Back from Vacation

It's been a little over a month since my last update but with finals, Christmas and a vacation it's been pretty hectic... so here I am. I've been tossing around ideas for what story I want to start working on next, I think I may go towards my non-graphic horror story, it has a fun premise I think I can get a lot out of.

As for "Blood in the Trees" I finally settled on the new title of "No Refuge" - it is shorter, which is good, and easier to say, which is also good. I changed a reference of the woods about 10 pages into the story to say "wildlife refuge" and there it is. I think it works and frankly I'm sick of trying new titles with this damn thing.

I've also been working on some query letters for this and my rom-com, they're coming out fairly decently and I'll be using Script PIMP's forwarding service contact thingy to see if i can get it out there to some producers and agencies. The horror film would be cheap to make so there are a lot of options out there, hopefully someone will like it. I'd much rather just go and make it myself, but hey, you have to start somewhere. My rom-com I'm just holding back on a little, doing some tweaks here and there. It seems that every woman that has read it has really liked it whereas every guy (all two of them that I could con into it) said "I hate it but it's well written," par for the course I suppose. As I said before in reference to the rom-com, it's a little formulaic as most of them are but with that genre you already know where you're going to go, it's the getting there that's fun.

Aside from all that I've just been watching a bunch of random movies to see what's out there since I have the streaming Netflix now, my recent views were "Teeth," "Dead & Breakfast" and "The Charge of the Light Brigade" which were stupid, silly and good in that order. I also watched the first two seasons of "30 Rock" which was hilarious... good stuff.

I'll update once I figure out a good query letter and get it out there, persistence is key.

Oh! And a bunch of people commenting really solidified my "no contests" standpoint now, good looking out. It's always great when someone that knows things a lot better than I do gives me some advice, it's motivating. Thanks!

So Much for Updating More Frequently

But still, what's the point of updating if there's nothing to update? Now that I have a few things I can make a semi-coherent blog entry.

*ahem*

At any rate, I received more notes from the Script P.I.M.P development service and have made some changes and added a few scenes to Blood in the Trees (I'm still open for a better title, by the way) and I'll be resubmitting to them in the next week or so. Here's to hoping that I've finally covered everything that needs to be covered without making any more problems. It's either that or they're just stringing me along, hoping I'll keep paying for that coveted "recommend" rating. It's a dysfunctional relationship but I think deep down they still love me.

My romantic comedy is coming along nicely, I'm 1/8th of the way into having a first draft. That's sort of swimmingly I guess. I do have a completed outline and a fun hook. I must say that the first fifteen pages are packed with everything that's needed to suck an audience in and set up the rest of the story, so no more of my "waiting too long to get started" problem. Plus it's fun writing witty dialogue and having it expected as opposed to being out of place in a horror setting. Even so, instead of selling the movie if someone can cut me a check I'll just go make the movie myself... that would be way more fun.

I also came up with a great idea for a classic ghost story. I think horror movies wherein the atmosphere is scary (i.e. The Haunting) as opposed to be scared of something are a lot creepier than the creature features that have been around. Think of The Ring; before you actually saw the little girl and you were getting bits of information with that air of foreboding it was really creepy. That's also why The Ring 2 was crap! Crap I say! I'll be working out that script after the rom-com, I've had enough of horror for awhile.

A reader (I presume the only one) contacted me the other day and told me about stuff he's working on and how he's hoping to get his name out there. He is working out a distribution deal right now for his first feature, a quirky/funny horror movie Hamlet the Vampire Slayer which I've conveniently linked for... well for me. I hope he has good luck with that... then he can hook me up!

Finding David is almost finished (just some editing tweaks to do) and hopefully we'll be able to get it into a festival or two and have even a fraction of success that Aaron is having.

So... more stuff happening and I'll update when they do!

Blood in the Slasher and Romance in the Romcom

I've retitled my slasher movie "Blood in the Trees" since that sounds... hmm... more slashery. I was told that "Behind Suburbia" sounded too artsy for a horror movie - and wouldn't be perceived as one just by the title. An odd observation but an accurate one though I don't know many people that randomly pick a movie to see based on the title alone. If anyone has a suggestion for a BETTER title, please let me know.

At any rate, I resubmitted "Blood in the Trees" to the Script P.I.M.P. development service (seeing as how it was technically "Behind Suburbia" version 10) to see what they say about all the changes. I think the last time they saw the screenplay was version 3, so it has definitely come a long way since then. At least I hope it has. I think the visual writing went pretty well and the screenplay is a lot smoother and more dynamic. POW!

I've also put my eccentric comedy on hold in favor of a semi-formulaic romantic comedy. The eccentric comedy was getting a little TOO weird so I may have to go back and change things, but while doing so a great idea for a romantic comedy popped into my head and I decided to run with it. I'm partway through the outline and so far it is really shaping up. Of course, the plot of a romantic comedy is pretty easy to hash out, it's just a matter of creating characters that people love and can identify with.

Here's my formula for a romantic comedy, please swap genders depending on your protagonist:

1. Guy has a lousy (or too perfect) life.
2. Comes up with plan to improve life (or a plan backfires).
3. Meets and falls head over heels for someone they meet during plan.
4. Other person reciprocates.
5. Plan blows up in face, loses other person.
6. Redemption.
7. True love (but at the opposite of original expectations).
8. The End.

Easy, no? Don't get me wrong, there are a ton of mutations on the genre but if you break them down enough this is essentially what they boil down to. Some stories come in at step 5 (High Fidelity) then retell steps 1-4, but all of those steps are there.

The trick to being successful in this genre is to find a unique way of going through the steps. I'm not talking make it a Momento-esque retelling, I mean find something unique. Give the protagonist a unique job/interest, give them an original plan to go through with, make the other person outside of the norm for true love (The Holiday: Cameron Diaz + Jude Law = romantic comedy. Kate Winslet + Jack Black = what?). Or you could always write several half stories, slap them together through odd coincidences and you have a complete movie (Love Actually, which I really enjoyed).

So - you know where you start, you know how it's going to end - you just have to fill in those little bits in the middle and you've got yourself a romantic comedy. The plus side is that romantic comedies have a built in audience, even the crappy ones seem to be decently successful at the box office, especially if they have some star power behind them.

My previous post was right, having school work to do definitely gets the creative juices flowing!

Inherently Silly Words in Dialogue

Dialogue always has to have a purpose, it's used to create and amplify tension, conflict, and move the story along. A character saying "There's a small animal biting my testicles" to which another character replies "bummer," while silly, really does not do much for your story - unless it's a story about testicular reconstructive surgery or small animals of course. For the sake of this explanation though, let's use this line to see how it can be made funnier.

The idea itself while sophomoric is still humorous, so that's covered. Anything involving a great deal of pain without permanently injuring the character is always funny (re: slapstick) so just showing that alone would be funny to a lot of people. Let's say the character has to explain what's happening to a friend over the telephone, or is in the other room, then he has to describe the situation. As it reads above, he states exactly what's going on, a small animal is chewing on his testicles. How can this be improved?

The English language is handy in that there are more words than any other language and it's easy to make up new ones, invent slang, and misconstrue the meaning of other words (which is also slang, but go with it) for a situation. There are also words that make people smile. Just a certain way that they sound that brings out the comedy. It's been said by many people that anything with a "k" is funny. I tend to agree simply because "k" is a funny sound. Pickle. Say it out loud. Then say it out loud three times really fast. Whee! Of course don't limit yourself to talking about the Ku Klux Klan molesting a duck simply to cash in on an idea, I'm just saying a "k" word here and there never hurt.

So let's look at the first part of our sentence "a small animal." There are a lot of small animals in the world, so let's think of some funny ones. If we want to go with "k" we could say muskrat or skunk. I, personally, think a weasel is the funniest sounding animal. If we want to throw a "k" in there as well, we can call it a stink weasel. So our sentence has transformed into "There's a stink weasel chewing on my testicles!"

On to our verb, "chewing." This is where a thesaurus comes in handy, there are a lot of ways to convey that something is chewing, so let's look through the list until we find a word that just seems silly. Here's what we have: bite, champ, chaw, chomp, consume, crush, cud, deliberate, eat, gnaw, grind, insalivate, manducate, masticate, mull, munch, nibble, ponder, ruminate. There are more, but let's look at these. We don't want to use a word that not many people would understand or anything too outdated. The word should also sound painful while still being inherently silly. To narrow it down, we can use "gnaw" or "nibble." In my own personal opinion things with two unconventional letters in a word usually wins, but in this case I like the idea of gnawing. The idea of a stink weasel either gnawing (just going balls out) or nibbling (saving the delectable feast) on testicles is pretty funny either way, but I'm just a fan of the gnaw. Our sentence is now "There's a stink weasel gnawing on my testicles."

We're now down to the "testicles" part of the sentence. While descriptive, the word testicles is both a mouthful and not that funny. Here's where we can use some tried and true slang or just make up our own. As long as the audience is seeing what's happening we can get away with just about anything. People have some interesting pet names for their balls. At any rate, just for a sampling, let's go to the urban dictionary and see what we've got. So under "testicles" we've got: balls, nuts, scrotum, sack, testes, bollocks, gonads, nutsack, nads, vagina, ballsack, sac, genitals, family jewels, teabag, junk, nut, chode, jewels, bag, nards, rocks, berries and grundle. All of those are fine, but we should make up our own slang word here. If you know your character well, just think of what they would call it and go from there, but in this case I'll just make something up (and remove "on" from the sentence). Our sentence is now, "There's a stink weasel gnawing my happy sack!"

Not the best, but hey, I'm making this up as I go along. It sounds a little close to "hackey sack" but we'll just go with it. So our sentence has gone from "There's a stink weasel biting my testicles." to "There's a stink weasel gnawing my happy sack!"

A vast improvement? Not really. A decent improvement - yes. With this line our scene is halfway there, especially if the visual is spot on. In order to make this a complete comedy exchange, the reply to this line has to be unexpected, that's where people will laugh. Let's look over the scene now.

Chip is walking through the park arguing with his girlfriend Kandy (stripper name?) on his cell phone about her jacking a guy off in exchange for a meatball sub. Then, in the midst of the argument, a small animal darts out of a nearby bush, runs up Chip's pant leg and goes right for his nuts, and he lets out a scream.

CHIP

"There's a stink weasel gnawing my happy sack!"

KANDY

It's always you, you, you.

There are a million unexpected replies to this. That's what makes a comedy fun, make your characters not care about each other and see where it takes you. In retrospect this was kind of a dippy example, but using funny words will get your that much farther.

Opening a Comedy

Starting a comedy script is a lot different than starting a horror script. In horror, you want to save the best for last, the big payoff involving the killer, the last survivor and whatever else you've cooked up in the course of the story. Sure, you open with a token death, or the remnants of the latest kill (or both), but you want to entice the audience to stay longer to find out just what's going to happen. In a comedy, it's the exact opposite, you want them to be laughing so hard they have no choice BUT to stay.

Your comedy should start with something hilarious.

You want to get your audience in the correct mindset to laugh, and put them in the mood to do so. Sometimes, this gag can be your inciting incident and other times it's just a brief introduction to the character that you're going to be getting to know through the rest of the film.

American Pie opens with the main character masturbating and getting caught by his parents, a relationship set up that plays out through the rest of the film. Annie Hall opens with Alvy discussing directly to the audience why he's so messed up, something that plays out in every Woody Allen film. Dr. Strangelove opens with a deluded general initiating the start of global thermonuclear war while the rest of the film is everyone else scrambling to deal with it. Duck Soup opens with Groucho being put in charge of an entire country - and opens with a song and dance number.

The examples go on and on for comedy - if it works, it works. The thing with modern comedies as mentioned previously is that they are now going for more gross out humor than really thinking about why things are funny. Eating poo or being high? Hilarious. Watching dysfunction impair social relationships even though the main character relates to everyone he knows because of that fact? Not so much (to audiences anyway).

You Don't Mess with The Zohan opened with Adam Sandler being naked and catching things in his butt. I thought the movie as a whole was funny but that gag was just... odd. The audience seemed to love it though, so whatever works (I personally found the "fish out of water" jokes to be funnier).

All in all a comedy has to be funny to a lot of people but you cannot neglect the story in an effort to fit in as many jokes as possible. The situations that arise from the protagonist solving the effects of the inciting incident should be what makes the movie funny and memorable. Subplots and ancillary characters are perfect for the really awkward/hilarious moments, but whenever the main character is involved, the plot should always be moving forward. That's the key - but a lot of comedies muddy the water towards the end.

By the end of most comedies the plot has taken a turn for the serious as the character(s) attempt to right things and a lot of the earlier humor is gone in favor of trying to cram the plot that should have been developing since the beginning into the very end of the film. It's a case of too much story in not enough time. I love a good, well told story but the pacing is essential. Jokes without merit are funny, sure, but if that aren't moving the plot forward they're just filling up time that will have to be made up elsewhere.

These are just a few things that the writer needs to be aware of when constructing a comedy. The story is the most important part of any screenplay, and if you're setting up a hilarious situation just for the sake of setting it up - you probably don't need it. Find a reason in the plot for that hilarious situation, and you've got yourself a memorable comedy.

Just about any Judd Apatow movie (40 Year Old Virgin, Blades of Glory, Semi-Pro, Superbad, Walk Hard, etc.) has some hilarious, gut-busting moments, but for the life of me I can't really think of what they had to do with the plot, and unfortunately I remember them more than the funny things that happened within the actual story. This leads me to not wanting to see the movie again, not because they were bad but because some things are hilarious once. Randomness is funny but then loses its luster, but a great story will always be a great story.

Finding the Point of Comedy: Expectations, Sub-Genres and Silly Crap

"What's funny?" is one of the hardest questions to answer simply because it's different for everyone. What one person may find hilarious another may find just silly, or worse, stupid. For instance I find fecal humor to be too gross to be funny. My prime example is Stifler's scene from American Wedding... it was just a little too over the top for me -- but most people had the intended "Awwww, ha ha ha" reaction, uncomfortable laughter indicating "I'm glad that's not me!" Another prime example is that men love The Three Stooges... women don't. I know there's the exception to the rule at all times, but I speak in general terms since movies are for general audiences. When you write for too specific an audience you're going to fall flat.

Now the fun thing is that you can take just about any premise and make it a comedy. Comedy, traditionally speaking, is making fun of (or satirizing) an established convention. That's why there are so many sub-genres; if you take the expected results and flip them over to something absurd, you've made a funny.

Example: A bank robber is trying to open the safe in the back room of the bank. He sets up the plastic explosive and primes the charge, with a countdown of ten seconds so he can get to safety... only his sleeve is caught! In a serious movie, he would explode and be dead. In a comedy, it would blow up and depending on the sub-genre would:

A) Blow him into the police station
B) Leave a sooty mess on him
C) Not explode at all
D) Blow up and not open the safe
E) Blow up and not open the safe... but the safe wasn't locked in the first place
F) He frees himself, the safe blows open only to reveal another safe inside

or my personal favorite

G) Kill him anyway, but the janitor finds the open safe and has a decision to make

And so on and so forth depending on whatever mood the writer was in that day. This is of course a simple example, but that's the essence of comedy. Take what you except to happen and run the other way with it.

I just finished writing the outline to my comedy spec. I've written my characters into some humorous situations but it's the approach to the humorous situations that I need to narrow down before first draft writing commences. There's no point in switching comedy styles halfway through, you've established an action/reaction standard and the audience expects that prevail. I also personally hate going to a comedy and winding up in another genre entirely ("Man of the Year" anyone?) that just sets the movie up for failure because of false expectations, but that's a discussion for another day.

There are several schools of comedy before it comes to the sub-genre, they are: Fantasy, Observational, Irony, Satire, Slapstick and Tragicomedy. They are very broad so sub-genres came about to further differentiate between the schools themselves, and most comedies can be lumped into a few sub-genres, but for the most part it's easy to differentiate.

So let's look at our sub-genres: Black (not African-American, but that's one too), Criminal, Mocumentary, Farce, Horror, Family (for, Domestic is about), War, Musical, Parody/Spoof, Romantic, Satire, School, Slapstick, Sports, Teen and Urban. I don't think that's all of them... but that's all I can think of off-hand.

All sub-genres have built in audiences. If you want women to come to your film, make it a romantic comedy. If you want teenagers, make it a teen or school comedy (or just put in nudity). If you want to appeal to weirdos like me, you make a black comedy. Again, I'm speaking in generalities, but these hold true regardless.

Now, all comedies are satirizing or parodying some established convention (be it an actual institution or a belief) so those are umbrella terms, but it is in the way the humor is presented that would narrow that comedy into the sub-genre of satire (Zoolander, Anchorman, Idiocracy, Dr. Strangelove, Dogma) or parody (Blazing Saddles, Walk Hard, Scary/Epic/Super Movie). I hate lumping in Blazing Saddles with Epic Movie, but it's essentially the same thing, just one is presented way better than the other.

To put that into specific film terms: the protagonist is in conflict with the antagonist with unintended consequences, whether those consequences are surprising, ironic, weird or whatever is up to the writer.

Comedies winning the academy award are almost unheard of, the only ones doing so being It Happened One Night (1934), You Can't Take It With You (1938), Going My Way (1944), Tom Jones (1963), The Sting (1973), and Annie Hall (1977). There were a few hybrid comedies that won (and these were all comedies with dramatic elements, "sophisticated" comedies) but these were the only comedies that fell directly in the "comedy" genre umbrella. Recently though, comedies have been up for Best Picture, the first time in quite awhile, so that really opens the door to making sophisticated comedies once again.

That's where I'm trying to come in. I'm not talking about a high-brow masterpiece or anything, merely a comedy that also makes you think, examine life in general, and question the conventions of thought that society has given us. Sounds like heady stuff, sure, but my first goal is to make you laugh, then later, think about why you were laughing.

If I had to narrow down the sub-genres of my comedy I really would not be able to do it. This may be going against my aforementioned audience expectation caveat but the establishment of the tone and theme of the film in the first five minutes will alleviate that problem. As long as I maintain the same feel for the entire film, that is what's important and that's what comedies need to do.

A good comedy does this: in Annie Hall Woody Allen came right out and said that love sucks but you do it anyway, and he spent the rest of the movie showing us why, and it was great. American Pie let is know that it was going to be about the awkwardness of sex in the first two minutes and spent the rest of the movie showing us how, and it was funny. I could go on with all the comedies that I love, but I think I've made my point.

Then again I may have just rambled on, but I feel more focused anyway. On to the treatment!

Behind Suburbia finished (in theory) and Moving On

I've completed my version 5 (tenth rewrite, approximately) of Behind Suburbia and finally submitted it to a few contests. I got the notes back from Script Pimp but I did not find them nearly as helpful as the previous set. I saw that I did solve all of the previous problems except for one though (which version 5 rectified) ... but I still received a "pass" rating because of it. Aside from that one helpful hint the rest of the notes were something along the lines of "you need more horror movie conventions but don't make this a conventional horror movie."

All righty.

Needless to say I did not follow them as closely this round and now it's time to see what some contest judges have to say about it. I submitted to the PAGE Awards and something else I can't quite remember off-hand. Regardless, if this places better than "perfect ending" I'll know that I've improved and will feel pretty good about myself. If I won I'd feel awesome... but anyway, I'm happy with the script.

I'll be sending out some query letters soon to get some feelers out there to try and find a producer or an agent. I have two solid scripts and several more in the works so I'm building a decent base to work from. Hopefully I'll get some decent responses and I'll write an entry about query letters soon.

In the meanwhile I've had two good ideas come to the surface. One is a reworking of a comedy script I wrote when I first got interested in screenwriting. I enjoy that version but the overhaul I'm envisioning would have me start over from scratch. The second idea was a modern-day sci-fi movie, i.e. takes place now but has futuristic elements the common populace is not aware of. I've already started the character backgrounds and the outline, and I think it has a lot of potential. I'm just tired of being so serious.

My first set of notes compared my dialogue to Woody Allen and Kevin Smith. Not to toot my own horn but I have a knack for observational and conversational humor, and I really want to do something where I don't have to kill off a bunch of characters. I know, what fun would a slasher flick or murder mystery be without the dead bodies... and the premise of my sci-fi film would require some killing. Not a lot, mind you, but a few. Plus it would be a serious film.

The comedy would be fun, so I'm actually thinking about working on both at the same time. Then I can alternate my entries between comedy and sci-fi genre conventions and explore two things at the same time. Mind you that would entail me watching a ton more movies to cover both genres, but hey, I think it's a task I'm willing to undertake. I don't think I'd be able to WRITE both of them at the same time, but I can certainly do all of my outlining and pre-planning.

So, that's fun. I'll keep you all updated as things move forward. If anyone is curious to read "Behind Suburbia" feel free to e-mail me. Especially if you are a producer looking for a writer/director ... I'd really be up for that.

Resubmitted and Moving Forward

Just a quick update, I've resubmitted "Behind Suburbia" to the Script PIMP development service, I've requested the same reader so they can see the progress I've made and that I actually paid attention to their suggestions. I got tired of waiting for my editor to read the latest version, but I think I caught all of the errors throughout. Structurally it's sound, I'm, sure on that.

I also noticed I've been rather antsy lately, kind of restless and agitated. I was just going with the flow until last night, when I was just in a very agitated state. It took me until this morning to realize that it's because I haven't worked on anything new in awhile. A writer has to write, no?

I've been up to my ears in slasher movies for the past six months, and I've been been rewriting the same piece of work since mid-February. I think after the results come back I'm going to just make some minor adjustments (it's never perfect) and then submit it to the Script PIMP contest and the Nicholl Fellowship. If I can make it to the later rounds at least I know I've improved a lot since last year.

As for the writing bug, well, I think I'm going to be moving on to a comedy. I've killed enough people in my last two screenplays, it's time for something lighthearted where people aren't allowed to die, though I can hurt them for comedic effect so long as they can stand up and say, "well that sucked!"

So expect a thorough analysis of the comedy genre in the coming months as I analyze what works, what doesn't work, some of the genre conventions and my own insights into the characterization of an amusing, albeit identifiable character.

I don't mind rewriting, mind you, but after staring at the same characters for the past few months I need someone new to mess around with. I'm proud of Behind Suburbia. I think it's come a long way since the first draft, and I think this draft has some real potential. I think that even if the development service gives it a "pass" (it's a 50/50 shot) I think I'll still send out some query letters and try to get it into the right hands anyway.

I mean come on, if the last few movies that have been released in the horror genre are any indication, I think my script should be able to stand up just fine. Maybe.

I'll have an update with the results later or next week, as for now it's time to break out my trusty composition notebook (I was using yellow legal pads but the ones I buy have lousy binding) and get crackin'!