Bring the Funny

by Greg DePaul

  Whenever someone onscreen would throw an object off-screen—a rock, baseball, a tin can—this director would insert the sound of a cat screaming as if it had been hit with what was tossed away. Hey, he figured, why not? It makes people laugh.

  I’m not saying you should add random animal screams to a movie, especially if it’s a serious flick along the lines of, say, American Sniper or Schindler’s List. But I am telling you that my friend didn’t get to be a big-time comedy director without searching for every last opportunity to make the audience laugh.

  You should do the same. Within reason, of course, and without ever selling your characters out for a joke.

  Because every laugh matters.

  The Standard

  What do you do when you’ve tried your damnedest to make every scene unique and remarkable, and yet you still look at it and say, “That’s such a typical meet-cute,” or “Holy crap! I just wrote the usual hero-saves-the-girl scene.”

  What if you write the scene where the depressed ex-boyfriend walks alone in the rain until he suddenly realizes he made a huge mistake for leaving the love of his life and then runs to find her?

  In other words, what do you do when you realize you’ve written the standard scene?

  You embrace it.

  After all, the audience has its expectations. People don’t go to romantic comedies to see the lovers fall off a cliff and die. They know that when they’re watching a Fish Outta Water story the fish will eventually learn to thrive on land. They know the underdog must win. That’s why they watch movies—to get the same darn thing every time, over and over …

  They just want it a little different each time; that’s all. They want to be pleasantly surprised but never shocked or left wondering why they came.

  So when you realize you’ve written the standard scene for a particular type of story, rest assured. You’re not far off. You just need to sprinkle some magic screenwriter dust on it and season to taste. You don’t need to throw it all out and reinvent the wheel.

  And don’t worry that studio readers and producers’ assistants will stop your script at the gates for not being truly unique. Far from it. Their job is to direct scripts to their bosses that give the people what they want—just in some novel, entertaining manner.

  Don’t sweat the fact that screenwriting requires you to exploit long-established formulae by simply filling them with your unique content. Some of your scenes will always be reminiscent of past movies. When some brilliant screenwriter writes a script that harkens back to nothing whatsoever and shines with true originality on every page, you give me a call.

  But, until then, I encourage you to steal when necessary and write without guilt.

  The Four Most Important Scenes

  Good screenwriting is decisive writing.

  Sure, filmmaking is collaborative, but, unless you are writing with a partner, screenwriting generally is not. We all know the director can shoot your movie any way he or she wants and stars can say what they want when the cameras start recording, but, if you are writing a script to sell, you must write with authority.

  In particular, there are three places in every comedy screenplay where no ambiguity can be tolerated: the ends of Acts 1, 2, and 3. If we’re talking about a one-hundred-page script, those points are around pages 25, 75, and 100.

  Act breaks should be clearly defined. They should read as if a curtain is coming down hard—Whomp!—onto the stage, signaling to us that now things are going to change. Readers read for that. Audiences look for that. You need to write that.

  Go look at the screenplays for some of the most successful recent comedies and look at the act breaks.

  1. This Is the End: Act 1 ends when a huge cataclysm rains fire and destruction down on the world, killing just about everybody except, of course, the lead characters. Act 2 ends when a fire kills one of the lead characters and forces the rest to leave the house they’ve been hiding in throughout the second act. Act 3 ends with the leading characters being sucked up to heaven.

  2. Parental Guidance: Act 1 ends when the parents drive away, leaving their children with the kids’ grandparents. Act 2 ends when the parents return to find their family in total disarray. Act 3 ends with the parents’ realization that their kids’ grandparents actually did the children good.

  3. We’re the Millers: Act 1 ends when the “family” goes to Mexico to smuggle drugs. Act 2 ends when David, the “father,” decides he’s had enough of the family and drives off on his own, abandoning them. Act 3 ends with the family back together and living as a real family in the witness protection program.

  Ya see? Definite act breaks. Very definite.

  Notice how often act breaks involve someone showing up somewhere or leaving for a long time. Entrances and exits are another way to bring that curtain down—Whomp!—onto the stage. Act breaks are almost never subtle.

  Whether it’s because they’ve been taught to think this way or because of some inner psychological need, the audience wants to know when they’ve entered the next stage of the three-act structure. It’s up to you to tell them where in the story they stand.

  Oh, and I almost forgot—there’s one more place where you must be very clear that a change in the story has occurred: the inciting incident. I didn’t include it in the previous discussion because it’s not an act break, but it’s important, so …

  The inciting incident is when we find out what the movie is about. We almost always meet the protagonist in the first handful of pages. That’s where we see her in default mode; we see how she is living her life before the story starts. Then, suddenly, something happens that lets us know that this day of her life will not be like any previous day. It usually comes between pages 5 and 10. See Syd Field’s book Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting if you are unclear on this.

  And just as with act breaks, inciting incidents must be strong and clear. To use the same movies we just discussed:

  1. This Is the End: The inciting incident occurs when two of the lead characters leave a party to get some food and suddenly witness the beginning of the end of the world.

  2. Parental Guidance: The inciting incident occurs when the parents first bring up the idea of having the kids’ grandparents watch the kids.

  3. We’re the Millers: The inciting incident occurs when Mike, a powerful drug dealer, tells David to smuggle drugs.

  In all of these cases, the inciting incident tells us what kind of movie we’re dealing with and what to expect. The train we want to ride has arrived.

  Subtext

  And now we embark upon a discussion that is better left between screenwriters.

  Unlike the three-act structure and well-known writing strategies like Fish Outta Water, subtext is a subject that producers and executives usually have little interest in. Perhaps that’s because the movie industry’s biggest workhorses—the engines that pull the freight—are now comic book movies. And comic book movies are not known for their subtext.

  But comedies still have subtext. Especially romantic comedies. That’s because subtext exists whenever characters must conceal their intentions. When characters’ intentions are hidden or masked, yet they take dramatic action to achieve their goals, subtext blossoms.

  Subtext rewards the intelligent viewer who enjoys the challenge of discerning the true intentions of characters in a dramatic story.

  Robert McKee gives a line-by-line understanding of subtext in his book Story, and it’s still worth reading today. The purpose of this book is to help you bring the funny—hence the title—so I won’t chart the subtext in an existing film. Instead, I will assume you’ve read McKee and give you a primer in how to create subtext in every scene of a comedy screenplay.

  1. Load the Situation

  There is a tendency to write scenes in which one character—usually the protagonist—has an agenda and the other characters do not. Don’t fall into the trap. Give everybody an agenda and let the sparks fly. You will have more subtext because you will have
more characters trying to accomplish their goals in the presence of other characters from whom they wish to conceal those agendas. In other words—give everybody something to do.

  2. Impose a Gag Order

  Find strong reasons why your characters cannot just tell everyone their agendas—reasons beyond mere civility. In The 40-Year-Old Virgin we learn in the first ten pages that Andy is deeply embarrassed about being a virgin and doesn’t want anyone to know about it. Then, when he dates Trish—the woman we want him to be with—he must fight to keep his virginity a secret while trying to romance her. That’s subtext—what the actor plays underneath the script.

  3. Try This Million-Dollar Subtext Exercise

  I once read a script that sold for one million dollars. The script was a thriller and was made into a not-very-good movie, but that doesn’t matter. It was a fantastic script. The screenwriter wrote this on the first page:

  Dialogue in parentheses is not spoken.

  Throughout the script, the writer put parentheses around thoughts his characters were thinking but did not express. It looked a little like this:

       MAN

  (I hate you.) How’s it going?

       WIFE

  (I hate you, too.) Fine.

       MAN

  (Look, even though I still want to kill you for sleeping with my brother) I bought these flowers for you.

       WIFE

  Oh how nice (that you got me week-old grocery store flowers).

       MAN

  Well, I (feel so uncomfortable that) have to go now.

       WIFE

  Yes, maybe we’ll talk later. (Go jump in a lake. A lake of flaming shit.)

  And so on throughout the entire script. It made for a lively read and infused the dialogue with deeper meanings. Good for him.

  I’ve never used that trick on an actual script that I’ve tried to sell, but I have used it to help me write. When I’m writing new pages, I put the unspoken verbiage in parentheses in the first draft to see how it will read. Then, when I’m editing later drafts of the script, I cut those parentheticals out.

  Training wheels. That’s what they are. But they work. So I offer them to you. If your results are half as good as mine, you’ll be quite pleased that you can now create some serious subtext.

  Set Pieces

  A set piece is a scene, or sequence of scenes, that occurs in one location and derives the most comedy bang for the buck from that location. Having a character walk through the kitchen of a busy restaurant, trip and fall for one laugh, and then leave the kitchen—that’s not a set piece. That’s a missed opportunity.

  In a comedy, that character should trip all over the place, knocking people and cutlery everywhere. Plates should break, knives should be flying, and the whole place should be on fire when he walks out. That’s a set piece.

  Traditionally, there was a production-necessary efficiency to set pieces. After all, if the script calls for a gladiatorial arena to be built and thousands of extras to be hired, it’s just not cost-effective to film a single short scene on that set that supports only a single joke. If you commit the resources to setting a big scene, you had better get your money’s worth (in laughs) out of it.

  Steve Martin is the master of the set piece. Did you see The Pink Panther? Martin goes into a hotel bathroom to get a Viagra pill and somehow manages, bumbling around, to start a fire and a flood, which causes him to crash through the floor and land in the lobby below.

  Most comedy screenplays have second acts that are buoyed by set pieces lasting three to six pages, thus taking up three to six minutes of screen time. I can give a zillion examples of great set pieces you’d remember from recent comedy movies, but here are eight:

  The police taser sequence from Meet the Fockers.

  The hair removal sequence from The 40-Year-Old Virgin.

  The drunken barroom sequence from The Heat.

  The Today Show sequence from Get Him to the Greek.

  The gang fight between rival news crews in Anchorman.

  The touch football game in Wedding Crashers.

  The tailgate party in Silver Linings Playbook.

  The kids’ baseball game in Parental Guidance.

  Ideally, a good comedy screenplay should have at least six set pieces, but there are no established guidelines, no official ordinances governing their use. However, more is generally better. These are the scenes and sequences that producers are looking for when they read your script. This is the stuff that leads to funny trailer moments and big box-office openings. The audience anticipates the humor coming in jabs until it escalates into roundhouse punches and finally that big knockout blow that leaves us roaring with laughter.

  I could go on and on, but you’ve got scripts to write. Funny scripts that use great set pieces to earn big laughs.

  Pop Quiz!

  1. Every scene in your comedy screenplay should have: A) A setting, a conflict, and a question.

  B) A guy getting kicked in the privates by a little kid.

  C) A scene where the protagonist’s geek sidekick hacks into the bad guy’s computer system.

  D) Whoa. You’re still reading? I suggest you consider Answer A. And B, too. It never hurts to have a kid kick some guy in the balls.

  2. The important thing about a master scene is that: A) It be written masterfully.

  B) It read like a stage play incongruously jammed into your movie script. Sorta like a scene from Our Town stuck in the middle of Transformers.

  C) It would require subtext to write, and I don’t know what that is.

  D) There are times—even in a twenty-first-century comedy—when we need to see all the main characters sit down, break bread, and just talk. And you need to practice writing those scenes so they kick ass.

  3. A “story told in pictures” is: A) At best, an incomplete way to describe a movie.

  B) Something that annoys the crap outta me every time I hear it.

  C) Here’s the deal—comedies need dialogue. Great dialogue. And you’re not going to abandon your responsibility to write it by telling yourself that a movie is just a story told in pictures. So get to work. And I say that with love.

  D) All of the above.

  4. The way to write set pieces is to: A) Write a boring, old drama scene, then toss in a joke or two.

  B) Set up a great comic situation in one location, squeeze every drop of funny out of it, and leave it in a shambles when you’re done.

  C) Yup, it was B.

  D) B!

  Act 3

  You vs. The World

  8

  The Biz

  You may wonder why so many chapters in this book exhort you to work harder, commit yourself to comedy screenwriting, and, well, enjoy life less.

  If you’re in the one tenth of one percent of all aspiring screenwriters who just happen to be closely related to someone who’s a big player in the entertainment industry, then—for Pete’s sake—put this book down and go schmooze that person now. Does he need a backrub? Give him a backrub. Does she like truffles? Buy yourself one of those truffle-sniffing pigs they use in Italy to find truffles and start searching.

  Oh, and remember—you love his work. You always love his work. I’m talking about your close relative, the big player, not the pig.

  But if you’re one of the ninety-nine and nine-tenths percent who don’t have that advantage, keep reading this book. And when you’re done, start again. You still won’t be on an even footing, career-wise, with the person who’s related to the big player, but at least your comedy screenwriting will improve. Plus you don’t have to buy the pig.

  The industry is that competitive.

  Successful screenwriters balance two worlds—the inner world of the writer, and the external world of Hollywood. Art and money. Yin and yang. Some like to pretend they don’t care about money at all. They will tell you that, when they are writing, they have no other concerns.
Maybe. But sooner or later they’ll have to put on their business hat, make calls, lunch with the right people, and sell themselves.

  But the real winners, the ones who kick ass, make lots of money, and succeed over and over again—they meld the two worlds. For them, there is only one world—that of the Hollywood screenwriter. And, in that world, art and money are not opposites; they are mutually complementary. Those writers don’t hold their noses while dining with agents and pitching to studio executives. They breathe it all in. They love the combination of the two environments.

  They don’t see writing and power as contradictory—they see writing as power.

  Those writers—assuming they’re also very talented and hard-working—rise to the top. They become show runners in TV and have multiple movie projects in development at the same time. Hollywood is their oyster. They never complain about how it’s too sunny in California or how nobody on the West Coast has read the right books … because they never liked New York to begin with. They live for this. There is no duality. Yin is yang.

  I’ve known more than a handful of those screenwriters, and I admire them. Since I am also a playwright, there is still a part of my soul that cannot totally enjoy Hollywood. And that holds me back.

  But I advise you, the aspiring comedy screenwriter, to make peace with all that is Hollywood and travel farther into this industry than I have ever gone. I will wave to you as your ship leaves and pray that your star never fades. And I will call you up the next time I’m in Beverly Hills, and we’ll do lunch.

  Until that time, however, your career demands that you learn more about …