Progress

I’m making some great headway on my screenplay. For the last few weeks I was getting frustrated because I kept writing these meandering scenes that were killing the flow of the script simply because I was not clear on some aspects of my story and the characters. A week ago I watched the movie The Switch starring Jason Bateman and Jennifer Aniston and made some discoveries about what really makes a screenplay work. That movie was satisfying because it hit every marker required for a comedy to work. The characters can’t be flat. They have to have what some writers refer to as “the comic gap.” They have to have something funny about them. Are they a schemer? A control freak? A bum? Or like in the case of Jason Bateman’s character, are they a hypochondriac? Also, there are certain beats a comedy must hit to work. The main character needs to have an external problem that he is very much aware of as well as an internal problem that only the audience is aware of. Also, it is important to have two people after the same goal. This allows for the comedy to really work. There needs to be somebody in the story who stands as an opponent to the main character who is after the same thing he is. For example, in The Switch both Bateman’s character and another guy were in love with Jennifer Aniston’s character. This allows for tension to be built and comedy to follow.

After watching that I realized why I was frustrated with my screenplay and felt like I was writing in circles. Since my story and characters needed help I sat down with a good friend of mine and fellow writer, David Fredrickson, last Friday and we hammered out a solid story and came up with some good comic gaps for the characters. My main problem was my lead character needed some more flaws. He was too normal. The two of us bounced ideas around and were able to give this guy an interesting and entertaining personality. Now I’m working on the outline of the screenplay so I have a clear direction to go. (I guess those research paper writing skills I learned in school are really coming in handy.)

News in the Movies

Morning Glory

Having worked in television for over sixteen years, one of my big pet peeves is when movies come out depicting life behind the scenes of the news in the most unrealistic ways.  For example, the movie The Ugly Truth that came out in 2009 starring Katherine Heigl and Gerard Butler drove me crazy!  It was so far fetched that it made me wonder if the screenwriter did any research on what it takes to produce the news.  They had news anchors wandering around the studio to locations that were never disclosed to the director and the cameraman following them like mindless zombies while the director and producer were screaming, “What are they doing?!”  Hello!  If the director doesn’t call the shot, guess what?  IT AIN’T HAPPENING!  An anchor can not just walk out the back door of the studio to something he set up outside that was never disclosed to either the producer or the director. They also had cameras capturing things in the most impossible places, like hundreds of feet up in a hot air balloon.  How was the camera guy able to fit in the basket?  And how were they able to send the signal to the live truck? Then in the control room the producer was calling the shots and the director sat below her next to the technical director and without question did what she said.  Excuse me, she’s the PRODUCER not the DIRECTOR!  She decides the content and runs all changes by the director who calls the shots!  To make matters even worse, the movie was supposed to take place in Sacramento, the television market in which I work!

Well, yesterday I was pleasantly surprised when I watched Morning Glory, starring Rachel McAdams, Harrison Ford, and Diane Keaton.  It became clear very early in the movie that the screenwriter, Aline Brosh McKenna, had done her homework.  Grant it, it wasn’t perfect, but it was true enough to the “spirit” of what goes on behind the scenes that the gaps were easy to overlook.  The film featured anchors and crewmembers half asleep when the early morning news was starting, mispronunciations on air, and incorrect graphics appearing on air and the panic to quickly remove them.  The director called the shots while the producers produced.  The relationships between the people were believable.  I thought Diane Keaton and Harrison Ford were perfectly cast as the hosts.  In fact, I think this was the most fitting role Ford has had in a long time.  He had the look and sound of an old “Tom Brokaw” type anchor and was quite humorous being the cranky old guy.  Plus, it was nice for once to watch a comedy with a female lead that although the movie featured romance, it wasn’t a romantic comedy.  So I give Morning Glory a “thumbs up” for good story telling that was well researched.