Dying Is Easy. Comedy Is Hard.

I have been trying to move in circles having to do with screenwriting and story telling, and picked up on a web site that has quite a few nice articles on scriptwriting topics, and is embedded in cute colors.  All this under the imposing masthead: Script Gods Must Die.

I was watching a documentary on Monty Python and John Cleese mentioned that he subscribed to the Henri Bergson theory of laughter. I had never heard of it, but John Cleese’s endorsement was more than enough for me.

I feel like a fool growing to my ripe old age and not having heard of it, but I could fill an encyclopedia with my regrets and mistakes. In fact, that’s what I’m doing on my personal blog. In the meantime, I’m just going to keep learning and trying to get better at all this.

The article explains it all quite well, and I mostly just wanted to add a link to it so that I can refer back. I guess I subscribe to the theory that a blog is an extended form of associative memory, and Google provides the way to recall the thought.

Dramatica is just begging to be prefixed with “sch”, but that word is the name of a theory of story, as in story telling, that I have studied. It is a great system for the writer to use as a framework of characters and story arcs, and provides for multiple plots and sub plots as the various characters work their way through the story timeline.

The unique perspective of Dramatica is to consider the story to be a mind that must work out a problem, and all the various characters are parts of that mind, and the way they interact in solving that problem is the story telling. Here is a link to their site, which is really the place to go for a better explanation.

It has helped me write several stories, and they all are complete in terms of working through the problem, but one thing it didn’t help with is creating an interesting story filled with drama. For that, I have turned to Chris Soth’s Mini-Movies, and I think you would do well to learn from him as well.

Celtx, my favorite screenwriting software, is now available in the iPhone store, which means it’ll work just fine on an iPad. I had that moment of whimsical disappointment and jealousy I get all too often, thinking it would be such fun to work on a screenplay with an iPad. Of course it would, but I don’t even own an iPod Touch, let alone an iPhone, and, heavens forbid, an iPad. I would enjoy each, but it just hasn’t worked out that way.

But if you have any of those three, Celtx can now go anywhere you go.

I get that same feeling of disappointed jealousy whenever a new movie comes out that I really enjoy–I regret not having created that movie myself. That’s a very immature viewpoint, but at least I don’t wallow in it. I do try to take inspiration from the movie, and work on my own ideas a little more seriously. I’m not sure having an iPad would actually make me a better, or more productive writer. But, like dating twins, I’d like to try it some weekend.

I feel compelled to announce to the world that I really enjoyed “The A-Team”. It was a fast-paced romp with lots of stuff blowing up. The wise cracks were delivered with sincerity, and were actually funny. Maybe you have to be in the mood for those wise cracks to seem funny, but what I’m saying is that it worked for me.

The only part I didn’t love was the manufactured “change” in Mr. T’s character. He converts to Islam, avows non-violence, and then must change is mind at the end to save the day.  I still liked it; I appreciated the effort. Personally, I would haven’t have asked his character to struggle that much. I would have been a little campy with the whole idea of such character changes, and had him accidentally committing acts of violence once he had taken the vow, and trying to rationalize it the way I rationalize not going to church on Sunday. The fact is, I don’t really like going to church, and I’m silly for trying to act otherwise. So it is with Mr. T, who exudes violence whether he is on the little screen or big screen.

Holy crap, I just realized I’m referring to Mr. T as if that was the character’s name in the story. It’s B.A. Baracus, and this reveals the fact that I never watched the show. I don’t feel a fraud in this; at the time, I thought it was a dumb show, and I was probably correct. It was, in truth, a dumb movie, but it was fun and worth the money.

When it is replayed on the little screen, I will watch this A-Team movie again. I may not make plans around it, but the various bits and pieces were highly entertaining, and I will sit and watch.

I do the bulk of my writing using Celtx. I call it screenwriting software, but it is intended for much more than that. I just have only so many hours in a day, and can’t work on comic books, novels, plays, and radio scripts all at once.  I use it for screenplays.

Celtx does a fine job producing a script that is ready to be shared with the world.  The formatting is accurate and correct. It does all this in a fast and convenient manner. Considering it is free to download, I love it.

When creating a script, the software cleverly recognizes that hitting ENTER or the TAB key will toggle through different line styles for scene heading, action, character, or dialogue. This makes for fast and efficient typing.

The only complaint I have is that there are no keyboard shortcuts for choosing the style of a given line. This comes into play when I import a block of text and want to convert it to a script. I often have to revert to using the mouse to choose a style which gets a little clumsy. But I’m being picky.

To format a script, you do have to be connected to the internet because, apparently, the software retrieves formatting information from a secret consortium’s server bank. Or something like that. But it works, and on those rare occasions I don’t have a connection, I do something else until I am back on the grid. It’s a nit, and I just keep moving along.

Celtx also has options for sharing scripts using version control software (CVS) and is tightly integrated with the server system to pull it off, and adds nice window dressing and multi-user capability for a nominal fee. If you are collaborating, or just want to save your ass when your laptop fails you, Celtx Studios is the answer.

I have been using it for two years now, and I have used it on Windows machines and my Ubuntu laptop. I really like it, and I am willing to risk sounding like a fantard to let others know. So there.

Andrew Kersey runs Kersey Management, a literary management agency. Andrew was a recent guest on Chris Soth’s “Hollywood By Phone,” which interviews working Hollywood professionals. During the interview, he and Chris discussed how he looks for talent, what genres he prefers, and how one should approach their writing career; this article relates the highlights from that conversation.

Andrew pointed out that it is challenging to make a sale in the spec script market, and that large payouts for spec scripts are rare. When a sale is made, the project can be derailed at any point because of the boom or bust mentality of Hollywood. The approach, therefore, should be to build a portfolio of great writing samples to use as calling cards, develop connections with Hollywood professionals who are a good fit with you for creative development, and work with a manager to develop a sustainable game plan.

As a manager, Andrew’s approach is to help writers hone their pitching skills while developing a sense of the high concepts that will lead to sales. Hollywood is absolutely trend driven, but rather than chasing the zeitgeist, the emerging writer should develop their voice and audience one connection at a time. When creating those great calling cards, hedge your bets by writing scripts that are PG and approach the four-quadrants (appeals to male and female, young and old).

Don’t be discouraged when a script is not picked for a deal, or when it is picked but the deal falters later on. Studios are being asked to spend tens of millions of dollars to develop a movie, and are reluctant to consider a script unless they are convinced it is worthy of such large sums. Every marketable script is an opportunity to develop your career and expand the network of creative connections.

The challenge for writers is to find the networking opportunities that will lead to development opportunities. It’s important to have representation in Los Angeles or New York that is developing connections, mentioning your work, and arranging those initial opportunities. The calling cards can lead to assignments if the pitch skills are there and the creative chemistry is working.

Contests and coverage services serve as an access point for networking opportunities. Resources such as Creative Screenwriting, Fade In, Script Magazine and Script Pipeline provide quality readers that can provide valuable breakdowns of a script to improve it. Andrew often reads for them and, if the voice and craftsmanship is apparent, considers every script as a possible client or a reference to an agent. Andrew prefers to deal with comedy, action-thrillers, and horror.

Andrew looks for succinct and colorful queries: a short introduction and no more than a two-sentence log line. He hopes to be able to envision the finished movie when he hears the log line, and suggests the writer have the movie poster in mind when crafting it.

You can listen to Andrew’s Hollywood By Phone interview at: http://bit.ly/d3GYe2 .

About HollywoodbyPhone.com: Million Dollar Screenwriter Chris Soth, of www.YourScreenplayMentor.com, interviews producers, development executives, agents, managers, attorneys, writers and directors. Live calls are free when you sign up at http://bit.ly/4BH9pf.

I went to see “MacGruber”, the recent movie that spoofs the 80s icon TV show “MacGyver”, and hated it.  It was deeply flawed.  It was almost to the point of my wanting to gouge my eyes out, but not quite that bad.  I did walk out because I didn’t give a rat’s ass how it ended.  I have never done that before (by the way, gouging my eyes out is a one-time-only act, and I haven’t done that either).

“MacGruber”, if you’re not familiar, is based on the Saturday Night Live skit of the same name.  In those three minute segments, the concept is very funny.  The versions I’ve seen have MacGruber working on a MacGyver-ish solution to his pesky situation, and he keeps getting interrupted or distracted from his task and things don’t work out so well.  It’s cute and funny.  The one with Betty White playing his nana was very funny because it brought private, embarrassing details into it which are always funny, but then they had a relationship and it got creepy.  I should have taken heed.

The biggest challenge is that MacGruber is not sympathetic.  He is an egomaniacal jerk who kills his own men.  The only other joke built into that sequence was a homophobic gag that was okay, but if the only reason you’re going to show two men kissing is to make fun of them for being gay, then I’d rather you didn’t bother showing them.  We don’t make fun of blacks because they are black, or Jews because they are Jews, and the same goes for gays and lesbians.  The exception to that rule is that it is now okay to make fun of bankers just because they are bankers, whether they made obscene profits selling bizarre financial instruments, or lost billions buying bizarre financial instruments.

MacGruber, it turns out, is also a little crazy, and also stole his friend’s girlfriend, turning his friend evil, and is simply not very good at being a soldier.  I’m not sure what his appeal is.  It was just a character I care nothing about.

On top of all that, they made prominent sex scenes that were not funny, just sad.  Sad and unfunny sex I know, and that’s what I saw on the screen.  I want to see people having fun when I watch sex in a movie.  If I want to see bad sex, I look in the mirror.

I am saddest of all because it was such a poor use of the SNL brand.  They can be so very funny.  MacGruber, however, was not.

I am working up ideas for a new script, and I am going for “high concept.” I’m finding it very difficult. Most of my ideas thus far have not been high concept. I have heard various versions of what high concept means, but the one I heard today may stick.

High concept means:

1. Great Title
2. Fascinating Subject
3. A Strong Hook
4. Broad Appeal
5. Described in a single sentence.

My approach to a great title is something that is catchy, clever, and intriguing.  It must suggest something new and yet be familiar at the same time.  I look for puns, but maybe that’s part of my problem.

A fascinating subject might be the toughest challenge.  The subject material has to get you through 15,000 words of dramatic action.  It must be something people want to experience.  It must be familiar enough to be recognized, but not so familiar that the audience knows all about the topic.

A strong hook means piquing the interest of the audience early in the drama so that they are engrossed throughout, and perhaps long after so that they tell their friends.  It also means surprising them beforehand so that they are compelled to pay money to watch the story unfold.

Broad appeal means that you have the greatest potential for paying customers.  As the author, you may care more about the story than about the number of tickets sold, but if you can’t sell tickets, you won’t be in the business.  Harsh and irrefutable.

To describe all that in a single sentence is the Zen riddle of a lifetime.  It turns generating ideas about Hollywood style genre movies into an art with demands similar to Haiku–limiting the number of words available means that each one must count and do double duty if possible.

I haven’t found an easy way to do this.  I’m grinding them out, and hoping for the best.

Steve Kaplan is one of Hollywood’s most respected experts on comedy, and he recently had a conversation with Chris Soth on “Hollywood By Phone.” Steve Kaplan has a rich history in entertainment, and has worked with major studios, taught at universities, and consulted with a long list of successful comedians, writers, actors, and producers. (See his bio at: www.kaplancomedy.com/bio.html). He hosts a two-day intensive workshop on comedy where his knowledge and experience have been boiled down to their essence. During the conversation, he gave an in-depth overview of that workshop.

What’s funny is whatever makes you laugh and, thanks to human nature, that can be pretty much anything. But comedy was best described by John Cleese as watching a person watch someone else being silly. It is often referred to as the straight-man and the funny-man routine, and Steve has a number of tools that he teaches to make that situation get to the funny bits.

Comedians are people who see the world without criticism or condemnation. The world can be a very silly place, and being human can be very messy. We trip while we walk, we drop things we mean to carry, and we spill sticky things on ourselves when it is least convenient. We have hair that grows where it wants to grow in spite of our aspirations of beauty. Comedy helps us live with who we are, and being a comedian means to confess to being human in front of an audience.

Steve explained how, given the above, there are two basic types of comedians: observers and silly people. Observers describe how a silly person interacts with the world, and silly people act out on stage their interactions with the world. For the silly act to work on stage, the comedian must find a way to remind the audience that they are the observer.

Moving into comedic stories, Steve explained that the basis of comedy is to have a regular guy, a “moke”, who struggles against insurmountable odds without the tools or knowledge to succeed and yet never quits. The comedic character must don blinders so as to help him ignore the signals from the real world that things are not going well, signals that would tell a reasonable person to stop what they are doing. The comedic character, marching forth on their quest, needs help from other characters to help reveal the funny bits in their situation, and there are a number of tools that can be applied in those scenes.

The comedic character often needs a foil or sidekick so that their own “straight line” of action can be contrasted with a “wavy line” of reasonableness. This is the observer and the silly person at play. The comedic character must always take positive actions; i.e., they must believe that everything they attempt will assist them in their quest. They must also employ active emotions–they must be plain in what they are feeling, and they must act on those feelings, even if they themselves don’t understand those feelings.

Beneath the surface relationships in a comedic situation is a metaphorical relationship, and employing that metaphor often helps bring out the funny bits. When Jerry Seinfeld tells a joke about socks, the socks are not inherently funny; but the sock as a metaphor for our own human desires for freedom, excitement, and adventure is funny–or maybe you just had to be there.

During Kaplan’s Comedy Intensive, Steve breaks down scenes from movies–those that work and those that don’t– and together with the class he discusses ways in which the tools might have helped the funny bits work in the situation. What he generally believes to be wrong in most romantic comedies is that they portray beautiful people doing foolish things which have little hope of helping their situation. The gags are not designed in any way to help them on their quest, they are just slipping on a banana peel, and you may or may not find that funny. They lack the credibility of “the moke”, and so we may chuckle at the gag, but we don’t laugh at the situation, nor do we care if they succeed.

One way to build that credibility in our comedic characters is to employ an interesting premise, as in Groundhog Day and Big. The best comedic premises are absurd and silly lies that help tell the truth: being condemned to repeat a single day over and over helped Bill Murray’s character explore and correct the very many flaws in his personality, and being thrust into adulthood with only the mind of an adolescent helped Tom Hanks’s character learn how boring and painful life can be, and how necessary it is to learn those lessons at a prescribed pace.

Listening to Steve and Chris on “Hollywood By Phone” was like watching “This Old House” on PBS when two master craftsmen explain their trade: it reveals what is possible, if only you could master those tools. You can listen to the interview at: http://bit.ly/bl8bm5

About HollywoodbyPhone.com: Million Dollar Screenwriter Chris Soth, of www.YourScreenplayMentor.com, interviews producers, development executives, agents, managers, attorneys, writers and directors. Live calls are free when you sign up at http://bit.ly/4BH9pf.

About the author: Mickey Hadick is a novelist, screenwriter, and blogger whose humorous projects can be seen at www.mickeyhadick.com.