JaneEspenson.com

I work right now in a writers’ room with a lot of really experienced comedy writers. You better believe that I sit there with big ears, listening for comedy crumbs. Here’s what one of them said today.

“It’s all about who’s stupid and who’s lying.”

This is very possibly good advice for life in general, but what he meant was that situations are rendered comically complex by all things that can happen to obscure the clear communication of information.

Kinda stiking, isn’t it? Misunderstandings — Jack thinks Crissy’s pregnant! Deceptions – Lucy puts on a costume to sneak onstage! Someone is stupid and someone is lying. In fact, you’ll find examples in just about any comedy you care to think of. M*A*S*H? Frank Burns is stupid and Hawkeye is lying. Of course, stupidity and deception come in interesting and complex flavors. Self-delusion and pomposity is a sophisticated kind of stupidity. Crafty creativity is a fun sort of lying. Play around, in other words, with ways to keep information away from those who need it.

Interestingly, this suggests that clear communication is the enemy of comedy. Sounds about right. There was a great Kids in the Hall bit once in which two vaudeville comics attempt to do the old Abbott-and-Costello “Who’s on First” routine. But it keeps getting derailed because one of the performers keeps clarifying. “Oh! I see the source of the confusion! I’m referring to the players’ last names, you see.”

Don’t be afraid to populate your spec pilot with fools and liars. You will treasure them.

Lunch: tuna sandwich and lemon creme meringue pie

Oh my. That little LA Times piece about this blog has just borne fruit. Fruit in the shape of envelopes! So much mail has just reached me! Oof! (I collapse under the mail bag, just my little feet sticking out, one on each side.)

Some of the mail either contains ideas for television series (which I simply CANNOT read, no matter what kind of waivers you include, seriously – in fact, they don’t even get to me, having been thrown away before I receive your envelopes), or questions about how to sell such ideas for television series. These questions generally come from those of you who are in situations such that it’s not practical for you to move to Los Angeles and spend ten years establishing yourself in a writing career before you begin pitching pilot ideas. So, of course, you want to know about other avenues for turning ideas into shows.

I wish I knew of such avenues. But I don’t. There are so many working writers with ideas – we pride themselves on them – that there’s no sense of a need to seek out other sources.

I am reminded that there was, briefly, an attempt to do something like what you are looking for. There was a fairly low-profile reality show on Bravo last season called “Situation:Comedy,” that was a sort of Project Greenlight for sitcoms. Unproduced writers submitted spec pilots, and two finalists had 15-minute versions of their scripts produced. (These mini pilots were called “pilot lights”.) Unfortunately, I have heard of no plans to repeat the project, although I personally thought it was great, and I wish it would continue.

And how did I happen to be reminded of this short-lived project? Well, one of the letters I received was actually from one of the “Situation:Comedy” semi-finalists! I’m delighted to learn he’s finding the blog helpful! Here’s wishing you continued success with your career!

Maybe other projects and contests like that one will come along. We can all keep our eyes open for them. Until then… keep thinking, keep writing… what you’re doing now is very much like how I got started. It takes many hours of flight training before you become a pilot. And many hours in the writers’ room before you pitch a pilot. But both are, in the end, attainable.

Lunch: steak and potatoes.

You know what I heard the other day that I hadn’t heard in a while? People talking about a commercial they saw. With more and more of us using Tivo, and skipping the commercials, they are becoming less of a cultural touchstone. Interesting.

Tellingly, the ad these people were talking about was for a product marketed to men. Ah. That would be advertised during sports – something which is still watched live. That explains it.

Of course, there are all sorts of points that can be made about this particular loss of commonality in our culture. The point I’m choosing to make is possibly the most trivial of all these possible points. Commercials no longer are a great comedy resource.

Believe it or not, this is a sizable loss. Punchlines derived from commercial tag lines like “Two, two, two mints in one,” “He likes it! Hey, Mikey!” “Ancient Chinese secret, huh?” “Less Filling! Tastes Great!” and so on, were a huge part of my television adolescence. (For some reason, I only seem to be thinking of really old commercials… but I know I have often referenced more recent ones when writing.)

The jokes will instead become, I suppose, references to popular YouTube-type offerings (Mentos + Diet Coke, etc). So don’t despair. There’s still lots of comedy to harvest. Just observe and enjoy the little seismic shift as one of comedy’s staple resources undergoes a change. And stay on top of it, of course. If you want your readers to get that pleasant jolt of recognition… make sure you’re working with material they’ll recognize.

Lunch: chicken and vegetables. Healthy but good.

So, gentle readers. I finally did it. I finally read The Da Vinci Code. Also known as The Big Book of Act Breaks. Look at it for great examples of exactly when to interrupt the action in order to require your audience to keep going. He pulls you through the story as if you’d gotten a race horse tangled in your hair clips. Whoosh.

The writing style, however, is beyond clunky. For one thing, no character ever looks at anything without being reminded of something else. People are constantly looking out windows, at paintings, at books, and at other people, while being reminded of past trips, childhood experiences, historical events and random old relationships. Can’t someone just look at a thing and see a thing, please? Or have a memory without some physical prompt? Sigh. Just a thing I noticed.

Anyway, I was interested to find that there is a good lesson for script writers in the pages of the book. There are a couple scenes in the book that are set in a classroom (in flashback, prompted, I believe, by looking at something-or-other). Our hero is laying out some facts for the reader, through the device of having a dialogue with students in his class. I find these scenes to be most problematic. The students always ask exactly the right question to prompt his next statement so that the points role out of him in the optimal order without requiring him to spout blocks of unbroken text. This doesn’t feel particularly spontaneous. The students function as cue cards and are about as cardboardy.

But here’s where I grow gentle with Mr. Brown. The truth is, this kind of scene is one of the hardest you’ll ever have to write. I’ve seen subtler writers than this one fail at it. I’ve failed at it myself. It’s hard not to. There’s even a moment in Aaron Sorkin’s special “Isaac and Ishmael” West Wing episode that has always bothered me for exactly this reason.

You remember this episode? It was the bottle episode produced very quickly, soon after 9/11, in which students asked questions of our regular characters about the nature of terrorism. Here is the exchange that bumps me:

STUDENT
You know a lot about terrorism?

SAM
I dabble.

STUDENT
What are you struck by most?

SAM
Its 100% failure rate.

The “dabble” exchange is great. I love Sorkin for moments like that. But look at the next question. “What are you struck by most?” is a very, very strange question. The asker has no reason to think Sam has an answer to it, after all. Or that the answer will be important. It’s a question asked only as the quickest possible way to get to the next point. It might, in fact, be the quickest and most elegant way out of a bad situation. It’s just a weird question, is all. The problem, I assert, is not with Sorkin, but with the nature of this kind of scene.

In a scene with lots of real characters in it – regular, recurring or even guest characters – you avoid this problem. Because even when some lines are there to set up other lines, they can still be laden with character. But in the type of Q-and-A scene I’m talking about, a number of speakers don’t have (or need or want) characters. They are there to be devices, not people. And that makes them ridiculously hard to write. You need them to be good little devices, and so they tend to sound like good little devices.

If you’ve got a ton of exposition in your spec for some reason, I would recommend finding ways to get it out without a Q-and-A scene involving a number of questioners without characters. These scenes are just too hard. Look for ways to get your established characters to pull info out of each other instead.

Lunch: shabu-shabu. Beef and veggies cooked in boiling water right on the table top. So good!

So, if I understand this internet thing, I can just swear, right? Right now, I could just cut loose with a barrage of inventive and obscene language blue enough to change the color scheme of my site? I’m tasting the freedom!

This is not the case on network television. There are rules. Now, you might think that as a writer of spec scripts, these don’t apply to you, but it’s a good idea to adhere to them anyway, just to demonstrate that you’ve got some professional savvy. Besides, joke writing is a lot easier with dirty words, and you want to prove that you can be funny without them.

Of course, if you’re spec-ing an HBO show, please, swear with abandon.

Now, you know the obvious rules. You’ve watched television. So I’m just going to talk about the ones that I find surprising. These, believe it or not, are generally considered unacceptable: Chrissakes, goddamn, non-reverential uses of Jesus, Jesus Christ, Christ.

Maybe you’re not startled by those, but I forget them all the time. I find myself typing “goddamn” into scripts, thinking of it as a fairly mild curse, as these things go. But no. “God” is fine. “Damn” is fine. “Goddamn” – go wash out your keyboard with soap! And “Jesus” as an exclamation – a fine earthy outburst that conveys a certain type of character? – nope. So watch out for these.

And here are a few delightful distinctions. On the list I have, “eat me” is listed as never acceptable, while “bite me” is fine. Interesting. And “jerk-off” is acceptable as an insult but not as a reference to masturbation – but isn’t that at the heart of the insult?

When I started out as a writer, “Oh my God” was sometimes flagged for removal, at least on TGIF shows. Some writing staffs made a practice of spelling it “omigod” — I can’t imagine it made a difference, but they seemed to think it did. Now it seems to be universally accepted.

When I wrote my first Buffy, I had Buffy’s mom say “screw you!” to Buffy. I was certain it would be removed. But, no! “Screw” is hunky-dory! Go for it! Also, “bitch” and, surprisingly, “son of a bitch” are generally allowed, although I’d be careful about these during kid-friendly, early-evening shows. And “pissed” is usually fine, meaning angry. Or drunk, if a British character is saying it.

Which brings us to exotic swearing. As long as it’s not in common US usage, you can get away with all kinds of stuff. “Berk,” “Merde,” “Scheiss” — all perfectly acceptable, although presumably sometimes bleeped when the episodes are eventually exported.

Be more conservative if you’re spec-ing an 8PM show than if you’re doing a 10PM show, since the rules do loosen up throughout the night. And study your sample scripts for examples of where your show draws the line. But, there you are. Reverential Jesus! That was fun!

Lunch: Chinese Avocado Salad from “Nature’s Pantry.” Healthy and good!

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