JaneEspenson.com

You know how stuff gets put in piles around the house? Well, it does in my house. Oh, you know what they should make? Pile-cozies. Brightly-colored plastic or fabric-covered cubes, about nine-by-eleven and maybe a foot tall, that you could just slip down over piles of papers when company’s coming over. Genius! I swear, that’s a brilliant idea. You could make them look like art. Anyway, I just found two stray pieces of blog-related mail that got lost in a pile.

Karen in San Diego sends a great postcard, on which she expresses the wish that I be the one to take over Gilmore Girls. Well, what I can do is assure you that the amazing Rebecca Kirshner will be continuing there, and I’m all agog to see what happens next. Rebecca is remarkably smart and funny and I expect great things.

The other letter is from Brendan, writing from near-at-hand in Studio City. There’s the general praise, (thank you, blush), and a good question. He’s asking about how often it’s all right to call an agent who is reading your material, in hopes of spurring them to read faster. The answer, of course, is a fulsome shrug. You don’t want to let an opportunity dry up due to inattention, but you don’t want to give an agent the impression that you’d be a pest, should he or she decide to take you on as a client. I have no idea what the right answer is. But I know who might. Befriend the assistant. This is always good anyway, because assistants become agents. Also, they are good and overworked people and they could stand to hear a friendly voice. Once the assistant is charmed, they can help you find the perfect moment to give that agent a little nudge. So make a joke, ask about their day, compliment their pleasant phone manner… if nothing else, you’ll make their day easier and an angel will get its wings.

Okay, now to the jokes. I’ve been going around the house chuckling for a while because of a joke I heard weeks ago on House. I’ll just be making lunch or something and I’ll think of it and chuckle. The team has been trying to make a diagnosis, right? And there’s an important new development. They all rush in together to tell House about it:

CAMERON
We’ve got anal bleeding.

HOUSE
What, all of you?

Oh my god. That slays me. It’s fast and short and snappy. It reveals character. And it’s got “anal” in it. It might be the perfect joke.

I think part of why this one tickles me so much is that it’s a joke type I rarely use myself. Let’s call it the Disingenuous Type. I found another example, from an episode of Friends. Joey and Chandler have just listed an advantage of being female. Rachel counters with:

RACHEL
Come on! You guys can pee standing up.

CHANDLER
We can? All right, I’m tryin’ that.

This is of course, a joke for a smart-ass. Got a smart-ass in your spec? Well, this is the joke for them.

Lunch: I finally figured out what made my soymilk-yogurt-tofu shakes so awful. The yogurt and the tofu. Soymilk + banana + natural peanut butter = great!

Hello again! I want to make clear that friend-of-the-blog Lani is not herself compiling a catalog of joke types, but that I am. Or at least, I intend to. Some of the entries in this blog will be devoted to indentifying joke species, as a part of the catch-and-release effort. Others will continue to be about other aspects of spec writing.

I got to interact with two lovely puppies while I was on vacation. Little tiny things that lived in a beach-side café, digging adorably in the sand and eating random bits of dropped starch. So cute! And I had that thought. That one that I think all of us have when we play with a small animal. “I’d agree to give birth, if I could have one of these instead of a baby.”

Oh.

So… that’s just me, then.

That was my attempt to execute a certain kind of tv joke in blog form. I was prompted to try this by a note from friend of the blog Lani. Lani is enjoying the continuing catalog of joke types. She writes:

“One of my favorites is the silent punchline, or what I call a cricket, when someone says something that doesn’t become a joke until the silent beat. They play off the other characters, and the audience, knowing a character so well that comment isn’t necessary.”

Lani calls it a “cricket” to evoke the implied sound of crickets during the silent pause. Some shows use a real cricket sound here, but that’s getting very tired. The joke form itself is evergreen, however.

Lani, bless her, even supplied examples, which Buffy fans may recall. The first is from the Buffy musical episode, in which Anya is wildly off-base in identifying the source of the evil:

“The first cricket that comes to me off the top of my head is when Anya sings, “Bunnies, it must be bunnies” and then there’s the shot of everyone just staring at her on a silent beat. Then back to Anya with “Or maybe midgets.”

She also recalls this one, which is, interestingly, entirely silent, relying on an outlandish costume.

“A great cricket is when Giles opens the Magic Shop and he’s wearing the sorcerer getup and Buffy just stares at him for a beat, and he takes it off.”

Like the analogy jokes that we talked about earlier, I think these jokes work because they come directly out of character. You’re reminded of Anya’s irrational fear of rabbits in the first example, and you’re amused, conversely, by Giles’ out-of-character decision to wear a costume, in the second example. It’s a very common joke form, and I’m sure you can think of your own examples from Friends, from The Simpsons, etc. The Office is almost entirely constructed of crickets, come to think of it. Man, I love the Office.

I have two caveats about this joke form, however. As I was writing this entry, it occurred to me that my instinct is telling me it works better on film than on paper. So much of it is about the literal silence and the facial expression of the actor doing the reacting. On paper, in a spec, it may read not as much as a silent punchline, as it does an absent punchline. Have your friends read it, ask them about it, make sure you’re getting the right effect.

My second caveat. If you do this, make sure you don’t have the character who uttered the original line follow it up with “Did I say that out loud?” That was very funny the first time. (That was on Cheers, I think?) It is no longer funny.

But whatever the hazards, this is one of the joke types that comes out of character. And that makes it good. Look at The Office to see how the pros do it.

Lunch: A weird kind of shake with yogurt and tofu and soymilk and peanut butter and splenda. I want a burger.

Had a great lunch today with friend-of-the-blog Maggie. So much fun! Much talk and analysis of my fave show, Battlestar Galactica. I came to the party late but have lately been much immersed in DVD viewing and the wonderful world of iTunes downloads. What a great show! It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a show that does such a good job of crafting plot developments that defy prediction without feeling arbitrary. It’s a tricky line to walk. But it’s vital. If an audience gets ahead of the story, they can get very bored.

This is also true in the micro as well as the macro. Wanna see how? Here is possible scene transition. For the sake of the example, let’s say this is an excerpt from an episode of, say, Taxi. We start at the end of a scene as Elaine is confiding in someone (probably Alex):

ELAINE
And here’s the worst part! I agreed to go out with Louie!
CUT TO:
INT. RESTAURANT
Elaine looks on in horror as Louie blows his nose into a cloth napkin.

Now here is a better scene transition:

ELAINE
And here’s the worst part! You’ll never believe who I agreed to go out with!
CUT TO:
INT. RESTAUTANT
Elaine looks on in horror as Louie blows his nose into a cloth napkin.

See the difference? The second option is better. The reveal of Louie as her date is funnier when it’s done as part of the cut. This is because it’s a bigger swipe at the viewer’s expectations. In the first version they go into the restaurant scene knowing something about what they’re going to see. It’s simply not as funny.

Try, as much as is possible, not to tell the viewers what they’re about to see. Unless you’re lying to them. Look at your scene transitions. I bet you can find some that you can arrange so that the cut into the next scene becomes a revelation, not just a what-happens-next.

Lunch: Sushi at Echigo on Santa Monica. Tiny morsels brought one-by-one on clouds of warm rice.

I have a dentist appointment today. Just a cleaning. But I find this stuff very stressful. It’s the combination of discomfort and boredom that’s so awful, I think. I sit/lie there, with my hands clasped over my tummy, gradually tensing up until I realize that I’m jamming my joined fists downward as if trying to heimlich the hygienist right out of my mouth. Then I effortfully relax and start it all over again. Bleahh. But, it is also my favorite day. Because it’s the day that is the farthest apart from the next time I have to go in. Making a problem into a virtue, that’s what I’m going for here.

Which, oh so neatly, brings us to another question from a friend of the blog. This is from the charming Tracy Berna again. The question is about a specific show, but I bet a lot of you will find her frustration very recognizable. The problem she’s facing is probably one you will face at some point. She is working on a “My Name is Earl” spec and she asks:

“I came up with one possible past sin to have Earl make up for, but
I’m not sure who to make the wronged party, and here’s why: ‘Earl’
is a show that regularly and liberally employs guest characters. BUT!
You say that you shouldn’t use guest characters in specs! So what
rule do I follow? The rule of the show’s conventions, or the no-guests-
in-specs rule? Huh? HUH? Answer THAT!”

I will!

First off, let me point out that it’s not a “no-guests” rule, but rather a “don’t-build-the-whole-spec-around-a-guest” rule. But even so, Tracy has a valid dilemma here. What should she do?

Well, I can tell you what I would do. I would make the wronged person a character the audience already knows. Like, his ex-wife, his brother, his ex-mother-in-law, his ex-wife’s new husband, or some other regular or recurring character. Maybe Earl doesn’t even know who the wronged party is ,at first. He knows he did something wrong and goes looking for the victim, and the trail leads him right around to home again. Lots of good fodder for karmic thoughts there, all built-in.

Not only does this solution allow you to work solely with voices that you already know, but it also will tend to lead to richer emotional areas. Remember, you’re trying to write the Best Earl Ever. Part of that is digging slightly deeper than the show does except in its very best episodes. Dealing with a dynamic that already exists gives you a head start on finding that depth.

A variation on this, is to have the wronged party indeed be a guest character, but one who is connected to an already existing character. Earl knows he wronged a certain woman. He’s searching for her. Then he discovers his bother’s new girlfriend is that very woman. At this point the woman is almost irrelevant. It’s a brother-versus-brother story. Voices we know! A dynamic we care about!

(Forgive me if I’m mangling the show and its relationships, I watch, but not religiously. The larger point is still valid.)

The only other solution I can think of, if you really need to create a brand new character, is to make them “audible” by supplying imaginary casting. “Earl confronts TINA, a sweet little Betty White type older lady.” or “Earl finds himself face-to-face with the big, blustering JERRY, think Chris Farley.” It’s not ideal, but at least the viewers know those voices, those personalities. It’s even better if, say, Jerry reminds Earl of his own brother, and the show ends up being about him saying things to Jerry that he wishes he could say to Randy. Now we’re back in the relationships we care about again!

A friend of mine once wrote a brilliant Frasier spec in which Daphne started dating a man who was just like Niles. This was a guest-character spec that was acceptable because the guest character’s lines were all written in Niles’ voice. The only problem with the spec? Right about the time she finished it, the episode of Frasier aired in which Daphne dated a man who was just like Niles. The spec was instantly obsolete, but she had the satisfaction of knowing she was certainly thinking just like the employed writers on the show. I like to think she sat back down to write again with increased confidence.

Problems become virtues. My dentist appointment looms. Soon it will be over.

Lunch: I used spices that were bought for me in Turkey to make a spicy chicken-and-yogurt dish.

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