Laughing Out Loud Page 21
ASSIGNMENT:
I. Pen pages 41-50.
2. Check out a few websites on comedy (appendix 2) to see if there are any of interest to you.
Week 9: Reviewing the Treatment
ASSIGNMENT:
1. Write on with good humor to roughly your halfway point, pages 51-60.
2. Treat yourself to several days off to read and think over what you have accomplished, and to recharge your comic batteries with whatever activity you wish.
There's nothing sacred about taking stock of your whole project at roughly the halfway point, for you are in a real sense constantly reviewing and replaying your story, structure and characters as you write. But it is good to take a day or two off at what feels like a significant point and review the whole picture with an honest eye, and hopefully with a partner's or friend's feedback.
Begin with your treatment. Nine times out of ten, you are making real and perhaps radical changes as you go along, and you better understand what your characters and story are up to. You may wish to take a day and simply revise your treatment. In that spirit, I offer one of my own treatments for a script still waiting to be written.
A Sample Anarchistic Romantic Treatment
What follows is a sample anarchistic romantic comedy treatment I wrote with two Russian friends a few years ago. I do wish to make this film someday. It is offered simply as an example of how to present enough story, character and suggestion of comedy in under five pages for a producer to get the gist and flavor of the whole project.
In this particular case, the story grew out of a very real situation in New Orleans. Since the late 1970s, many of the Mardi Gras groups ("krewes") have used Russian tractors to pull their floats on Mardi Gras day and in the parades leading up to it. But while these tractors are inexpensive, they are also cheap and continually break down. Thus the need for Russian mechanics to fly over during the Mardi Gras season to help service them! So we cooked up this idea as the simple "what if" connected to one simple clueless mechanic-a fish out of water-who is suddenly and unexpectedly dropped into the festive world of carnival.
Tractor Blues, an original screen treatment by Andrew Horton, Marina Drozdova, and Sasha Kiselev
CONCEPT: Tractor Blues is an offbeat anarchistic screwball romantic comedy involving a Russian tractor mechanic and a young Creole girl, set in New Orleans during the Mardi Gras season. East meets West as the spirit of carnival helps this unlikely couple enjoy some unexpected pleasures before their real lives resume.
THE STORY: In the dark we hear Louis Armstrong sing "When It's Sleepy Time Down South." Opening shot: A wolf howling in close-up. We con tinue to hear Louis Armstrong throughout this scene. The flat landscape of Siberia, as a handsome young engineer, IVAN (28, give him another name you feel works!), is fixing a tractor. THREE OF HIS CHILDREN watch their father as he works. Their simple house in the background as the mother hangs up clothes to dry. The wolf howls again as he comes closer to the few houses that make up the Siberian farm village. Ivan calmly puts down his tools, picks up a rifle and shoots the wolf. He goes back to work as the kids run over to see the wolf.
From far away we see the dust of an approaching jeep coming toward them. It seems to take forever because the distances are so great. When the jeep arrives, there is a "novi" Russian businessman in a suit, who hands Ivan a sealed envelope. "Where must I go this time?" Ivan says. "New Orleans. Tonight," says the businessman.
Cut to: Credit montage sequence as we see Ivan at the Moscow Airport, with crosscutting to New Orleans shots of the beginning of Mardi Gras season and back to Ivan on a jet as we continue to hear Louis Armstrong. Sequence ends with Ivan getting off the plane in New Orleans and being greeted by several men, including an almost-fat man, DAVE (45), who wears a cap saying BELARUS TRACTORS. As the music ends, Ivan can see as they leave the airport that the Louisiana landscape is as flat as his native Siberia!
As they drive into New Orleans and Ivan looks at this strange and wonderful city, Dave explains Ivan's job through an interpreter, LEON, black, educated, fluent in Russian and finishing his Ph.D at Tulane University with a thesis on Pushkin! In fact, as they drive into the city, Dave has a small video player in his large car, and we see shots of Russian tractors pulling Mardi Gras carnival floats through parades. Dave explains (through Leon) that it is Ivan's job to supervise the American mechanics as they take care of the tractors during the two-week season that includes all the parades leading up to Mardi Gras day and that day itself. "These Russian tractors," says Dave, "are like our Louisiana women: they look good but you ride them too hard and they break down!"
Of course the "surface" plot will involve this fish-out-of-water or strangercomes-to-town story of a Siberian farm engineer coming up against the crazy world of the pagan/Catholic/southern/African/Creole season of carnival, with all of its festivity, sexuality, music, humor, danger and sense of renewal of the human spirit! Leon, of course, will constantly quote Pushkin to Ivan. Ivan, on the other hand, has not read much Russian literature but knows all of Jack London by heart.
Ivan should be a socialist realist hero. Serious but not stupid. Not given to pleasure. In fact, he is a really good guy who has done everything "right" and yet has never had a good time. It will take New Orleans to teach him how to let go and enjoy. Ivan should also be not a communist but not a democrat either. He feels very mixed about the changes in Russia today. He doesn't want Stalin, but he feels capitalism will "rob the spirit of us all."
Of course we can have many funny scenes with the tractors and parades and costumes (Ivan will have to be in costume to work on the tractors!!!). But also serious moments too, as he comes to see and understand black New Orleans culture, music, food. Leon is his window to this world. Leon is also gay! There should be funny/serious scenes as Ivan deals with this and as Leon expresses his fears: AIDS, being black, etc. But a true friendship (with one big blow-up) should develop that helps both of them. Dave, meanwhile, is a "good old boy" who wants wine, women and ... tractors (money), but with a good soul too.
Now for the subplot, which is really the heart and soul of the film. Leon's sister: ROBYN. Light-skinned Creole girl of 18 who, we learn, has been tapped by the family to be a voodoo priestess, in an old tradition (which really exists) of grandmothers who are priestesses passing it on to their granddaughters. She is not sure about becoming a priestess (this is not a "job" but something one does for family and friends), and she wants to have a serious musical career. The family has jazz musicians who want her to continue with jazz, but she dreams of classical music.
The unlikely happens, of course. Ivan and Robyn become close and, one night, lovers. It is a beautiful moment when it happens, a calm in the midst of a carnival hurricane of emotions. For Robyn also has a jealous boyfriend, MR. FAITH, who is the owner of a jazz club, The Bottom Line.
There will be another subplot that puts everyone in danger: a right-wing religious/political outfit, American for Americans (modeled on David Duke), wants to rid New Orleans of all foreign influences, including especially Russian tractors at Mardi Gras. They sabotage a number of tractors and put all of Mardi Gras in danger. But Ivan, Dave and Leon are able to find a solution after Robyn, using voodoo powers, discovers who the bad guys are. Dave, meanwhile, has sold his Russian tractor business, fed up with it all, to a Japanese businessman. Dave is going into the women's clothing business. . . "to meet more women!"
"What goes up, must come down," says Robyn, and so Ivan must leave the morning after Mardi Gras. It is a gray cold morning. The streets are empty. A few drunks sleeping in strange costumes, but basically no sign of Mardi Gras.
Robyn and Ivan part. Louis Armstrong plays but it becomes Robyn's voice as he walks off to Leon's car.
Cut to: Siberia. Same as opening shot. Ivan is again working in front of his house. His kids play. His wife cooks. A jeep approaches. It takes forever. It arrives. Leon gets out! He has come to stay ... for a while, while he finishes writing his thesis.
THE END
Week 10: Focus on Comic Texture and Tone
So you are back on the job, ready to buckle down and enjoy the second half of your script. Congrats!
Take a few moments to think over the texture and tone of your comedy. Let's review three quite different comedies for our assignment of the week.
John Huston's African Queen meets the requirements of screwball romantic comedy. But it is something of an action-adventure film as well. The tone therefore hovers between these two poles as Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn negotiate their way down an African river, confront a Nazi gunboat and simultaneously come to appreciate each other as man and woman. The texture of the film has to do with the rugged and often dangerous beauty of Africa-including the animals and birds they encounter-which really shares the spotlight with the characters. Put another way, the texture of this romantic adventure comedy has much to do with a feeling of being outdoors. And this should strike us as a refreshing switch from so many romantic comedies set in cities and taking place inside houses, buildings and cars. Yes, shooting on location did make a difference to the look, tone, and texture of this American classic, which made it to the AFI Best loo Films list.
Kevin Smith's debut, no-budget comedy Clerks (1994) also gained much by being shot on location. In this case, however, the location is a convenience store in Smith's suburban New Jersey, where he actually worked at the time he made the film. Truly an anarchistic buddy film, Clerks is fun to a large degree because the low budget helps create the texture of a kind of clever home movie, complete with black-and-white cinematography and often rough camera shots or set-ups. The absurd tone of the film comes from our feeling that the scene is so real that the "actors" must be making up half their lines as they go along. The texture is thus as far from that of a Hollywood studio film as possible. And the results of such a consciously chosen rough texture? Leonard Maltin speaks for many critics when he notes that Clerks is "certainly more provocative and entertaining than many glossy Hollywood movies of the 199o's" (245).
Benny and loon (1993) creates yet another atmosphere and comic climate. Director Jeremiah Chechik aims for a tone evenly balanced between wry comedy and very real pathos in this fable about a mentally unhinged young woman (Mary Stuart Masterson) and a young social misfit who sees himself as a reincarnation of Buster Keaton (Johnny Depp). Yes, it could technically be called a romantic comedy, but the underlying seriousness generated by the "case history" tone of many scenes means that we come away from the film feeling it to be equally a psychological drama that skates very close to melodrama. Also important to the texture and climate of the film is the strong echo of silent comedy, especially that of Keaton and Chaplin, as Johnny Depp acts out old slapstick routines and mime performances. In short, many mimes explode before film's end.
Considering tone and texture helps you define what it is in your script you are up to beyond laughter. What determines these twin elements? Everything: characterization, your particular genres of comedy (or comedy mixed with other genres), minor characters, locations and subplots.
ASSIGNMENT:
1. Write pages 61-70.
2. You are in charge of the movie poster for your own comedy. Dream up what you want to be your poster image or images. Besides the title and credits, what one-liner might appear on it?
Week 11: Balancing Fantasy and Festivity
Fantasy and festivity: twin elements of comedy that are important to whatever particular form of the muse you are writing. The question of the week is: what kinds of festivity and fantasy have you made use of, and are you satisfied with the degree and mixture you are cooking up in your comic recipe? Remember our basic distinction: fantasy celebrates the freedom of an individual's imagination and embraces any "magical" element in a script, and festivity is a shared and therefore communal celebration. Anarchistic comedies by definition suggest a great freedom to indulge in these twin elements. But romantic comedies may invoke large doses of each as well.
Consider the following examples:
Penny Marshall's The Preacher's Wife (1996) has Denzel Washington as an angel sent down to help a troubled African American gospel church who falls in love with Whitney Houston, the preacher's wife. An anarchistic gospel screwball comedy, it is actually a remake of the 1947 comedy The Bishop's Wife. In Marshall's update, the fantasy element-an African American angel-blends humorously and joyously with the festive gospel hand-clapping scenes for a true carnival of a Christmas-season film.
Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands was a Brazilian hit comedy in 1978, starring Sonia Braga as a very sensuous cooking instructor who is haunted by the ghost of her hard-drinking, hard-loving young husband (Jose Wilker) while she tries to live a quiet middle-class life with her chubby and very conservative middle-aged second husband (Mauro Mendoca). In the tradition of South American "magic realism," the presence of the dead first husband, who is only visible to Dona Flor, is the clear fantasy element. Festivity breaks out everywhere throughout the film, beginning with the opening scene, since the setting is a carnival culture (the first husband dies during a carnival parade). Food itself becomes festive in the scenes in which Dona Flor is cooking. Add the carnival music to the sound track and you have a film that is a carnival pure and simple from beginning to end.
But what of films that do not introduce such obvious "magical" fantasy elements? Big Night, we have suggested, is one of the most festive celebrations of good food in American cinema: the whole narrative revolves around the preparation and consumption of a "to die for" meal. Festivity? Absolutely: it is a shared experience that brings a very diverse group of people together for an evening they will never forget. And fantasy? The biggest fantasy is simply the two brothers' dream that they can save the restaurant. But this outward goal covers a deeper inner need: for Primo to be taken seriously as an Italian chef and for Secundo to feel he is succeeding in America.
Finally, in an ensemble male-bonding anarchistic feel-good comedy of the early 199os, Ron Under-wood's City Slickers, fantasy and festivity cross paths constantly. Billy Crystal, Daniel Stern and Bruno Kirby live out their fantasies of escaping middle-class, middle-aged suburban life on their getaway holidays. We meet them in the opening credit sequence being chased by bulls down the streets of Pamplona, Spain, in a funny takeoff on their Ernest Hemingway fantasy. The comedy shifts to Out West, as they become cowboys under the mentorship of a stone-faced Jack Palance. The comedy in the film is generated from watching not only the obvious slapstick of city slickers trying to be cowboys but a group of friends needing to redefine themselves and readjust their fantasies. The festivity is, therefore reflected in the shared experiences of this group of urban cowboys.
Look over your script. Are you happy with the intertwining of these elements in your tale? What would happen if you added more or less? Woody Allen begins Annie Hall (1977) by looking out at us, standing alone, like the stand-up comedian he used to be. He ends speaking to us once more, in voiceover, but the camera is trained on a busy New York street near Lincoln Center. The street with its passersby is not an actual carnival, of course. Yet I would argue this is a "festive" ending, for Allen has shifted our attention from just himself onto the passing world outside. This is an embrace and celebration of a much wider world.
ASSIGNMENT:
I. Deliver, playfully, pages 71-80.
2. Take a few minutes to do a fantasy/festivity check on the major players in your script. What are the fantasies of eac
h, and to what degree have they or have they not fulfilled them? Similarly, what is the relationship of each of your characters to festivity, and have you increased or decreased that character's "festivity threshold"?
Week 12: A Few Words on Tears and Laughter
If you are writing a purely anarchistic farce along the lines of Austin Powers or There's Something about Mary or Duck Soup or Blazing Saddles, then keep writing and pass on to Week 13. But for many of you, comedy may well include moments if not a whole overall tone that calls for both laughter and a few tears along the way. We have discussed a number of genre-bending examples and suggested that such border-crossing films have become more numerous, be they Fargo, Pulp Fiction, Kolya, Get on the Bus, Good Will Hunting, Cinema Paradiso or My Life as a Dog. Comedy and serious drama often cross in unusual ways, as even Socrates has pointed out. Realize further that to talk of tears and laughter is to suggest several possibilities. Think about which may apply to your script.
A strongly comic film with one or more scenes that reach an emotional level. Four Weddings and a Funeral keeps us laughing 9o percent of the time as a romantic comedy with strong farcical underpinnings. But the funeral packs an honest tearful punch, in large part because of the contrast with the laughter we have experienced before it (and will experience again afterwards).