As you continue to battle through the rewrite of your AMATEUR COMEDY SHOWDOWN script, I thought to myself, how can I help these writers make their script funnier? That got me thinking about yesterday’s script review and the concept of SITUATIONS. Here’s how I defined situations in that review…
A situation, in screenwriting terms, is a familiar event, with genuine consequences, where the reader understands the rules and can, therefore, participate in the fun.
A bank robbery is a situation. A breakup is a situation. A battle of wits, such as when the Man in Black took on Vizzini in The Princess Bride – that’s a situation.
The great thing about comedy is that comedy and situations go together like peanut butter and jelly. So that’s what we’re going to do today. We’re going to add one “Situation” scene to your comedy. And we’re going to make it hilarious.
So what I’m going to do is list ten situations for you and you’re going to choose which one of those would fit best in your script and write the funniest version of that situation that you can think of.
Here’s your list:
1) A breakup – Breakups are some of the easiest scenes to make funny. They’re inherently comedic. A word of advice, though. Be creative about where they take place. For example, it’s probably funnier to have someone break up with their boyfriend at the beginning of a flight than in their car. Add a guy who’s terrified of flying and you’ve got yourself a scene.
2) Underage kids trying to buy beer (or get into a club) – We’ve seen this situation a million times before yet audiences will watch it a million times more. There’s something about watching underaged kids try to pull one over on the cashier/bouncer that never gets old.
3) Job interview – Job interviews are packed with tension and you can find a ton of comedy in tension. They can also pop up in unexpected places. One of the funnier scenes in Deadpool 2 was the job interview sequence. Step-Brothers also has a good one.
4) Meeting the parents – The first time someone introduces their boyfriend or girlfriend to their parents is a situation. Try to create clear boundaries to make the scene better. For example, if you force them to sit through dinner at a restaurant, that creates more tension than if they come over to the parents’ house, say hi, and everybody goes their own way. Remember that the more boundaries and rules that are in place, the better a situation works.
5) A dreaded gym class game – Those gym class games, from basketball to soccer to dodgeball, are inherently funny because we’ve all been through them and know the rules. You have to go through the torturous process of getting picked. Then you have to play a game you suck at. You always come out looking bad. Before you say this is too specific since it only covers school years, remember that they made an entire film about adults in this situation (Dodgeball). If you’ve got a workplace movie, maybe it’s a game they play during a retreat.
6) The big boardroom presentation – These work best when your hero is the presenter and there’s a ton of pressure on them to do well. But you don’t have to write them that way. You can have your hero be a nobody in the boardroom but be unexpectedly called upon to offer his opinion. He can then fail spectacularly.
7) The hustle – The hustle is a great situation. Whether it’s pool, chess, or basketball, you establish that someone is going to be hustling someone else and then watch the game unfold. Always entertaining, especially if you flip the script (and the ‘hustled’ is the real ‘hustler’).
8) Stuck in line at the DMV – The never-ending torture that is being stuck at the DMV – in endless lines, talking to people who aren’t helpful, forgetting documents you were supposed to bring, being forced into a surprise driving test (another situation!). Lots of hilarity here. Zootopia uses this one.
9) Walk of shame – Waking up in an unfamiliar bed with someone you don’t know and having no idea how far away from home you are and how you’re going to get back is an age-old situation that offers all sorts of comedic possibilities. The more obstacles you can throw at the character, the better.
10) Getting pulled over by a cop – Always a fun situation to play with because we’ve all been there, understand the rules, and there’s a clear goal to the proceedings (try not to get a ticket!). The more your character has done wrong, the better, since they’ll have more to hide.
The above are general situation templates but there are tons of situations specific to whatever subject matter you’re writing about. People stuck in a shack in the woods with zombies trying to get in through every window – that’s a situation. Being inside a convenience store when men come in to rob the place, that’s a situation. A guy standing on top of a building, deciding whether to jump or not with a bunch of people trying to stop him – that’s a situation.
You’ll notice that the higher the consequences of a situation, the more interesting the scene tends to be. So if you have someone who’s standing on top of a building ready to jump… that’s a very high-consequence situation. The Office had a famous one of these where Michael fakes like he’s going to jump off the building so that his employees will appreciate him more but then, the more he talks to everyone, the more he *actually* wants to jump, which turns it into an increasingly serious situation.
By the way, what *isn’t* a situation? Situations dissolve whenever the boundaries become faded and the rules less clear. For example, a wedding ceremony is a situation. There’s a clear beginning, middle, and end, with high stakes attached to it (since usually, in movies, somebody’s going to try to stop the wedding). But a wedding post-party is not a situation. It’s just a vague chunk of time dedicated to people having fun. There are no rules. There is no clear climax. That doesn’t mean funny things can’t happen during it. But whenever something has less rules and less structure, the tendency for it to become unfocused and boring increases.
Actually, whenever you’re in non-situation territory, like a wedding after party, I encourage you to add as many of your own rules as possible, to create an “artificial situation.” For example, if Best Man Joe is trying to win the heart of Maid of Honor Jane, maybe his goal is to profess his love for her at the after party. Now the after party has structure (since there’s a goal and, therefore, something to look forward to) which makes it an artificial situation.
Finally, situations work best when they’re used within concepts where you wouldn’t expect them. For example, you don’t expect a trip to the DMV to be in the movie Zootopia. Or if you’re writing a Star Trek parody, throwing in a walk of shame scene could be a really unexpected way to have some fun in that universe. You want to look for ways to flip the script. For example, instead of following a group of teenagers who are trying to sneak into the club with fake IDs, maybe your movie is about a group of adults who, at some point, find themselves trying to sneak into a kids party where they have to pretend they’re under 18. In other words, you never want to execute situations exactly as expected. You want to look for little twists and turns to make them fresh. One of the best examples of this came from Notting Hill where we get the situation of a ‘FIRST DATE.’ Hugh Grant shows up for that first date and finds himself in the middle of a publicity tour.
Situations are great for any genre but they can be really fun to play with in comedies. So have at it!
