speech. These movies just want you to have a good time in the theater first, AND THEN if you want to look deeper, they serve you an extra helping of warmed up leftovers to dig into later. I think when people sit down and think, “I want to write an Oscar screenplay,” they get into this mentality that they have to change the world with every word. But there’s enough of an entertainment factor to all these movies that I think the old saying, “Entertain first, teach second,” is the way to go.

THERE’S AN ELEMENT OF LUCK TO WRITING A SCREENPLAY
One of the scariest realizations I had going over this list is that there is a huge amount of luck involved in writing a great screenplay. And I don’t mean that writing doesn’t require skill. What I’m saying, rather, is that sometimes a story just comes together and sometimes it doesn’t. And we don’t always know if it’s coming together until we’re well into writing it. I say this because in the last 25 years, there has been a different winning screenwriter in the original screenplay category every single year. And there is only one writer (or pair of writers) who have won twice if you include the adapted category, and that’s Joel and Ethan Cohen for both Fargo and No Country For Old Men. You would certainly think that, if you’re good enough at your profession, you would continue to win at least somewhat consistently over the course of your career. But the opposite is true in this category. What this tells me is that the screenplay is the star, not the screenwriter, and I don’t say that to diminish the work of the writer, but rather to remind you, if you come up with a good idea that seems to be working on the page, nurture that thing and make it the best you possibly can. Because like it or not – even for the best screenwriters – the great idea combined with the perfect execution just doesn’t come around very often.

LEARN TO DIRECT
Nine of these winners directed their screenplays. That’s 36%. Although I sometimes question the writer-director approach (writer-directors may be too close to the material to be objective), it’s clear from this number that the approach pays off. This is probably because directors write with a director’s point of view, which is a little different than a writer’s point of view. They can visualize cinematic sequences they know will work, whereas a screenwriter might know that sequence will read terribly on paper and ditch it. Take the 12 minute dialogue scene in Jack Rabbit Slim’s in Pulp Fiction for example. That would never survive in a spec script. The producers would scream foul at a 12 minute dialogue scene with 2 people sitting at a table. But Tarantino can visualize the setting, the characters, the mood, the tone, and know it will work. This freedom allows the writer-director to write things differently, and the Oscar-voting crowd likes rewarding things that are different.

TRENDING TOWARDS THE SINGLE PROTAGONIST
A lot of these winners consist of an ensemble cast (American Beauty, Crash, Gosford Park, Little Miss Sunshine, Fargo, Hannah and Her Sisters, Pulp Fiction). Cutting back and forth between multiple storylines seems to get the Academy’s juices flowing. However, I noticed that the past four winners more or less follow the traditional singular hero journey that is so often taught by screenwriting books and gurus. They may not be executed on the same basic level as Liar Liar or Taken, but the single hero journey it is. So don’t feel like you have to populate your story with multiple characters and multiple intersecting timelines to get the Academy’s attention. You can follow just one guy. Just make sure that guy is interesting!

NEVER FORGET THE POWER OF THE IRONIC CHARACTER
Robin Williams is a therapist who doesn’t have his shit together. Matt Damon is a janitor who’s a mathematical genius. Dustin Hoffman is a mentally challenged man who’s a genius at black jack. Colin Firth plays a king who’s unable to speak to his people. Audiences are fascinated by ironic characters, those who are in some way opposite from the image they project. These characters are by no means necessary to write a great script, but if you can work one into your story, it’s going to make you and your script look a lot more clever, which should give you a bump come Oscar time.

TAKE HEED LOW-CONCEPTERS
For those of you out there worrying that your script is too low concept, you might want to toss your hat in the ring for an Academy Award. Truth be told, very few of these loglines scream “I have to read this now!” The exceptions might be Ghost, Rain Man, Eternal Sunshine, and Shakespeare In Love. However, it’s important to remember that almost everyone on this list had a previous level of success in the industry which guaranteed that their screenplay would get read by others. Who knows how long these great scripts might have sat on a pile unread because the loglines were average and they were written by Joe Nobody. So I still think the best roadmap to success is to write that high-concept comedy or thriller first, THEN bust out your multi-character period piece about a prince suffering from whooping cough second, in order to snatch that Oscar you so richly deserve.

So, that’s what I found. Did I miss anything? I noticed that a lot of these scripts were written by a single person as well, so time to dump your writing partner (kidding). I still feel like there’s a magical formula here as there definitely seems to be a similarity with all these scripts that I can’t put my finger on. So I’ll leave that up to you. Enjoy discussing.

Genre: Drama/Comedy
Premise: A New Yorker heads back to the small liberal arts college he attended to give a speech for a retiring professor and ends up falling for one of the students while he’s there.
About: Radnor is the writer-director of one of my favorite scripts, which used to be on my Top 25, Happy Thank You More Please. This is his follow-up project, which will star him and new IT girl Lizzie Olsen after her breakout turn in Sundance hit, “Martha Marcy May Marlene,” about a girl who grows up on a hippie convent.
Writer: Josh Radnor
Details: 115 pages (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time the film is released. This is not a definitive statement about the project, but rather an analysis of this unique draft as it pertains to the craft of screenwriting).

I still can’t get over it. I still can’t handle the fact that an actor making $400,000 an episode on a silly sitcom is also one of the best screenwriters in Hollywood. Don’t agree with me? Okay, let’s narrow the playing field a little. He’s not going to write the next Heat. But there is no one who’s doing the “lost early mid-life crisis” thing better at this moment than Radnor. He’s Cameron Crowe before Elizabethtown. He’s Woody Allen before, well, his last 15 movies. He’s a way more sophisticated Zach Braff. There’s an honesty and an intelligence to his writing that you just don’t see that often. Naturally, I couldn’t wait to read his second script.

And it started off perfectly, almost like a parallel universe continuation of his last film. Jesse Aaron Fisher is 35 and works a mindless college recruitment job in New York City. High school students come in, ask questions, he gives them stock answers, they leave, repeat.

Jesse has one thing that keeps him going. Books. He looooooves books. Oh, I mean he really loves books. His ex, who just broke up with him, comes over to his place to get her stuff, and instead of taking advantage of this last opportunity to repair their relationship, he reads a really awesome book instead.

Jesse also loves college. Or loved college. It’s been 13 years since he finished his small liberal arts education, and boy does he miss it. So when one of his favorite professors and good friends calls to inform him he’s folding up the chalkboard and would like Jesse to speak at his retirement party, Jesse can’t jump in his car fast enough.

From the moment he reaches campus, Jesse is a different man. There’s a pep in his step, a smile on his lips, a life surrounding his bones. The vibe on this tiny little campus is more electric than all of New York City put together. And it’s just about to jump a few volts higher.

Jesse runs into one of the students there, the cute and way more intelligent than the average college kid, Zibby. She seems to be just what Jesse needs at the moment, someone to excite him, to remind him to loosen up, to be young again. And so when Jesse runs into her a second time at a dorm room party, so begins a very tense very sexually charged friendship.

And yes, I know what you’re thinking. I know you think you already know where this is going. I know that because I thought the same thing. But guess what? You don’t know. You don’t have a clue. In fact, we deviate quite severely from the typical garden variety older guy younger girl romance.

They don’t hook up. Instead Jesse goes back to New York. The two start writing each other, getting to know each other on a deeper level, and then, after some time has passed, he comes back to the college (spoilers), but right before he’s about to seal the deal, questions what the hell he’s doing, and starts having a mini-mental breakdown on top of his early mid-life crisis, and goes fleeing in the opposite direction, as far away from Zibby as possible.

In the end, the story becomes more about Jesse figuring himself out, rather than figuring out him and Zibby, and so for better or worse, a sort of offbeat indie romantic comedy becomes a full-blown coming-of-age film. It’s strange and unexpected and different and is the reason I’m so damn confused about how I feel about the script.

You should know me well enough by now to know that, for the most part, I like clean narratives. I like when stories have clear places to go, where we understand the direction of the plot, where we’re staying in the same general vicinity for the majority of the story (unless the genre dictates something else – like a spy or action flick). Liberal Arts doesn’t follow that template. I thought for sure that once we got to the school, we would stay at the school. And when we didn’t, I was confused but still willing to give it a go. However, we’re jumping back and forth between the school and New York so much, and we’re travelling so much and sending so many letters, that at a certain point I began to wonder if it wouldn’t have been a lot easier to go the more traditional route.

Here’s my take on it. You want your characters in the place that produces the most amount of conflict. Two characters 500 miles away? No conflict. Those same characters – who for a number of reasons shouldn’t be together (the main one being their age difference) – stuck on the same campus together? Conflict. Now I can excuse this if the concept of the movie is based around separation (Going The Distance) but the central element of conflict in this case, Jesse’s reluctance to engage in an “inappropriate” relationship, doesn’t work unless the inappropriateness is placed in front of him at all times. If you can’t reach the cookie jar, the question of whether you will isn’t a factor. But if it’s right there at eye level, always there for the taking, then the question of whether you will or won’t becomes a lot more interesting.

I’m so torn up about this script because I absolutely loved the first half. I mean I loved it. The thing with Radnor though is that he’s going to give you something different. He did it in Happy Thank You More Please when he threw a 35 year old man, a kid he found off the street, and a fuck buddy, into an impromptu family. And he does it here. Where you think this is going to be like Point A, where a guy starts dating a much younger girl. But it isn’t. It’s about a guy who’s ABOUT to date a much younger girl, then realizes it’s wrong and backs out of it.

So I guess I should be rewarding Radnor for not falling victim to cliché and obviousness. Yet a part of me feels like I just spent all night flirting with a girl at a bar and then at the end of the night she went home with someone else. 70 pages have been spent setting up this relationship. To rip it out from under our feet like that is at least a little deceitful, right?

Radnor also eschews other suggested Scriptshadow practices, like giving the main character a goal. There is no goal here, and therefore nothing driving the story other than the question of, “Will Jesse and Zibby get together?” On the list of devices that can drive your story, I always rate this one pretty low, because it allows for too much wandering about. Without pursuits, the characters just sort of exist in their day to day lives, so by the time we get around to that question being answered, it’s too late, since we’ve already lost interest. I know of only one movie where that’s the ONLY thing driving the story and it’s still worked, and that’s When Harry Met Sally. So I always suggest avoiding it unless you have some unique way of making it work.

And while I liked Jesse at first, I thought it was interesting that Radnor made him less likable as the script went on (the arc of most characters is the opposite – they start off unlikeable, then we’re given reasons to like them along the way). There’s a whole sequence where Jesse finds out that Zibby’s read Twilight and literally freaks out. He’s so upset about it that he actually chastises her for even contemplating reading the book. It’s somewhat necessary in that it’s the final straw in making him realize that him and Zibby aren’t meant for each other. But I’m not sure Radnor realizes how unlikeable it makes Jesse. I mean, I hate Twilight as much as the next guy. But I think anybody who appreciates art understands that, in the end, taste is in the eye of the beholder. For him to be so cruel to Zibby after finding that book – I don’t know – it just really distanced me from the character.

I know I’m giving a lot of flak to my screenwriter crush Radnor, but I felt he made some choices in the second half that, while different, made the story less satisfying. Still, I loved all the touches, such as accidentally falling asleep on the quad lawn then waking up in the middle of the night (nothing like a random 35 year old man falling asleep in the middle of your college campus). The roommate that keeps popping in at the most inopportune times. The classic college hippy guy who’s always sharing his whacked out but not nearly as deep as he thinks they are philosophies. Radnor continues to have some of my favorite guy-girl dialogue as well. It’s not so much the kind you quote. But it’s fun and honest without being showy, never an easy line to walk.

Anyways, this was a frustrating read for me. I loved parts of it and I hated parts of it. So my final verdict falls somewhere in the middle. Should be interesting to see where it goes since, now that he has a movie under his belt, it will get a lot more attention.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Remember guys. A break-up scene including your main character at the beginning of your script DOES NOT HAVE TO HAPPEN AT A RESTAURANT. In fact, it doesn’t even need to happen at all. Here, in Liberal Arts, the break-up has already happened. And the post-break-up scene takes place at  our hero’s apartment, with his ex coming by to get her stuff. I realize we’ve seen this scene before, but not nearly as much as the break-up at restaurant scene that opens 43% of all comedy specs. Please, no more break-up at restaurant scenes starting your movie! You are more original than that.  I promise you!