Genre: Comedy
Premise: A young family must deal with a legendary party-happy fraternity moving in next door to them.
About: This flick stars Seth Rogen and Zac Efron. It seems to have been written on assignment, as references to all the real actors are scattered everywhere in the script. The writers also appear to be longtime collaborators with Judd Apatow, starting as low-level producers on his movies, then moving up the ladder. This will be their first feature credit. Nicholas Stoller (Forgetting Sarah Marshall) is directing.
Writers: Andrew Jay Cohen & Brendan O’Brien
Details: 111 pages
Man, it’s been a weird weekend, hasn’t it? I went up to Portland for Thanksgiving, where I’ve realized every guy has a shaved head and two-foot beard. I don’t want to say it’s starting to get clique-y, but it was no fun feeling like one of the uncool beardless kids. I then come home to find out that Paul Walker, the star of a franchise based on really fast cars, died in a really fast car accident. In the midst of thinking how shitty that was, my mind drifted into the logistics of finishing a film so dependent on Paul’s character (Fast & Furious 7). This will be the most difficult rewrite a movie of this size has ever had to deal with, with a cast-member’s death during production. I honestly don’t know how they’re going to do it without completely rewriting the movie and starting over.
Then I went and saw Delivery Man, wanting to laugh and feel better about life. Strangely, the movie took every opportunity where a big laugh was about to come and pulled back. It was like that girl who keeps leading you on, implying she’s interested, yet every time you ask her out, she comes up with an excuse. Talk about frustrating. And then I finish the weekend with this script, which starts off with our three main characters talking to someone with their balls hanging out of their zippers. At that point, what do you do?
I know, I know. You’re expecting another “Comedy Screenwriting Apocalypse” review from me. And after that scene, I was too. Well the JOKE’S (get it? Cause it’s a comedy!) on you. Because I liked Townies. It’s one of those “in spite of” comedy experiences where you’re defending your laughing to other people, but you’re laughing nonetheless.
And speaking of jokes, I gotta give it to the man I thought was a joke, Zacky Efron. 99 out of a 100 of his types have come and gone in this business in the blink of an eye. But he’s still around, even though he looks like a weird white version of a Japanese animated character. The guy’s getting involved in the right projects, and this is another perfect match for him. Way to go Zac.
Mac went to college in the 90s when cell phones were mini-tanks being bought up by former Russian provinces for future wars and you communicated with others via how grungy your clothes looked and how many Nirvana lyrics you could recite by memory. Gold stars if you were able to pull off a full goatee.
And you know what? Mac loved college. He loved it so much that he married his college sweetheart, Kelly, and bought the piece of shit house they lived in while at school. Well, a lot of time has passed since then. The two have a daughter now. And they’re STILL living in the same house. As you’d expect, the wifey is NOT okay with this. She wants to move to a “normal” neighborhood. But Mac can’t stand the thought of moving out of this box of wonderful memories. He’d stay here for the rest of his life if he could.
So yeah, everything gets janky when Kappa Sigma moves next door. All of a sudden, Mac and Kelly are trying to raise a child next to a frat house. This house is led by the one and only Teddy Sanders, a senior who is bent on continuing Kappa Sigma’s tradition of pioneering partying. These guys are the Facebook of the frat partying world, inventing things like Beer Pong and the “boot and rally” (which I’d never heard of until this script – why would you want to throw up in your boot?).
So Teddy wants to create the greatest end-of-the-year party in college history where every single frat member will get laid (he’s calling it “The Full House” – not sure why). This is the last straw for Kelly. She tells Mac if he can’t do something about that frat, she’s out of here. The screenplay then amounts to Mac and his loser buddies trying to get the frat kicked out so he can continue to live in his house. But when Teddy and the frat learn they’re being fucked with, they call an all-out war on Mac. Needless to say, there will be many a casualty before this is over.
Townies opens with a montage showing our main characters growing up in college. I wouldn’t say it’s boring. But it’s not the kind of thing you’d ever see in a spec script (which this isn’t). Montages are generally boring, used to show the passing of time. The beginning of a spec is when you want to pull your reader in. Not bore them away. Which is why I’m always fascinated by this dichotomy.
When you’re writing on assignment, you have so much freedom to take your time. You’re working with producers who generally know what’s coming, so shit, if you want to start your script with a character-intro montage, start with a character-intro montage!
If you’re writing a spec, however, you’re working with no one, and therefore you have to write a compelling first scene that immediately pulls the reader in (like the boat scene I just discussed in Deep Blue Sea in the newsletter). I find it funny that a slow opening scene or a compelling opening scene in the movies is often dictated by whether the person is writing on spec or on assignment.
Anyway, Townies doesn’t get laid. But it does hook up. The structure of this script is solid. You have Mac, whose goal is to take down the frat house. You have Teddy, whose goal is to throw the most epic party ever. And you have Kelly, whose goal is to buy a new house. Since all of these goals are in conflict with each other, you have a lot of funny scenes.
And you have a story that’s constantly evolving in order to keep this plot – which could’ve run out of ideas in twenty pages – moving.
What I mean by “evolving” is, this starts out with Mac and his friends trying to take down Kappa Sigma. Right as that’s about to get old, they convince Kelly to help them. Kelly (who’s smarter and more manipulative than them) adds a new dimension to their strategy. She gives them ideas they never would’ve thought of. Then, as that thread’s starting to burn out, Teddy catches wind that Mac’s trying to take him down, and he turns the tables and goes after THEM.
Identifying those moments where a story thread is running out of stream and finding a way to infuse the story with a new hit of heroin is one of those essential storytelling skills that isn’t talked about enough. Had this script been written by an amateur, it probably would have been one continuous set of attacks by Mac that would’ve gotten stale quickly. It’s important to look for those things that shift the balance of the story just enough that it feels a little different.
And you know, I laughed a lot here. There’s a scene where Mac and Kelly’s daughter swallows a condom thrown over from the frat (thinking it’s a balloon). They take her to the hospital and must explain how their six year-old daughter swallowed a condom. There were these hazing flashbacks that are beyond anything you can imagine (think Human Centipede), where college dishes like “the vommelette” are introduced. I kept shaking my head, not believing I was laughing. But I couldn’t help myself. There’s some inventive stuff in here!
The only big issues I found were that the relationships at the frat weren’t well-defined. It wasn’t clear whose was whose girlfriend – that kind of thing. And we seemed to be on the cusp of developing Teddy as a character (a brief glimpse of him realizing he was ill-prepared for the real world) but nothing came of it. I like when villains change. So it sucked that we didn’t get to see him arc more. I give them credit for trying, though. A lot of writers would’ve never taken us in that frat house to begin with unless our main characters were there. Cohen and O’Brien tried to give that world a little more weight.
I don’t know if I’m ready to anoint this a classic. But it’s a good comedy. Assuming people want to see it (I think they will), they should leave the theater telling their friends to see it as well. And if that’s the case, we’ll have a hit on our hands.
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: When you’re giving your main characters goals, look to put all of those goals in conflict with one another. That’s what creates drama in your screenplay. Teddy wants to keep the frat house. Mac wants him out. Kelly wants to move to a new house. Mac wants to stay in this one. None of the principle characters agree. Which is what leads to conflict. And conflict is what makes comedies funny (think about it, when has a comedy been funny when everyone’s on the same page?).
