by Greg DePaul
I’ve written and re-written scripts, changing characters and entire story lines—and then re-written them all over again. Draft after draft after draft until it barely resembles what I started with. But I never throw out the Big Idea. If I do, the project is over.
I’m using the Big Idea in the general sense. It can mean concept, story premise, logline—whatever makes the story special. The Big Idea is what makes me want to write the story—it’s what the script aspires to be. I’m not talking about a sales tool. I’m talking about a handful of words that you, the writer, use to express what lies at the heart of your storytelling process for a particular feature screenplay.
I can’t give you ironclad examples of what the Big Idea was for somebody else’s movie, because I didn’t write it. Only the writer of a script knows what lies at the heart of a particular script for that writer. I can tell you that when Hank and I were writing Saving Silverman we held onto this Big Idea: two guys save their buddy from his evil girlfriend.
The story changed many times as it was pitched, re-pitched, written, and re-written along with the help of producers, studio executives, a director … but that Big Idea always stuck around.
But if the people in power—the folks who were paying us to write—had said, “We like your main characters, but we hate that big idea, so take Wayne and J. D. and put them in a different story,” that would have killed it. Big Idea dead on arrival.
Thankfully, they didn’t say that. But they did make us change just about everything else. Early versions of the story were darker and had a body count. Yup, characters died. There were shootings. And there was no Neil Diamond. We were forced to write him into the story by the director, who had his own Big Idea, which was to put one of his favorite singers in his movie. So we did.
Yup, we whored.
But that only proves we like to eat. After all, nobody wants to get fired from their first big movie and replaced by new writers who will naturally be gunning to earn themselves credit, which requires major changes to the story.
Again, if the powers-that-be had asked us to change the script’s Big Idea, we would have walked away.
Why?
Because then we would have had nothing to turn to when the writing got tough. As it usually does.
That’s the greatest thing about the Big Idea—it’s there when all else is lost. When you’re stuck in your umpteenth draft. When you forget why you started writing this script in the first place. When you’ve cut and pasted all your best and worst scenes so many times that you can no longer tell which are the best and which are the worst. That’s when you need to remember your Big Idea.
Hank and I re-wrote Saving Silverman a zillion times (OK, it felt like a zillion; it was probably more like fifty) over a period of about eighteen months. During that time, we took everybody’s notes: the director, producers, studio executives, actors, etc. I’m not sure, but I think we even took notes from a guy flipping burgers at Carl’s Jr. He hadn’t read the script, but they were good notes. And they came with a side of fries.
But when things got bad and we had scratched all the hair out of our heads, we could always turn to each other and say, “They’ve gotta save their buddy from his evil girlfriend!”
And we were OK.
So before we get into the differences between a logline and a premise, let’s take a moment—as writers—to acknowledge that we need our Big Idea when we write. We need it like a five-year-old needs a teddy bear. Because it keeps us warm at night, makes us feel cozy, and protects us from harm. And without it, we are lost.
Now that I’ve told you what you must hold dear while you write, let’s look at what you write …
Act Two Is All
In 1979, Syd Field published his groundbreaking book, Screenplay. In it, he described conventional screenplay structure based upon a total of 120 pages. The second act constituted half—60—of those pages.
Syd did screenwriters, and the whole industry, a great service. He made things clear and provided a simple road map for what is an incredibly complicated process—writing a screenplay.
But, last I checked, this is no longer 1979. And in the twenty-first century, most feature screenplays—especially comedies—run closer to one hundred pages, if not less.
And those middle pages—now more likely to constitute about fifty pages—are the important pages.
If you hand me a screenplay with a wretched first act, a great second act, and a horrifyingly painful third act, you’ve handed me gold. I can re-write the first and third acts to conform to the second act. Seriously. I can fix that baby with one arm tied behind my back. I can make all of it sing. Guaranteed. I’ll send it to you when I’m done, and you’ll buy it.
And that’s not because I’m a genius. That’s because somebody else has already done most of the hard work.
Now you may be thinking …
But Greg, first acts can be tough, too.
Like hell they can. First acts are easy. I would wager that, of all the millions of unfinished screenplays ever written, more than half end before page fifty. That’s because bad writers, weak writers, unprepared writers, and even good writers who should know better can all dream up the best opening and follow it up with great character introductions and fun scenes … all leading nowhere.
Remember—the first act is merely setup. The plane is merely taking off. The ship is merely leaving port. For all the fanfare and toasts, the beginning of a journey doesn’t tell you if it will be a great ride. The aircraft that looks so shiny and grand during take-off might just be about to explode once it reaches cruising altitude. Or, more likely—as with the majority of all scripts ever written—it will stall and fall to earth. Very few of them will smoothly fly from page 25 to page 75—if they even get that far.
But if they do, I guarantee you they can be landed. And I promise—on my sacred honor as a comedy screenwriter—that for every great second act there is, in fact, a great ending. That’s because it can’t be a great second act if it doesn’t engage the dramatic forces of the story and build to a resolution. And if it’s building to a resolution, it can be resolved.
Let’s say you’re writing your comedy screenwriting butt off and you get to the end of your second act.
Phew! you think.
Then you find that, after trying over and over, you cannot finish your story. You cannot resolve it—no matter how hard you try. In that case, I submit that you do not have a great second act because it does not beget and set up its own ending.
And if that is so, I say this to you—go back and make it great. Don’t try to fix the script in Act 3. That cannot be done. No, you must go back and wrestle with Act 2 until you have won.
Why is the second act so … everything?
Because the second act is more than just the middle of the script. It’s where the premise hits the road and either rises to life or falls flat on its face. And it’s what the audience pays to see.
Put this book down right now, go online, and watch the trailer to any successful comedy movie. Most of it will be made up of moments from the second act. Think of the best moments of any movie and chances are you’re recalling something from the second act.
Do you hang out with aspiring screenwriters? How many times have you heard an aspiring screenwriter pitch you a script? They’ll start telling you the details of the opening, the camera angles, what the protagonist is wearing, etc… . and after five minutes they’re still telling you about the first act. Because that’s what they’ve written. Then their voice will start to slow down as they get toward the end of Act 1.
This is where I’ve still got a few kinks, they’ll say.
This is why you don’t have a script, I’ll think.
Always decide on your second act before you write. Even if you’re a “process writer” and you like to start writing without an outline or even a foggy notion of your ending. Come up with the main body of the story in advance. Even if it’s just a sentence. Know what happens in Act 2—who faces o
ff against whom, what the nature of the conflict is and where it takes place, etc. If you can’t settle on this before you write, don’t start writing.
I can think of plenty of successful comedy movies where the second act is so strong that the screenwriter could have written totally different first and third acts without harming the story. Most of them are high-concept films or films with strong hooks where the main point of the first act is to set up the otherwise-hard-to-believe second act.
After all, there are a lot of ways a screenwriter can get to the second act of Neighbors. If you haven’t seen it, Neighbors is about a feud between a married couple and a fraternity living next door.
In the version that made it to the big screen, the married couple, played by Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne, are already ensconced in their suburban home when the fraternity moves in next door.
Imagine a version where the fraternity has already been living there and the married couple move in. How different would it be?
Not much. The main conflict—a war between the couple and the frat—would still be the core of Act 2. Most, if not all, of the same set pieces and story turns could be used.
What about We’re the Millers? In that movie, a small-time drug dealer is forced to smuggle drugs from Mexico. To accomplish this, he puts together a fake family to help him drive the drugs over the border in a recreational vehicle.
Does it really matter which of his two “children” is introduced first? In the version that played onscreen, Kenny is introduced before Casey. Would the second act change if the reverse was true?
No. Because first acts are interchangeable. For every great second act, there are a variety of possible first acts. In We’re the Millers, there are many ways to introduce the dealer’s family—as long as it is done early.
OK, Greg, you may be thinking, but what about the ending? Aren’t endings terribly important?
Not to me. And they shouldn’t be to you, either.
Third acts of comedies are notoriously short and unsubstantial. That’s because many film comedies operate on what I call the Moliere Principle.
You don’t need to have studied French or drama in college to understand the Molière Principle. You don’t even need to have read his plays. All you need to know is that hundreds of years ago there was a very funny playwright named Molière who constructed stories out of very simple premises.
For instance, he wrote a comedy called The Imaginary Invalid, in which a hypochondriac tries to force his daughter to marry a doctor so he can always have a doctor in the house.
Molière also wrote The Miser, in which a miser schemes to get his hands on more and more money. As you might guess, his miserly-ness drives the plot.
And then there is Molière’s Tartuffe, in which a charismatic, religious man seduces others into becoming his disciples and obeying his whims.
In all of these plays, a character fault drives the story. The character faults of the protagonists in The Imaginary Invalid and The Miser are clear enough. They’re right there in the titles. As for Tartuffe, the protagonist is the head of a household who falls for Tartuffe’s trickery. Thus, the protagonist is easily led—another character fault.
So character faults can drive a story. But if those faults are cured—if, for instance, the miser sees the error of his ways—the story must soon come to a close. The engine of the story is gone. Finish your popcorn and go home.
That’s the Molière Principle. And it exists in comedy movies as well. When Andy in The 40-Year-Old Virgin finally gets over his fear of intimacy, the story comes to a quick ending. Yes, the director occupies a handful of minutes with Andy trying to get to his girlfriend. But once they kiss and make up and jump into the bed, the story has come full circle.
The load, she is shot.
Let’s look at the Molière Principle at work in The Silver Linings Playbook.
As you may recall, Pat, played by Bradley Cooper, has many problems. But his biggest problem is that he hasn’t given up on his ex-wife, with whom he has been estranged for some time. His desire to get back together with her drives the story because it causes him to spend time with Tiffany, played by Jennifer Lawrence. Once Pat realizes he no longer wants to be with his ex-wife, the story is on the verge of ending. The load is about shot. Pat need only chase Tiffany down a street and beg for a kiss. The movie is over because Pat’s personality defect has been solved as per Molière.
Who knew a seventeenth-century French dude could be such a great screenwriter?
So, to review: Act 2 is all, and everything else is small.
Say it to yourself five times fast and keep reading this book.
High Concept
When I first arrived in Hollywood, a television producer took me to lunch. He was a friend of a friend from the East Coast, and I was hoping more social occasions like this might follow shortly.
Turned out I was wrong. I didn’t lunch with another producer for a couple years. For those about to pack up and head to Los Angeles to make it as a screenwriter, know this: you will burn through your early contacts after crossing the Midwest. That’s part of the game. Don’t sweat it.
At lunch, the producer tried to educate me on a subject that gets a lot of attention in the screenwriting world—high concept.
I had actually written one attempt at a high-concept comedy screenplay. It was called Brainchild, and it was about a boy who accidentally swallows a pill that makes him the smartest person in the world. Not a great idea, but a big one. And not a great script, either. But it was my attempt at high concept.
Producers, agents, writers … all define high-concept differently. Some say it’s a catchy logline. Thus, if a script or movie can be summed up in a catchy logline, it is high concept. But just about any successful movie can be summed up with a catchy logline, so that definition is useless.
Newsflash: you are reading this book to get actionable information. You need news you can use. To launch your big comedy screenwriting career. Now.
So let me define high concept in a way that is immediately useful and specific. A high-concept story is one that couldn’t happen in real life—but can happen through the magic of moviemaking.
Leaving aside comic book movies, horror films, and science fiction flicks, my definition of high concept embraces such movies as these:
Bruce Almighty
What Women Want
Night at the Museum
Ted
Click
This Is the End
Midnight in Paris
The Santa Clause
Hancock
Elf
Evan Almighty
Freaky Friday
This is the stuff that only happens in the movies. Stuff that can’t possibly be real.
So, now that you have the idea, let me ask you …
Is Old School high concept?
Old School is about a group of middle-aged men who create a fraternity so they can relive their youth and hold wild, drunken parties with college co-eds.
Nope. Old School is not high concept. Why not?
Because, while I know of no instance in which a bunch of middle-aged men created a fraternity and held drunken parties with college co-eds, it could actually happen. It’s not physically impossible. It’s just highly unlikely. Hard to believe.
Lots of stories are hard to believe. That’s what makes them remarkable. But it doesn’t make them high concept.
What about a man who can hear women’s thoughts?
Now that’s impossible. Totally, totally impossible. That can only happen in a movie, which is why What Women Want is high concept.
But, you say, what about the catchy-ness of a concept? What about a concept that sticks in your head and makes you want to see the movie? Doesn’t that make a story high concept?
No.
Many of the high-concept films I listed above are extremely catchy because they have a hook—something that sticks in your head when you first hear it and makes you want to see the film. A hook may allow
you to visualize the story and “see” the poster for the movie. It can also tap into the zeitgeist and reach people based on some shared cultural understanding, or because the concept gives life to some thought you’ve already been carrying around in your head.
There, I used the word zeitgeist. Am I a smarty-pants, or what? Anyway …
Bruce Almighty has a very zeitgeisty hook. After all, most of us have wondered what it would be like to be God for a day. The concept taps into the zeitgeist and hooks you in. Same goes for What Women Want. Lots of men have wished they could hear what women are thinking. The concept draws on that shared, easily identifiable common desire. Again, high concept with a hook.
Contrast those movies with other high-concept flicks like Midnight in Paris or Elf, neither of which have particularly strong hooks; they are just imaginative concepts that could only happen in the movies. I’ve never wondered what it would be like to wander into Paris in the 1920s. Similarly, the idea that an elf from the North Pole would search for his human father in Manhattan was totally novel to me before I saw Will Ferrell do it onscreen. That’s why—in my book—Midnight in Paris and Elf are high concept, but without hooks.
I’m not making a judgment here about what’s best—I love all four of the movies I just mentioned. I’m simply distinguishing them for screenwriting purposes.
Low Concept
Here is where we lump all the screen stories that could happen in real life.
21 Jump Street is low concept. It is possible for grown-up cops to go undercover as teenagers. Not likely, but possible.
The Hangover is low concept. Yes, the bizarre series of events presented in that film would be unlikely to all occur to the same group of guys (let alone, the events of The Hangover II and III), but they could happen.
Many low-concept movies are what the industry likes to call “execution dependent.” That means the story idea alone doesn’t sell the film or even tell you what the film is. You have to watch the movie to find out.