comedy

Roll, roll! Roll in ze hay!

Maximum Z comedy, screenwriting, Some Like It Hot, writing, Young Frankenstein

Chances are you immediately knew what this meant. But just in case…

I read this earlier today, and it reminded me of a deal I made about ten years ago.

I had a co-worker at the time who thought Adam Sandler’s BILLY MADISON and HAPPY GILMORE were the funniest movies she’d ever seen.

“Whaaaaa?”  I have nothing against Adam Sandler.  I just don’t think he’s funny. “Haven’t you ever seen YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN or SOME LIKE IT HOT?”

“No. Are they funny?” OOF! The verbal equivalent of a kick to the balls.

After the impact of that question wore off, we made a deal: she’d watch my two and I’d watch hers.

Jump to the present. I’ve yet to uphold my end of the deal, and she left years ago, and I doubt she’s followed through.  Which is fine by me.

The above quote also reminded me I haven’t watched YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN or SOME LIKE IT HOT in years. The more I think about them, the more I realize how incredibly well-written each one is.  Comedy that’s still fresh and hilarious years later.  Even nicer, it’s smart-funny. Granted, YF can be a bit…bawdy at times, but that’s Mel Brooks for you.

What’s also so impressive is that the jokes are organic. They don’t feel forced. Each one fits the situation perfectly.

“Why would a guy want to marry a guy?” “Security!”

“Igor, will you help with the bags?” “Soitenly. You take the blonde, I’ll take the one in the turban.”

They just keep coming, one after another.  While a lot of dialogue today comes across as plain old snark, it’s the opposite here. And not just funny – double entendres, plays  on words,  etc., etc. Again – smart writing.

Count me among the writers out there who would love to be able write like this.  Believe me – it ain’t easy.

Could movies like those be made today? Hard to say.  If anything, the modern equivalent would be more like the writing on 30 ROCK or the still-missed ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT.

What not-recent comedy do you think still holds up, and why?

-Incidentally, this is blogpost #300. In honor of that, go enjoy a piece of pie. Tell ’em I sent you.

Is it funny?

Maximum Z comedy, screenwriting

A friend read my Chinese restaurant comedy last week. He said he really enjoyed it, adding he “hadn’t laughed that much in a long time.” I’m glad he feels that way. Every comedy writer hopes somebody thinks their work is funny, but his comments got me thinking.  I’ve read lots of comedies, but they usually don’t make me laugh.

This has always been a problem for me.  Don’t know why. The last thing I remember laughing out loud while reading was a Blackadder script.

A lot of times I’ll hear about a script making the rounds that’s supposed to be hilarious.  I’ll read it and wonder “what’s the big deal?”  I guess it takes a certain eye to process and enjoy comedy in written form, but I don’t seem to have it.  More power to those who do.

It’s a lot easier for me to enjoy and appreciate a good joke in it’s intended form, such as a movie or tv show. It also helps to not be the only one watching.  A comedy with an audience of one is never as funny.

It’s even easier to laugh at something audio-based, like a podcast.  Many’s the time I’ve had to stop running because I was laughing so hard at something I just heard.  Would I have this kind of reaction if I had read the bit, rather than heard it?  Hard to say.

My friend said he’d pass the script on to some his industry pals.  Can’t help but wonder if they’ll think it’s funny.

Done!

Maximum Z comedy, Mike Myers, Movie of the Moment, outlines, screenwriting, short films, writing gigs
how it feels, which is good

This post was originally going to be called “Sad Face” because I’d been struggling to get the outline for the short done before tonight, and didn’t think I was going to make it.

My original idea wasn’t panning out. The one after that was becoming too complicated.  The more I tried to figure things out, the deeper my self-dug metaphoric hole of frustration was becoming.  It got to the point that I was having dreams about it, and that’s just scary.

Would I have to accept the fact that I wasn’t going to make it?  Well, maybe.  But I wasn’t going down without a fight.  I just needed that one spark of creativity to get me going again.

And that spark came to me in the shower, of all places.  I already had a lot of the story elements in place.  What if I tried a different approach in tying them all together?  But how?  How about if the question of what happened is an absolute unknown?  That’s it!  Brilliant!

Oh, wait. That sounds like THE HANGOVER. Okay. Don’t want to seem like I’m completely ripping that off.  Maybe a variation on that.

And I was off.  Two and a half hours of writing, editing, researching and double-checking later (occasionally saving to prevent heartbreak if it accidentally got erased), I had the outline for what I think is a pretty good story.  It has now been happily sent to the director.  I hope he likes it.

-Movie of the Moment. THE LOVE GURU (2008) aka The Movie That Almost Destroyed Mike Myers’ Career.  Bad doesn’t even begin to describe it.  Non-stop, rapid-fire jokes that aren’t funny.  Despite a running time of 1 hour, 27 minutes, we zipped through it in about 45, and it still seemed too long.

This seemed like another case of a megastar project where nobody wanted to say ‘no’. How else to explain a Morgan Freeman vocal cameo, or Sir Ben Kingsley  making an ass of himself?

Only high points: Stephen Colbert and Jim Gaffigan as hockey announcers.  Sorry to say their scenes were the funniest parts.

If you value your time and sense of humor, DO NOT SEE THIS MOVIE!  And if this wasn’t proof that Myers has gone to the ‘throw every joke at the wall and see if anything sticks’ well more than once too often, I’d forgotten that there’s another Austin Powers movie in development.

I’ll do my best to rectify this situation with my next scheduled Netflix delivery: SUPER 8.

More days like this, please

Maximum Z comedy, found footage, Movie of the Moment, outlines, screenwriting, story, Willy Wonka
We all deserve one

In terms of writing, Monday was fantastic.  I got to the midpoint of my revamped LUCY outline, and I really like how things are developing.  It has a genuine pulp-y feel, which is kind of what I was going for.

The rest of Act Two still looms, so how that works out is still being developed.  The previous draft has a lot of stuff I can’t use anymore, so getting through it will be a bit of a slog.

Didn’t get to work on DREAMSHIP pages, but the editing of the first act continues. Hoping to get back into that sometime next week.  Over the weekend I realized it’s been about a year since I got my Script Quack notes. That really was the kick in the pants I needed to get started on this rewrite.  Definitely worth it.  Click on their link over there on the right to check ’em out.

-You’ve probably noticed the growing trend of the ‘found footage’ genre.  THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, CLOVERFIELD, and the forthcoming CHRONICLE.  And the spec market seems to be growing with more and more unique takes on it.

I think I’ve stumbled onto a potentially great idea for one.  And even better, it fits perfectly with a story idea I came up with years ago.  I don’t want to divulge any details just yet, but I’ve got the logline down on a long-standing list of story ideas, with the intent of coming back to it later.  What’s nice is that I can keep track of the market and see how any new scripts compare with mine.  Knowing me, I probably won’t get to this until sometime next year, but it’s definitely an idea worth holding on to.

-Movie of the Moment: BRIDESMAIDS (2011). It must be me.  I didn’t think this was the comedic work of genius I was led to believe it was.  There were some funny moments in the second half, but overall I wasn’t impressed.  Some of my co-workers thought it was hilarious, so maybe I would have enjoyed it more in the theatre, rather than at home.  But this isn’t something I would have paid to see.

I bet as soon as this was a hit, they announced plans for a sequel.  No doubt this time it’s Annie who’s getting married.  Such originality!  Puh-leeze. Spare me.

-On a more positive note, we watched WILLY WONKA AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY (1971) because V had caught the second half on TV and wanted to see it from the beginning.  She loved it.  One of those films that holds up after numerous viewings.  We’ll probably see the Tim Burton version this weekend.  While Gene Wilder definitely makes for a more interesting Wonka, I like the Danny Elfman songs in the Burton version a little more.

If we’re really lucky, we may even very slyly ‘convince’ V to read the original book for school.  That would be quite a coup for us.  And even better, she’d probably like it.

Our campouts were never like this

Maximum Z analysis, Black List, Boy Scouts vs Zombies, characters, comedy, horror, movies, screenwriting, story, zombies

Finally got to read BOY SCOUTS VS ZOMBIES, a horror comedy that ranked on the Black List.

The concept: A troop of Boy Scouts on their weekend camping trip must protect an island town after a zombie outbreak and save the local girl scout troop.

Personally, I’m getting a little tired of the whole zombie thing (although ZOMBIELAND was fun), this sounded interesting.  Seeing as how I was a Boy Scout (big surprise, right?), I wanted to see what the writers, Carrie Evans and Emi Mochizuko, would do with it.

First and foremost: A really fast read.  I zipped through this thing in about 90 minutes.  The whole thing really moves along.

I was also surprised how just about all the characters veer into stereotypes. The somewhat bland main character who’s too shy to tell the girl he likes her, the too-cool friend, the fat slob other friend, the mama’s boy, the overenthusiastic scoutleader, and so on.

It was a little difficult keeping track of all the characters, especially since the first half really focuses on the boys, then really adding the girls into the mix around halfway.  It was also pretty easy to tell which characters were going to be the token redshirts.

Once it settled into ‘will they survive or won’t they?’ mode, I was trying to figure out which characters would be the surprise death.  Surprisingly, that didn’t happen.

And the subplot about the top-secret lab where the whole thing starts seems to disappear after they decide to send out the commandos to neutralize the situation.  Some kind of follow-up would have been nice.

I’d also like to add that technically, the zombies here are the “infected with a virus that simulates zombie-like characteristics” type rather than the truly living dead.  This seems to be the go-to reasoning behind a lot of recent zombie stories.  I guess that’s easier than figuring out how to really raise the dead.  George Romero used radiation, so why not something similar?  But I digress.

Some of the jokes fell a little flat, but there were a handful that made me laugh out loud.  I especially liked the line after one girl turns zombie and tries to eat her friends, one says “Jenny! No! You’re a vegan!”  I also liked how even as everything around them is going to hell, the scouts try to take care of things via the Scout Handbook.  Again, I’m biased.  I don’t know if the guys in my troop would have been able to keep their heads like this.

I wasn’t crazy about when the wide margins would say something about the characters that should really come across in their actions and dialogue (“Matt’s dad has great expectations for his son, and they don’t involve fat slackers and comic books.”)  I always thought this sort of thing was frowned upon, but these two writers were in Disney’s Writing Program, so maybe there are exceptions.

I also wasn’t sure about the idea that a zombie can do the same things they did when they were alive, like a rock climber who turns into a zombie remembers how to climb a cliff.  It seems a little weak.

I really think with a little tweaking here and there, this thing could be fantastic.  It’s already been picked up for production, so it’ll be interesting to see what they do with it.

Would I pay to see it in the theatre?  Probably not.  But I’d definitely put it in the Netflix queue.

This is my last post for 2010, and since I haven’t seen that many movies in the theatres this year, I don’t have a list of my top 10 picks.  I’m just happy to be able to watch so many good flicks, and still plan on my own stuff being part of that someday.

Have a great 2011, and feel free to drop a note once in a while.

p.s.  Almost forgot.  If you’d like to take a look at any of these scripts, let me know and I’ll forward it to you.