Bring the Funny

by Greg DePaul

  However, if what you’ve written is so incredibly (as in really, really) funny that it leaves readers choking on their own tongues, you should find a way to justify it and leave it in—at least until someone who matters (like, say, the president of production) tells you to cut it.

  Until then, keep it.

  Really Important Comedy Screenwriting Rule #100

  There’s always a caveat, right? Even to Really Important Comedy Screenwriting Rule #99. Here it is:

  Never sell your character out for a joke.

  If a joke requires a character to behave in a way that is contrary to his or her character, cut it—even if the joke leaves readers choking on their own tongues with laughter.

  Why?

  Because you blow your story to hell when you make us doubt your characters. Their integrity must be paramount. So never do that.

  Pop Quiz!

  1. The BDRs are: A) Badass Dog Rappers.

  B) Bodacious, Darwinian & Recalcitrant.

  C) Booties, Dingdongs & Rumps.

  D) Really freaking important, especially for comedy. So figure out what they are and have it tattooed somewhere on your body where you can’t miss it. The hip works. Use your hip.

  2. Farce is a word that correctly describes: A) Silly plays written by writers in, like, the Renaissance, or some other long-dead era, and that are totally irrelevant today.

  B) The marriage of Bill and Hillary Clinton. (Sorry, I shouldn’t have gone there. No more politics, I swear.)

  C) A dramatic presentation where the characters pursue their goals despite escalating obstacles, hopefully prompting laughter.

  D) A dramatic presentation where the characters pursue their goals despite escalating obstacles, hopefully prompting laughter. (I figured if I wrote it twice, you’d have double the chance of getting it right.)

  3. When deciding where to start a scene, it is usually best to: A) Start as early as possible so you can get in as many Hellos and How are yous as possible before ever-so-slowly settling into the important stuff.

  B) Summon the spirits of great writers such as Shakespeare, Goldman, Ephron, and DePaul before making your decision.

  C) Mix yourself a stiff drink and hope for the best.

  D) Use Late Point of Attack.

  4. The most important rule in comedy screenwriting is: A) If it’s really, really funny, keep it in the script.

  B) Never sell your character out for a joke.

  C) Learn from Greg. Just Greg. There are no other teachers but Greg. Have I mentioned how much you should appreciate Greg?

  D) A & B.

  7

  The Pearls Themselves

  For years I taught screenwriting in the conventional manner, which is to make students write a feature script by starting with idea creation: What’s your premise?

  Once they came up with one-sentence version of their ideas, which often took weeks, they would expand it to a three-sentence story, representing the three acts. This was followed by an ever-growing outline that eventually showed the sixty or so scenes that would make up their screenplays. And then they wrote.

  But I no longer teach that way. Here’s why:

  First, that method emphasizes structure above all. Now don’t get me wrong—structure is critically important. But there’s no point in building a frame if you have nothing to put in it. And that’s just what students did—they labored for months on idea and story and plot and then failed to fill their big structural contraption with anything worth working on for months (or longer) afterward. So the method didn’t lead to a good script.

  Second, I teach comedy screenwriting. And the comedy screenwriter has an obligation—actually, I would argue it’s an ethical obligation—to be funny.

  Sixty unfunny scenes in a row is the definition of failure in the world of comedy screenwriting. If you write that script, you’ve just demanded that some poor reader spend about two hours sitting with your script not laughing. And for those of us who have written coverage for agents and producers, we know just how painful two hours of not laughing at a comedy screenplay can be. It’s about as much fun as swallowing hot sand—except there’s no trip to the beach. On the other hand, you can do it in the privacy of your own room—kinda like suicide.

  Eventually I got sick of teaching people to write what they couldn’t fill with funny. Or story. Or characters. Or great moments. All of which is necessary to sell a script.

  So I changed my approach.

  Now I teach students how to diagram and understand movies, as well as the Basic Drama Rules, and then I give them assignments.

  A typical early assignment is to write a scene that would take place in a screenplay that we have studied in class. Like The Heat. I’ll ask students to write a two-page scene using characters from The Heat. Perhaps Detective Mullins wants something badly from Agent Ashburn, who refuses to give it to her. Perhaps both characters have strong agendas and pursue them with reckless abandon. And maybe there’s a ticking clock …

  The primary goal of that scene-writing assignment is to force students to craft powerful scenes that have conflict and some sort of beginning, middle, and end. To help them get there, I temporarily relieve them of their usual responsibility to create characters and concept. This allows them to focus on the moment-to-moment scene writing they need to do. As a result, students very often come to see a marked improvement in their screenwriting. Suddenly, they are creating explosive scenes full of conflict and What Happens Next?

  And when you are making readers ask What Happens Next? you’re winning your battle with them—the battle to keep their attention.

  What’s in a Scene?

  If you come to comedy screenwriting after having written plays or sketch comedy, you may not need to ask this question. Playwrights and sketch writers with any experience rarely have to be told what’s in a scene.

  But if you come to comedy screenwriting having previously written nothing, or having written prose, the nature of a scene can beguile you. I’ve already told you where to begin a scene—as late as humanly possible—but that doesn’t give much hint as to what to include in the scene itself.

  Let’s just be clear about the kinds of scenes we’re talking about here. We’re not discussing scenes—often written into shooting scripts—that look like this:

  EXT. THE WHITE HOUSE—DAY

  Establishing.

  CUT TO:

  I’m talking about meaningful scenes. Not establishing shots, montages, or scenes in which very little happens. OK, yes, I realize montages can be meaningful, but …

  I’m talking about scenes in which the story is furthered. The muscle of your script. Here’s how to approach those scenes:

  Think of each scene as an idea—a unique pearl—and remember never to repeat the same idea. This is what makes good comedy screenwriting so difficult to pull off—you need to generate fifty to seventy pearls to fill a feature script.

  Memorable scenes from great comedy films usually show us the protagonist pursuing something she wants, grappling with some obstacle, and either achieving her goal or failing. And, unless we’re in the third act of the film, the protagonist is not likely to get what she wants by the end of the scene, so she must toil onward …

  And usually a bigger question is raised at the end of the scene that makes us want to know What Happens Next? Just as in a novel where each chapter ends with a cliffhanger that compels us to read the next chapter.

  Remember the scene in The 40-Year-Old Virgin in which Andy is forced to confess that he is, in fact, a virgin? It comes about ten minutes into the film, and it launches us into the story of the movie.

  The setting is a poker game. Andy is, for the first time, socializing with his co-workers. The subject of sex comes up, and each guy tells his raunchiest sex story. When Andy’s turn comes, he struggles to dream up a story, leading to the discovery by his friends that he is a virgin, which leads to the agreement by his friends to help Andy lose his virginity.
It’s a funny scene that advances this idea: Andy’s virginity is a problem to be solved.

  Every pearl in a comedy screenplay has three elements:

  A setting.

  A conflict (and sometimes more than one).

  A question (What Happens Next?).

  In the scene just mentioned, the setting is a late-night poker game. There are two conflicts. In one conflict, Andy battles his own inability to tell a dirty story. In the other, Andy battles his new friends, who force him to admit he is a virgin. The question raised at the end of the scene is, How will they get him laid?

  Remember the scene in Neighbors where Mac and Kelly, the married couple, ask Teddy, the frat boy, to lower the volume on his massive house party so they can sleep next door? That scene has these three elements:

  A setting: the frat house.

  Two conflicts:Mac and Kelly versus Teddy.

  Mac and Kelly versus themselves. After all, they want to convince Teddy to calm his party down, but they don’t want to look like a boring, old married couple.

  * Note: Teddy wins Conflict A by exploiting Conflict B. He sees that Mac and Kelly desperately want to appear cool, so he invites them into the party, which they accept, and which raises …

  A question. With Mac & Kelly partying at the frat house, who’s watching the baby? Will something bad happen?

  The writers could have broken the scene into three smaller scenes in order to accomplish the same task. They could have shown Mac and Kelly in Scene A as they try to convince Teddy to turn his music down and he rejects them. Then they could have shown a Scene B in which Mac and Kelly argue about what to do at home minutes later. Then they could have sent Mac and Kelly back to Teddy’s frat house the next morning to try to convince him again—that would be Scene C. And Scene C could have ended as the scene, above, ended—with Teddy inviting Mac and Kelly into the party. There would still have been a setting, a pair of conflicts, and a resolution that raises a new question.

  Instead, the writers chose to do as much as they could in the most efficient manner—which is why the scene they wrote works so well and keeps the story moving.

  In either case, a story beat is presented to the reader—either through a sequence of scenes or through a single scene—and the reader is left wanting to know more. Which means the page gets turned.

  When the film gets to the movie theatre or shows up on TV, that scene—if well-directed—should leave the viewer wanting the same thing.

  Master Scenes

  As discussed, the poker scene from The 40-Year-Old Virgin is a master scene. That’s a scene where main characters gather and discuss whatever is going on in the story. Master scenes are usually longer (say, four or more pages) and usually touch upon more than one plot. It’s like a big pearl with many smaller pearls inside it. A poker game, a family sitting around the dinner table, an office party, a rehearsal dinner … all good settings for a master scene.

  If you’ve seen Little Miss Sunshine, there are a number of well-written master scenes in that movie to use as examples. One in particular takes place in the first act. All the characters in the family are eating dinner. Various sub-plots are touched upon. One character recently attempted suicide, and another is failing in his career as a motivational speaker. We also learn that Olive, the young girl, has entered a beauty contest to be held some distance away. The question at the end of the scene—the take-away question—is, Can we get her there?

  The setting of a master scene is usually a forum—a place of discourse or contest where the dramatic goals of the characters are discussed or pursued and then either frustrated or satisfied (though, more commonly, frustrated), and finally a question is raised. That question leads us to the next scene.

  Writing the master scene is like writing a scene from a play—the action is primarily undertaken with words. Sit characters down and plant the camera on a tripod: we’re in for some talk. And while your screenplay may only have a few master scenes, they are often crucially important to the story.

  So you’d better get good at …

  Dialogue

  If you have taken a class in feature screenwriting, you have probably been told that a movie is “a story told in pictures.”

  That’s wrong. A silent movie is a story told in pictures.

  You remember silent movies, don’t you? You might have seen one in a museum once or watched one in film school. But you’re not going to write one, are you?

  You live in the twenty-first century, and, for you, a movie is actually a story told in pictures and sound.

  Sound comprises three elements in a movie: music, sound effects (also known as Foley), and dialogue. We won’t concern ourselves with movie music and sound effects. Leave that to the director and her crew.

  We screenwriters focus on dialogue—a crucial element of every movie and especially important in comedy.

  We’ve all heard dialogue that crackles and excites our ears. I’m going to lay out some strategies you can use to generate successful dialogue. And, for our purposes, successful means it pushes the story forward and makes the readers laugh their butts off.

  Four Strategies for Successful Comedy Dialogue

  Strategy 1: Write the way people actually talk, then shut them up fast.

  Young writers are often taught to eavesdrop on conversations to learn how people really talk so they can replicate it on paper. That’s wise. The problem is when they start downloading all they’ve learned onto the page … and don’t stop.

  When it comes to realistic dialogue, a pinch is all you need. If your character is from Alabama, throw in a few “y’alls” and you may well be done. If she’s from Queens, give her a few “youz guys.” But please don’t lengthen scenes with verbiage no matter how regionally or ethnically accurate it is. And as for all the ellipses … well … um … let’s just say … that, um … they tire the eyes.

  Strategy 2: Become your own best actor.

  When you are writing dialogue, speak it out loud. Play all roles. Just make sure you hear what it sounds like to speak the words you have written. This is a sure-fire way to detect and screen out overly written, unnecessarily elaborate language that has no place in your work. And then, of course, the next step is to sit down with actors and hear your entire script read aloud. Assuming you’re working with good actors, you’ll soon learn which words can be cut. In many cases, they’ll cut them for you by editing as they go.

  Strategy 3: No repetition.

  You only need to tell us that all-important revelation once. Then move on. For example, don’t do this:

  INT. GREG’S HOUSE OF BAD WRITING—DAY

  Bill and Wendy.

       BILL

  Wendy, I love you.

       WENDY

  Really?

       BILL

  Yes, really. I love you.

       WENDY

  Oh. I see.

       BILL

  Did I mention I love you?

       WENDY

  Yup. Got it.

       BILL

  And just FYI—

       WENDY

  I get it, OK! You love me.

       BILL

  Yes, I do. I love you.

  Finally, he moves to kiss her, but she has strangled herself out of sheer boredom.

  CUT TO:

  And if that doesn’t annoy the bejeezus out of you, wait until you read this frustrating miasma:

  INT. SAME PLACE—DAY

  Bill and Wendy again.

       BILL

  I’ve, uh …

       WENDY

  Yes?

       BILL

  Got something … um … I kinda, um … want to … you know … say …

       WENDY

  Come on, out with it.

       BILL

  Well, it’s just …

       WENDY

  I’m seriou
s, Bill. I know you’re a little on the shy side and the screenwriter is trying to build up to this moment and all, but this is really annoying the crap outta me. Say it!

       BILL

  I … uh …

       WENDY

  Oh, forget it.

  She gets up and leaves, annoyed.

  CUT TO:

  _________

  Just have characters come out with what they need to say.

  Years ago, I worked as a reader for an agent. I would read dozens of scripts in a weekend, and I was looking for any reason to stop reading and give a script a bad write-up. In fact, every time I was about to read a new script, I would flip to the last page to see how long it was. If it was less than one hundred pages, I was already in a good mood because I knew the writer respected my time.

  So respect everybody’s time and don’t tease scenes out that can easily be concluded with a line of dialogue or an action. Get to it and move on.

  Strategy 4: The Doctrine of Inadvertency.

  Funny characters are usually unaware of how funny they are. Serious for them is funny for us. And when they are in frantic motion, pursuing their goals, they are at their peak funniness—tripping over themselves to get what they need.

  Ask this question about every character in every scene: Has this character tried hard enough to get what he or she wants? I’m not just talking about the protagonist but every character. Leave no stone unturned in your search for comedy.

  I once worked with a director who, when editing, looked for every opportunity to add something funny. Actors were often brought into the editing room to record funny lines over scenes in which their backs were turned and they were walking away from the camera. Just another chance to throw in a joke, another quippy line.