You’re probably looking at the title of this article and thinking, “What the f#@% is a keystone cop?” When it comes to questions like these, there’s only one person I trust. Google. And here’s what he had to say: “A group of characters in humorous US silent films. They are police officers who are very stupid and are always making silly mistakes. A group of people, especially police officers, are sometimes compared to the Keystone Cops if they fail to do something properly because they have made stupid mistakes.”
Why am I bringing this odd term up?
A couple of weeks ago, I was doing a screenplay consultation and one of my critiques of the script was that the cops felt like “keystone cops.” The writer basically countered with, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. You need to explain that.” He was right. I wasn’t clear on what a “keystone cop” was or why it was a problem.
Upon further reflection, I realized I’d given this criticism numerous times yet never formulated an actual definition – in screenwriting parlance – of what it meant. So today I’ve decided to break down what a “keystone cop” is and why, if you don’t take it seriously, it has the potential to sink your screenplay.
For starters, almost every movie has a cop, a government agent, a military figure, or a criminal in it. In some cases they’re in the movie for a scene. But usually they’re around for much longer. That’s because movies tend to cover ‘larger than life’ scenarios and, in those scenarios, your heroes are either going to inhabit these occupations or encounter them.
Here’s where the problems begin. Writers never do any research on these jobs beyond watching other movies. As a result, the cop characters don’t act like real cops. And because they don’t act like real cops, we don’t see them as real cops. For example, let’s say that you’re writing a scene where a cop pulls a car over. Do you know what that cop is supposed to do in that situation outside of say, “License and registration please?”
You know how a cop takes the driver’s license back to his car? Do you know what they do when they get back to their car? Do you have any idea what the procedure is? I’m guessing you don’t. Which means you’ve written a keystone cop.
Now, to be clear, that might not hurt you in certain situations. If you’re writing a goofy comedy and there’s only one scene with a cop in it, it won’t be a big deal. But the more integral a cop, an agent, a soldier, or a criminal is to your story, the more it’s going to matter. In those cases, you can’t just have a cursory understanding of the job. You have to know it better than 99% of the people out there.
Because this is what happens. When you, the writer, don’t know the procedure for, say, what an FBI agent does over the course of a day, that seeps onto the page in ways you’re not aware of. Things start to feel FAKE to the reader, even if they’re not sure why. Once a reader loses trust in the writer’s knowledge of the subject matter, they check out. It’s happened to me hundreds, if not thousands, of times.
So this writer asked me to clarify for him EXACTLY what it was about his script that screamed “keystone cops.” And I realized a couple of things. One, his cop partners never went back to the precinct. They never engaged with any other cops. We only ever saw them with each other. It was there that I realized that a big contributor to keystone cops is *what you don’t show us*.
Cops have a job. That job starts at their precinct and requires them to go back to their precinct at least once a day. It’s there where we meet their superiors, the ones who are giving them their orders. It’s a place where you establish that you truly understand how being a cop works. Conversely, if a cop is never around any other cops the entire movie, they just seem like any other person. There’s nothing unique about their day.
The keystone cop criticism doesn’t just apply to cops. It applies to criminals as well. If your criminals don’t don’t act realistic or do realistic things, they will be labeled keystone criminals. I remember this one amateur writer wrote a script where two criminals discreetly exchanged a bag of money at a diner.
Do you know how much money they exchanged? 20 million dollars. I had to explain three things to the writer. One, 20 million dollars in 100 dollars bills weighs 400 pounds. Two, you would need a really big bag to hold all that money, so it’d be impossible to be discreet about it. Three – and this was the most important point – it was too much money to begin with. These were medium-level criminals. It didn’t make sense that they were doing anything that involved 20 million dollars.
That’s very common in keystone cop scripts by the way, where the money numbers the writers come up with make zero sense within the context of the story. For example, if you have a first time criminal who wants to rob a bank, does it make sense for him to try for 20,000 or 2 million dollars? The answer to this will determine whether your character is a keystone criminal or not so I hope you pick right (the answer is 20k).
Probably the biggest influence on the keystone cop label is a character’s introductory scene. Every character’s introductory scene is the scene that sells them to the audience. So if you look at it that way when you’re creating your cop or your agent or your criminal, you want to come up with as specific a scenario as you can that’s going to sell that character in that position.
One of the most famous examples of this is The Godfather. Who doesn’t feel that Vito Corleone is a real Godfather after that opening wedding scene where guest after guest come in to his office to ask him for unique things that only someone in his position can offer? That was it! That was all we needed and we believed this character was a real Godfather.
Another example: Scorsese. One of the reasons Scorsese is the master when it comes to crime films is how specific he is about the characters, what they do, how they operate, how they got where they got. Do yourself a favor and watch Casino, and just watch the sequence where they go through the details of how a casino operates. I never see that level of specificity in amateur scripts, which contributes to their keystone cop nature.
Another common issue in keystone cop scripts is when they cover a specialized version of a job – an internal affairs cop, a fixer, a surveillance investigator, a bookkeeper for the mob – and I don’t know anything more about that job at the end of the script than I did at the beginning. That’s unacceptable. One of your goals with any character should be to teach the reader about their job, what they are, what they do. That’s how we believe in someone, when we learn all of the unique aspects about their profession.
The reason I’m highlighting all this is because it’s one of the easiest ways to differentiate a pro script from an amateur script. The pro scripts I read that cover this subject matter are FAR AND AWAY better researched than the amateur scripts. If you want to write about crime, about cops, about the FBI, the CIA, big international incidents that involve multiple governments, you need to become an expert in this world.
Wikipedia and watching Heat for the 80th time isn’t going to cut it. I’m talking about reading NUMEROUS books on the subject matter. I’m talking about interviewing FBI agents for hours. If you’re laughing at that, then you don’t have what it takes to excel in these genres because the people who are writing produced movies in these genres, they’ve done the research. And if they haven’t, the studios pay for them to go out on ride-alongs until they do understand the profession. When David Ayer broke in, he did so with his script, U-571 that was based on his experiences as a submariner in the Navy. How are you going to compete with that level of realism unless you become obsessive with learning everything about the profession?
There is a silver lining to this. There are several things in screenwriting that are almost entirely based on talent. Dialogue is the obvious one. As frustrating as it may be to hear, someone who’s not naturally gifted with dialogue is never going to be as good as Tarantino no matter how much they study it. However, when it comes to research, you can out-research anyone. You can become an expert on the CIA if you’re willing to put in the time. You can then go write a bunch of CIA scripts – which Hollywood loves by the way – that feel more realistic than anybody else’s script in town.
But if you think you’re going to write a great script about a criminal organization and your only knowledge of criminal organizations is that you like the genre, you’re fooling yourself. You gotta do the hard work to make this stuff believable. But I promise you, when you do that research, it’s going to pay off. And you won’t have to hear me shaking my head mumbling, “keystone cops” anymore. So get to it!
Are you actually sending your screenplay out into the world without getting professional feedback? That is dangerous, my friend. I can tell you exactly what they’re going to criticize and help you fix those problems BEFORE you send it to them. I do consultations on everything from loglines ($25) to treatments ($100) to pilots ($399) to features ($499). E-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com if you’re interested. Chat soon!
