Genre: Comedy
Premise: In the near future, a group of astronauts on an extended mission run into another ship with an all-female crew. Having not seen women in over five years, the astronauts can’t keep their sexual urges in check, leading to all sorts of shenanigans.
About: This script just sold (or came together as a package) last week. This is going to be a big one, as it stars what might end up being the greatest onscreen comedy trio of all time: Seth Rogen, Zack Galifianakis, and Bill Hader. It’s written by Rodney Rothman, who wrote 22 Jump Street, Grudge Match, and a ton of TV, dating back to his time as a head writer on the Late Show with David Letterman. The film seems to be greenlighted off of the recent huge success of other space-related movies in the marketplace (Force Awakens, The Martian, Gravity). Bringing a comedy angle to this niche only seemed natural.
Writer: Rodney Rothman
Details: 115 pages – undated
So the other day, I was giving notes on a comedy through my consultation service, and it was really frustrating. Because the writer was good. I mean he had such a grasp on his characters. They were all different from one another, they were funny, they popped off the page. The problem was that the story was all over the place. The goals kept changing and each successive change was less interesting than the previous one. All of this led to a choppy reading experience.
Now yesterday we were talking about Spotlight. Despite my issues with the character development in the script, the plot is beautifully simple and easy to follow: GET THE EVIDENCE that exposes widespread sexual abuse in the church and then write the article about it. That’s it. There’s never a moment in Spotlight where you don’t know what’s going on. The goal is always clear.
As much as I thought that character development is what’s keeping amateurs out of the big leagues, I’m realizing that a lot of you are still having problems with plotting, structure, and story. And that needs to be sorted out before the character stuff because Hollywood expects structure to be a given. If you can’t do that, you need someone to help you figure it out. Cause no studio execs I know buy wandering stories that get less interesting as they go on.
There are basically two approaches to structure. There’s the Spotlight approach, where you set up the big goal in the first act and everything going forward serves that goal. Or there’s the “changing goals” approach, where goals are achieved in the script and then new goals replace them.
The reason the “changing goals” approach is tricky is because it requires an extra skill – each time a new goal is introduced, it must be bigger than the previous one. Because think about it. If your hero is going after, say, the Ark of the Covenant. And they get it on page 30. And then you give us a new goal, where your hero is trying to get $2000 to make his rent that month, the audience isn’t going to go along with you. You just had the biggest artifact in the world driving your story and now you want us to care about rent?
As long as you understand the challenge that comes with this new variable, you should be okay writing a “changing-goals” script. Which is something Rothman does with today’s script, The Something. Hopefully, we can learn from him.
The Something jumps right into its story (always preferred), as we observe our soon-to-be-astronauts during their astronaut interview process. There’s McMurphy, our hero, who’s got a Bill-Murray like “who gives a shit” quality to him. There’s Bozark, who’s way too enthusiastic about even the most mundane things. There’s Stirrup, an anti-Boy Scout who’s had a self-imposed bumpy life, and finally Wingate, our arrogant soon-to-be Captain.
After a quick training session, the group is sent a trillion miles away to mine a potent energy source from asteroids. Originally promised that this would be a 2-year trip, they’re now on year 5 and nowhere near their mandated quota to return to earth. Needless to say, everyone wants to kill each other, and if there isn’t a miracle within like, two days, that’s exactly what’s going to happen.
Luckily, there is a miracle. Another ship! The group goes crazy and manages the get onto this ship, and as if God himself were looking down on them, it turns out the ship has an all-female crew. Well, “all-female” is a little misleading. There’s the hot Captain, Cordelia, the girl-next-door, Olivia, and finally “Sister,” the “2001”-like female computer on the ship.
It turns out the women have been pretty desperate for male company so the next thing you know, the two crews are having an all-night party. Still, something seems off about the whole thing. And later, our drunk crew wanders into a secret bay where they find out the women are transporting an alien!
Curious (and drunk), the guys release it, and that’s when everything goes to hell. The alien starts anally mating with people, multiplying, and threatening to kill all of them if they don’t do something drastic. When the others are compromised, it will be up to McMurphy to save the day. But since McMurphy has just put a premium on his relationship with Olivia, his priorities might prevent him from doing so.
From a comedy standpoint, I didn’t really dig this. It’s just not my style. Unlike Lucas and Moore, who seem a little sharper with their comedy, Rogen’s crew likes to keep it low-brow. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Different people think different stuff is funny. But when your pivotal climax moment includes a ten-second fart… I don’t know. I just feel like you can do better.
But whatever. The comedy is what it is and these actors are hilarious so I’m sure they’ll make it work.
Today, I wanted to talk about that structure, specifically how Rothman uses the changing-goals approach to frame his story.
The first goal driving things is mining the asteroid juice. It’s small but you have to start small on a goal-changing script if you want to build. After the crew goes insane, McMurphy’s goal is to get the ship back to earth. That’s all he cares about. Still small, but slightly bigger than the previous goal.
Next is the arrival of the mystery ship. McMurphy’s goal is to get on that ship. They’re not allowed to make contact with AAA ships, so McMurphy has to sabotage his ship to con their way onto there. Once they get on the ship, there’s a new goal. Get laid.
Now, the get laid goal may seem like a step back. It’s not as big of a goal as “getting home.” However, one of the cool things about comedy is that as long as you have a funny situation that you’ve SET UP and that the audience WANTS TO SEE, you can deviate from big goals momentarily.
We’ve spent the last 30 minutes showing how horny and desperate these guys are. So naturally, when they have access to women, we’re going to want to see what happens.
Finally, during the party, they find the alien, who gets loose, which gives us our final goal – and the goal that has the biggest stakes of all – kill the alien. This is what drives the remainder of the story (roughly the last 60 pages).
And that’s how you structure. You either do it like Spotlight, where you establish a giant goal for the characters right away, then ride it out, showing all the obstacles they face until they succeed/fail. Or you do it like The Something, where you start with a small goal and then build to bigger goals as the circumstances of the story change.
The second way is harder. So if you’re a new writer, I’d suggest going the Spotlight route. But if you tried the single-goal route and it feels restrictive, this route allows you to create a story with a little more variety.
I wish I liked the comedy as much as the structure here, but alas, The Something and its 10-second farts were too much for me.
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: In a comedy script, interview scenes are gold. They’re just inherently funny. From trying to get a job (Stepbrothers, Tootsie) to trying to get a date (40 Year Old Virgin). Any sort of interview-like scenario is easy to draw laughs from. Don’t believe me? Go write one right now. I GUARANTEE it will be funny!
