Did I just read… a good comedy script???
Genre: Comedy
Premise: An unemployed doofus who lives with his mother is asked to pose as a couples therapist for a sports agent to covertly manage the agent’s wife, only to stumble into a new career as a shrink.
About: This was a big spec sale that came together earlier this month. Miramax beat out a bunch of other suitors. The production company is Boulderlight, who just produced the awesome, “Companion,” so let’s keep an eye out for them in the future, since someone over there seems to have an eye for good writing. Writer Brandon Cohen has actually been writing in Hollywood for over ten years. Most of his work has been on kid’s shows.
Writer: Brandon Cohen
Details: 110 pages
My choice for RJ is Ben Schwartz
I met with a producer recently and we were talking about how bad comedy scripts have gotten. We racked our brains to try and remember even one good one from the last five years.
Well, I got news for you. TODAY I FOUND ONE.
I don’t know how it happened. I don’t know where this writer came from. I’m just happy to have been able to laugh out loud for two hours.
RJ is one of those 30-something lovable losers who’s so self-involved that he doesn’t even realize that his relationship is crumbling around him. His girlfriend forces him to take couples therapy sessions which confirms what she already knows – this guy sucks – so she leaves him.
RJ Doordashes and lives with his mother, giving him few prospects for a next romantic adventure, but gets lucky when an old friend invites him to a UFC event. It’s there where he meets Jordan, a manager for a UFC superstar named Sean (think Connor McGregor). While in his friend’s suite, he meets Izzy, a beautiful perfect girl he instantly falls for. But she leaves before he can shoot his shot.
Later, RJ and Jordan get to talking about his recent therapy sessions and, jokingly, how he believes that his girlfriend was giving the therapist extra money under the table to side with her. This is a lightbulb moment for Jordan, who’s been having problems with his wife. He comes up with this idea where RJ can pretend to be a couples therapist and side with him during their sessions so his wife gets off his back.
RJ is reluctant at first until Jordan offers him 500 bucks a session. Therapist it is! RJ has no idea what he’s doing but, of course, does any therapist know what they’re doing? RJ fakes his way through a bunch of mumbo-jumbo advice, always siding with Jordan, and soon he’s getting referrals from other guys in the UFC agent/manager space.
All of this is going great until Sean comes to him for a session. And who is Sean’s girlfriend? IZZY! RJ must now make Sean believe that he’s supporting him in the sessions while, at the same time, not piss off Izzy, who he’s secretly in love with. There is literally no way this can end well. Which is exactly why we keep reading until the end! :)
I’ve been reading a lot of comedies lately.
And I’ve learned that comedy, in screenplay form, boils down to getting five things right. Those are….
SET PIECES
FUNNY CHARACTERS
CONFLICT
MINING THE UNIQUENESS OF YOUR PREMISE
and
VOICE
If you can nail three of these five things, you’ll write a funny script. Nail four of them, you’ll write a really funny script. Nail all five and you’ll write a hilarious script.
Set pieces are the showcases of your comedy so that’s where you need to focus most of your efforts. Sure, you can spend time trying to come up with funny lines spread throughout your screenplay. But it’s the set pieces that audiences will remember so that’s what you want to spend most of your time on.
And a set piece doesn’t need to be some big elaborate thing. It just needs to be concept-relevant and funny. My favorite set piece in this script was RJ’s first therapy session. He has no idea what he’s doing. He’s making things up as he goes along. We’re waiting for him to screw up and get caught. It’s hilarious.
Next requirement – the characters who have the most screen time in your story need to be as funny. That sounds obvious but a lot of writers screw this up. They create sort of funny characters then try and force funny lines into their mouths. This makes sense when you consider that writers are also trying to create fully fleshed-out characters who arc over the course of the story. So they end up prioritizing that over making them funny. In the process, they’re fighting that character the whole script trying to make them act funnier than they are.
This is a comedy. You have to focus on laughs. Prioritize a hilarious character over a deep character. Cause when you do that, you don’t even have to try to be funny when you write scenes for that character. They just naturally say funny things. RJ naturally says funny things because he’s a lovable doofus who’s pretending to be an expert in something he’s a moron in. So every single thing that comes out of his mouth is funny.
Next we have conflict. When it comes to conflict, your bread and butter comedy comes from two-handers where the characters constantly bicker, like Deadpool and Wolverine. But conflict can also come in the form of anything that is out-of-balance. In this case, RJ is lying about who he is. So, in every scene, there’s potential for him to get caught. He’s always having to talk around things, which creates conflict.
But also we have some traditional conflict in that Sean is an a-hole and is constantly putting pressure on RJ to do what he wants, which, of course, hurts Izzy.
Next up we have mining the uniqueness of your premise. Too many comedy writers write a movie with a premise – say, two geeky teens build a robot version of a popular kid to make them popular at school too – then write up a bunch of jokes that have nothing to do with that premise. There will be jokes about aliens, about weddings, about prison, about sexual preference, none of which focus on the core concept’s conceit – that two guys have built a fake popular guy in robot form and are trying to use him to ascend the social hierarchy at school.
Cohen did it right. A good 75% of the comedy in I Can See You’re Angry is built around RJ pretending to be a therapist.
Finally, you have VOICE, which boils down to “a funny way to see the world and talk about it.” To understand comedic voice, watch comedians. Note, specifically, the STUFF THEY TALK ABOUT and HOW THEY DELIVER IT. Nate Berghatze likes talking about really basic everyday stuff, such as ordering DoorDash and hiding it from his wife. Meanwhile, Ryan Long has built his entire routine around political hypocrisy. Two very different subject matters.
Then you have delivery. Aziz Ansari is known for his energetic almost manic delivery style. Whereas Anthony Jeselnik speaks verrrrryyy slooooooow. He’s not afraid to pause for an eternity before he delivers a punchline.
Conveying voice in comedy scripts is similar. What do you like to talk about and how do you like to talk about it. The style in which you combine those two things should feel different from the way others do it. Cause if you sound like everyone else, telling the same jokes in the same manner, you won’t make readers laugh and everyone will forget your script quickly.
The only thing I didn’t like about I Can See You’re Angry was the last third of the script. There was something forced about going to Sean’s lake house. When you start to exert too much of your agenda on the plot, you lose that organic feel that made things so originally effortless. Organicness is especially important in comedy because the best comedy comes from natural situations.
But even with that, this was still a good script and it’s given me hope that, as long as a good writer is writing it, good comedy is possible.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: A great comedy tool is exaggeration. And it’s simple to use. You just dial things up to a 1000. A trick on how to get the most out of it is to give an exaggerated line to someone who’s, otherwise, even-keel. It will then come out of nowhere, which is what makes it funny. When RJ is starting to make a lot of money as a therapist, he comes home to tell his mom that he’s finally going to change their lives for the better.
RJ:
Listen, Ma, things are about to
change around here.
LORRAINE:
If you take away my internet, I’ll
burn the house down with me inside.
I talk about exaggeration and other comedy tools in my dialogue book. If your dialogue is weak, DEFINITELY spend 10 bucks on my book. It will change how you write dialogue forever. That, by the way, is not an exaggeration. :)
