Genre: Comedy
Logline: (from Hit List) Abby hosts a popular true crime podcast about a brash blue collar troublemaker named Daryl, who she believes was wrongfully convicted of murder. But when Daryl breaks out of prison and shows up at her apartment, she goes from podcaster to accomplice as the unlikely pair team up to try to exonerate him before he’s caught.
About: I picked this script from the 2018 Hit List when I saw that the writers had sold another script called “Haunted Haunted House.” I thought that was hilarious. The writers started their career writing for College Humor, where they won numerous Emmys, and most recently wrote for Last Week with John Oliver. This film is set to star Awkwafina as the podcaster and Ike Barinholtz as the escaped convict.
Writers: Dan Gurewitch & David Young
Details: 110 pages
Let’s start today’s review with a Scriptshadow PSA. Your comedy spec should be between 100-110 pages. If you are outside this page count window, your screenplay will be terminated by the Scriptshadow Incinipager 11,000. Thank you for listening. Have a nice day.
You may be asking why I’ve yet again ventured into comedy territory with today’s script. The last time I gave a good review to a comedy was back in the 70s with Smokey and the Bandit. Ah, it feels like yesterday when Burt Reynolds signed up for the role of Smokey off the buzz from my script review. Or was it the Bandit? Who’s keeping track? All I know is that if you want something in this world, you have to will it into existence. I want to laugh during a screenplay again. And so it shall be!
Ultra liberal Abby Parrish had it all – the number one podcast in the world, fans hanging on her every word, late night talk shows touting the addictive nature of Crime after Crime. Every week, Abby would delve deeper into the murder of Tom Hutcherson, a simple man who was stabbed 17 times behind a bar and left for dead.
Earlier that night, everyone saw Tom fighting with his dimwitted overweight law-breaking brother, Daryl. So it must have been him who murdered Tom! That’s what the courts said. But Abby ripped open every crevice of the case to prove that Tom was innocent. Except she never proved anything either way, leaving a rabid fanbase to turn on her for wasting dozens of hours of their lives.
Lucky for Abby, she’s getting a shot to finally put the nail in the coffin. Or… take.. the nail out of the coffin? When there’s a blackout at the local prison, Darryl, in all his white-trash glory, figures he should make a run for it. He, of course, runs straight to Abby’s, just as she’s about to have sex for the first time in 3 years. The uptight Abby is NOT cool with Darryl crashing her sex party. But then she realizes she can finally give her audience what they’re looking for – an ending.
She agrees to help Darryl find out who really killed his brother and they figure the best course of action is to steal Tom’s phone from police evidence and see who he was calling that night. After successfully pulling the phone heist off, they find a bunch of calls placed to Temple Beth Israel Synagogue, which is strange because Tom was Catholic. They go there and talk to a shifty guy named Spencer, who says that, “Oh yeah, he used to do landscaping work for us.” It’s all a bit shady but when they look deeper into Spencer, he checks out.
Next up is Darryl’s ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend, Gene, as Darryl has concocted a theory whereby Gene has been planning for years to steal Darryl’s girlfriend and figured out the best way to do it was to kill Tom and frame Darryl for it! Abby doesn’t go with him on this one so Darryl kidnaps Gene himself, disguising himself and using a voice modulator to interrogate him.
Meanwhile, Abby finds the murder weapon in Darryl’s favorite secret hiding space, confirming her deepest fears – that Darryl did it. When she confronts Darryl about this, he falls apart, devastated that she wouldn’t believe him. Feeling bad, Abby decides to follow one more lead, a hail mary tied to that Spencer guy at the synagogue. If it pays off, justice will prevail. If not, she’ll have to come to grips with the fact that she’s been fighting for a murderer.
So here’s the thing with comedies today. They really only come in two forms. Female-driven and technology-driven. Even though that Anne Hathaway Rebel Wilson comedy just bombed, that’s the stuff they’re looking for. I don’t know why you would keep betting on a bad horse but sometimes Hollywood doesn’t make sense.
The other comedies that still shine are technology focused. That Uber comedy that’s coming out soon – that sold not long after Uber become popular. Here, we have a spec about true crime podcasts. What’s the common denominator? They allow you to write movies that haven’t been written before. And comedy is the genre that best takes advantage of pop culture and modern living.
Netflix is sort of changing the game. It seems like they want to bring high concept comedy back sometimes (“When We First Met”), but then they go out and make something like, Always Be My Maybe which doesn’t have a hook at all. I think they’re still trying to figure out what type of movies work for them. So we’ll have to stay tuned on the streaming front.
Back to Crime After Crime.
One of the ways I judge comedies (outside of the obvious – that I’m laughing) is how writers deal with familiar situations. Familiar situations are where newbie writers bare all their newbieness. I can tab a newbie the second we get to a familiar situation and they take all of the predictable routes. Seasoned writers find a new wrinkle, twist, or spin on a familiar situation.
One of the first familiar situations to come up in Crime after Crime is the cops visit Abby’s place immediately after Darryl escapes prison, forcing Darryl to run into Abby’s bedroom and hide. What’s more familiar than a character needing to hide in a bedroom? We’ve seen it a million times. So I’m going to have you actually practice this lesson yourself. What is your new comedic twist on this “need to hide in a bedroom” scene? Because I know what’s going to happen here. When I reveal what these writers do, you’re going to say, “Oh! That’s not funny Carson! You’re dumb for laughing!” Okay, so put your money where your mouth is. Go down to the comments and write what your funny twist would be, and we’ll let everyone else decide if your idea is funnier than these guys.
Are you back? Okay, so here’s what Gurewitch and Young did. Darryl runs into the bedroom, checks under the bed, but it’s filled with stuff. He runs to the closet, but it’s packed. He can hear the cops coming so he looks around, and he sees on the bed… a body pillow. He quickly unzips the body pillow, throws the insides out the window, then squeezes in and zips it up, trying to stay as still as possible. When one of the cops spots the body pillow, he confesses that he’s thinking of getting one and would it be okay to cuddle with it to see how it feels. Abby must think on her feet to prevent this from happening, and somehow get the cops out without realizing the body pillow is Darryl. If you wrote something funnier than that down in the comments, you get five Scriptshadow stars.
These guys know what they’re doing. They don’t always hit. You never do in comedy. But they knew how to construct scenes that are both clever and funny. One of the things I tell you to do is that everything should be hard for your hero. For example, it’s easy in investigation scripts to have a bunch of straight-forward scenes in rooms with heroes questioning leads. But that’s not very clever. And it doesn’t lead to much comedy, unless you’re a dialogue comedy ninja.
In one of my favorite scenes, this paranoid lead will only talk to Abby at a death metal concert because he knows that way he can’t be recorded. So when Abby gets there, he’s right in the middle of the mosh pit, and Abby must go into this wild crazy limbs-swinging mass of dirt and blood and violence to get information from this guy. That’s how you make things tough for your hero! And it’s certainly more fun than talking in someone’s apartment.
The only problem I had with this script is that the pairing of Abby and Darryl wasn’t that interesting. The two were on different sides of the political aisle. But that was never explored. There was no sexual chemistry either, so it lacked conflict on that front. As different as we’re told these two are, they get along well, and that lack of contrast made for some boring interactions.
Still, there were enough laughs to keep the read entertaining. And while this one isn’t going on anyone’s OMG, THAT WAS HILARIOUS list, it’s a fun way to spend 90 minutes.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: A lot of people are afraid of comedy these days because every little minor joke is being interpreted as hateful. But unlike stand up, where the person themselves is delivering the potentially inciting joke, in scripts, you can have characters say risky funny things as long as it’s in character. Audiences are more accepting of this because the characters are fictional. Here, Darryl and Abby have just found out that Tom has ties to the synagogue. Their quick interaction…
