The Ol’ Subplot Switcheroo: Role Models (SPOILER WARNING)
This movie is damn funny. There are four writers credited: David Wain, Ken Marino, Paul Rudd, and Timothy Dowling. Apparently Dowling came up with the concept and it went through a few title changes and various rewrites and even had some substantial re-shoots before it was finally released. The Creative Screenwriting Podcast interview with Wain and Marino is pretty cool too, if you get a chance.
From a storyteller’s perspective it’s a pretty interesting movie: the A story is this: two guys become mentors for two kids in order to avoid jail. The B story is that Paul Rudd wants to marry his girlfriend. And the C story is that Paul Rudd’s mentee is into live-action role playing.
The odd thing is that the third act climax is a C story beat: when the LAIRE King gets dethroned. The A story just ends with a deus ex machina when Jane Lynch (who is amazing) says she called in a favor from the judge. And the B story resolves everything just before the credits when Paul Rudd improvises a song to Elizabeth Banks; which is pretty much where it should end.
The best part is, it works. It’s a great ending. If the writers would have stuck to the screenwriting manuals they probably would not have considered this switch, and the story might have ended with a lame court appearance and a Full House speech from Rudd, quickly deflated by Sean William Scott farting on the judge.
I’ll try to think of some more examples of subplot switcheroos.
03.31.09Screenwriting Competitions: My Two Cents
There’s been a lot of chatter on the screenwriting blogs about the value of competitions. Most recently there was some scandal about the Fade In competition here, which prompted a response from them here, and then it got uglier here. Threatening lawsuits, harassment, accusations, lame rhetoric–exciting!
I’ve entered a few competitions: TVWriter.com Spec Scriptacular (Finalist), Script PIMP (Grand Prize, TV), Austin Film Festival (Winner, Sitcom), and ScriptapaloozaTV (absolute loser).
Yeah, that last one pissed me off. Here’s the story, I first entered the Spec Scriptacular, made it to the final round so I made a bunch of revisions. Then I sent that revised script to the other three competitions. I was ecstatic when I won the first two, but I didn’t even make the quarterfinals of Scriptapalooza.
I felt betrayed. Surely they had made a mistake. I emailed just about all the other writers I knew. Okay, I sounded like a big baby. And they all replied with something like, “Contests are subjective.” But to this day I believe my script was just thrown in the trash and never scored. Wah wah wah!
So am I going to enter Scriptapalooza this year? Yep. I’m a sucker.
This post will be continued with more about my good experiences with competitions.
03.30.09Screenwriting Tip #2: Toying with the Audience
(SPOILER ALERT) I Am Legend could have been great, but there was a point at which I had to leave the room and go rant to Sarah about it (and then go hug my dog).
If you’ve seen the movie then you probably know now what I’m talking about: when the dog dies. Killing a pet in a movie is just mean. I don’t like it. Like most folks my age, I was traumatized by Turner & Hooch (and I still have a hard time liking Mark Wahlberg after Fear). [EDIT: And I refuse to watch or read Marley & Me.]
But I especially dislike the way I Am Legend kills the dog. Here’s why:
First, we get a suspense-packed scene where the dog chases a deer into a dark building. We’re on the edge of our seats, praying that the dog will make it. We hear mammalian screeches, see a pool of blood, then a furry snout. Our worst fears are around the corner until– nope, that was the deer. The dog made it out alive! Who cares about the deer, right? Woohoo, what a scene! At that point I was sucked into the movie. If I didn’t before, I now cared a lot about Will Smith and his dog. The filmmakers had done their duty. Bravo!
You want to write scenes like this for this exact purpose, unfortunately such strong medicine is not without side effects, that is, these kinds of scenes set up rules and make promises that the rest of the movie has to deliver on. This scene promises me that the dog will be okay. Will Smith will be more careful next time.
Does it keep its promise? Nope, a few scenes later the dog gets killed. And the worst part is, this scene is far less suspenseful, far less interesting than the previous scene where the dog lived.
So I think this should be a screenwriting rule, if the dog narrowly lives in one scene, you shouldn’t kill him off three scenes later. I realize that horror movies may want to break this rule and apparently I Am Legend tried to be a horror film in some ways, but damn…those CGI monsters were lame. So if you want to break this rule, you better make the latter scene, the death scene, twice as good as the near death scene.
I Am Legend is a wonderful movie to learn from because it is a trainwreck. I’d really like to read about the committee that put it together because there are loose threads everywhere. I bet somewhere though, there is an amazing first draft that someone forgot to shred.
03.25.0952SS#4: The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allan Poe
The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult I vowed revenge.
A quick google search led me to this website, which appears to be a good source of crime short stories. I was really looking for detective fiction, which this website has plenty of, but I read this creepy Poe story instead.
I couldn’t help but hear Vincent Price’s voice when I read it. I had to look up a few words here and there, but there’s a universal structure to Poe’s stories that makes me think they’d be just as unsettling written in Polish (more so, maybe).
03.24.09Script Frenzy ‘09
I’m totally there. I signed up last year, but nothing came of it. Now that I’m behaving like a real writer though I think I can meet the challenge of 100 pages in the month of April.
Serendipitously, I just finished a sitcom spec and I’m working on the structure of an action comedy. There’s a good chance I’ll be going to script by April 1st.
03.18.0952SS#3: Tedford and the Megalodon by Jim Shepard
I had a Borders gift card burning a hole in my pocket since Christmas so I swung in the other day and picked up McSweeney’s Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales. It’s usually my policy to look up reviews on Amazon first, but all the names looked great on that cover and Michael Chabon’s intro was exciting. Unfortunately, the stories aren’t as exciting. At least, the one I read wasn’t; and the Amazon reviews, which I looked at later, leave me with a bit of buyer’s remorse.
Anyway, I read the first story of the volume (and a few pages of the second story) and here’s how I would describe it, using fifty-cent words, verbose and prevaricating.
And to top it off, there’s not really anything thrilling about it at all. While I was trudging through it’s dense, dialog-less paragraphs I wished I was reading Fletch instead.
Sorry, but this story was just boring.
Caveat emptor; read the intro in a bookstore, then go find the stories he talks about in other books.
03.17.09The Plan #2: Celebration! I finished a first draft!
And I am exhausted. In a manic fit I did some final revisions for my first draft of a 30 Rock spec and sent it off to a friend. I couldn’t sleep at all after it was finished, and I was literally shaking as though I’d just managed to lift a Buick over my head. Seriously, someone should have thrown one of those foil blankets over my shoulders and given me a Power Bar and a Gatorade. Writing is hard. But today I feel refreshed and free like the first day after finals, or…spring break.
Of course, this also means it’s time for a new script. Where to go from here? Well, this was really just my third script ever. I’ve written some short scenes, sketches, then I wrote my Office spec, then I wrote an Earl spec that was a real dud, and then I’ve got this 30 Rock spec that I think is effing brilliant. So now comes the scary part. I have to wave goodbye to all those “found” characters and wander off into uncharted territories with the hope of meeting some interesting people. Yep, I’ve got to write an original. So I’ll be digging through my notes and fragments and trying to piece something together. Hopefully I’ll find the next Beverly Hills Cop, wish me luck!
03.16.09Why The Austin Film Festival Is So Cool
Yeah, I know it’s SXSW time, and I’m not there 
. But I’m all smiley again because I remembered this photo I had from back in October. This is me talking to Greg Daniels (creator of The Office [US], among other things):
I love this photo because it looks like I have them enthralled in an great story that’s punctuated with swigs of Dos Equis (like most great stories are).
03.11.0952SS #2: A Small Room In Koboldtown by Michael Swanwick
Continuing with another Hugo nominee was a good idea. I’m not a sci-fi reader, so it can be as foreign as reading something from the 18th Century sometimes, but this story had a nowness to it that transcends genre. It’s a detective story that feels a bit like The Wire, only with haints and solids and boggarts (yeah, I had no clue at first either) .
Take a look at this quote from the first paragraph:
He fetched tax forms for the alderman’s constituents, delivered stacks of documents to trollish functionaries, fixed L&I violations, presented boxes of candied John-the-Conqueror root to retiring secretaries, absent-mindedly dropped slim envelopes containing twenty-dollar bills on desks. When somebody important died, he brought a white goat to the back door of the Fane of Darkness to be sacrificed to the Nameless One.
It starts off with all that procedural porn that grounds you in the real world (you know the seedy, cynical world from whence Rod Blagojevich oozed), but then Swanwick conjures up The Nameless One. It’s comedic and exciting. I love it! And it only gets better.
Also, Swanwick’s technique for describing a city reminds me a bit of Bob Dylan. Think “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues”:
He canvassed voters in haint neighborhoods like Ginny Gall, Beluthahatchie, and Diddy-Wah-Diddy, where the bars were smoky, the music was good, and it was dangerous to smile at the whores.
Good read. Very entertaining.
03.10.09More Richard Price
I decided to back up that “bitterness” comment with some research. Here’s an awesome quote from Price about Sea of Love:
I spent nine months shoehorning that script into a thriller, which I never meant it to be. I wanted it to be this moody, mopey thing, a character study. The worst thing you can say in a meeting with the studios is, ‘This movie about I’m about to pitch to you fellas, it’s like nothing you’ve ever seen before.’ They immediately say, ‘Well, in that case, get the fuck out of here.’ You sell a movie by its bloodlines, like you sell a racehorse. You tell them, ‘This is sired by Die Hard out of Do The Right Thing.’ Or, ‘It’s The Crying Game meets Jurassic Park, dinosaurs and transsexuals.’
And another:
What do they say? Comedy is Tragedy plus Time? Everybody’s telling me I’ve got to turn my movie into Fatal Attraction. Next thing I know, about a year later, I’m at a party and I run into James Dearden, the guy that wrote Fatal Attraction. And I said, ‘Oh. So you’re the prick that wrote that thing. I can’t tell you how miserable that made my life. I had to make my story like yours.’ And he said, ‘Look, I’ve just got a job directing a movie and everybody’s telling me I’ve got to make it like Sea of Love.’
I got all this from here. It’s full of fascinating background stuff, as well as some great commentary.
More about Sea of Love later…
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