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Friend-of-the-Blog Danny Strong wrote the movie RECOUNT that premiered on HBO this weekend. Did you miss it? That’s okay, I suspect HBO will implement some sort of scheme in which they rerun it a couple times. Don’t miss it next time, though, because it’s fantastic.

I read every draft of Danny’s script, and yet I have no memory of giving help of any kind. All I recall saying is, “Wow. This is really good.”

I recommend looking at the movie as an excellent example of how to handle exposition. Danny is telling the story of the 2000 Presidential Election Florida recount. He had lots and lots of very technical material to deliver to the audience. And never once does he just shove a chunk of it at the viewers, hoping to get past it as quickly as possible. It’s usually delivered by one character explaining something to another character who genuinely doesn’t have the information, and there is always an attitude behind either the giving or the getting of the information, usually both. Incredulity, amusement, shock, anger, even blank incomprehension — these attitudes make expositional moments into character moments.

Notice also his use of intercutting. He frequently cuts between the Democratic and Republican camps discussing the same point of law. The intercutting puts the emphasis on the different approaches to the problem and, again, makes the scenes about attitudes, not legal procedure.

He also found real-life obstacles for his characters. The guy who had to chase Gore down to prevent him from making a concession speech? He really did have a busted knee. The lawyer who argued the case before the Supreme Court? He really is dyslexic and has to work without notes. These are the kinds of character details — one more little thing to overcome — that you want to invent for characters that you make up, and Danny was smart enough to discover and exploit them (in a good way) for his script.

Writing scripts based on real events is incredibly difficult. There’s no reason to think that the journey of a real hero actually will conform to the Hero’s Journey, after all. If you’re trying to shape real-life events into a satisfying script, you’re not going to do better than this example.

Lunch: Cup O’ Noodles

Friend of the blog, the amazing Rob Kutner, one of the writers on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, has written a book called “Apocalypse How.” You can order it here, or, once Book Soup has it on their site, you can also order it there! And you can read about it way over here!

I don’t have my copy in hand yet, but this is sure to be terrific. From the web site: APOCALYPSE HOW is a comprehensive cataclysmic guide that walks you through the Nine Most Likely World-Ending Scenarios, and provides useful and inspiring advice on every aspect of surviving (and thriving!) in the new world to come. Fantastic.

Up here in Vancouver, I’m continuing to enjoy watching my words get spun into gold by this amazing crew and cast. Nothing will convince you you’re brilliant faster then having brilliant actors read your material. Of course, the opposite is true too, which is why I caution you to be very careful about staging amateur table reads. Terrible line-readings will make you think your writing is terrible. And it just isn’t. I think you’re better off listening to imaginary brilliance than real-world awfulness. So turn up those voices in your head and turn down your roommate’s boyfriend’s offer to read the lead in your spec pilot. Unless he’s good, he might just convince you to throw out something that actually works. Remember that there is no line so inspired that it can’t be read painfully badly.

Lunch: cheeseburger, pickles, other wonderful items from the catering truck

Friend-of-the-Blog Jeff sent me this link which I’m delighted to find references not only an interesting script style, but also a couple mentions of moi-self. Heh!

The issue is the use of earthy expletives in the non-dialog portions of your script. Apparently this is done with frequency and enthusiasm over at Lost. There is some talk in the referenced piece about whether or not this is a good thing. Someone speculates there that I might not approve. Well, it depends. I like a script to have force and energy and enthusiasm. I dislike scripts that read like gas grill assembly instructions. And these certainly look like scripts with verve. If I were on that staff, I think I’d probably have fun varying my style by tossing in a few zesty words.

Friend-of-the-blog Jeff raises the even more important issue, however. What if you’re writing a Lost spec? Should you follow the general rule of making it look like a produced script, and thus “fuck” if all up? Or should you avoid the dirty talk?

My inclination is to either refrain, or to split the difference. If you’re comfortable doing so, you can certainly write your stage directions with rather more punch than you might otherwise do, perhaps even get profane here and there. But be very careful about going overboard, because while there is little cost to avoiding the profanity, there might be a big one to overdoing it. And I’m not talking about easily offended readers. I don’t think that’s the hazard. I’m talking about coming across as flippant about the contents of your own script.

Joss never liked it when Buffy was referred to as “camp,” because that word suggests a style that doesn’t take its characters seriously, and we always took our characters very seriously. Similarly, you don’t want to seem to be making fun of all the people and actions in your spec script, and if you think about how a script with flip and exaggerated stage directions might read, I think you’ll see how it could easily give that impression.

Lunch: those darn stuffed jalapenos at Jack In The Box again. I can’t stay away!

A Friend of the Blog called me yesterday because she’d been given a note on a spec pilot that she’d written and it seemed strange to her. The note was to adjust her act breaks so that they all focused on the lead character. She’d heard notes before about breaking acts on story turns, but never about breaking them on a certain character. She wondered if she was getting bad advice.

She was right to ask the question. Any time a note feels like a formula is being applied to your script (“You should ALWAYS…”), you’re right to step back and ask if this is the blind application of some abstract rule instead of something that actually will work for your script. But, in fact, I think the note was probably a good one.

I wrote recently about the importance, especially in a spec pilot in which your readers are trying to grasp a lot of new things all at once, of making sure that every reader knows who the protagonist of your story is. Besides, the protagonist’s reactions during the developments in the story ARE the story. Since the act breaks are your story turns, they are the biggest opportunity to accomplish this.

Here’s an example. Let’s say your big act break involves a secondary character revealing a big secret to a huge audience that contains the protagonist. What’s the last line of text before the FADE OUT at the end of the act? It could be, “On the speaker’s face, knowing his political career is over, we…” or “On the crowd, gasping in surprise, we…”. But it’s probably better if it’s, “Among the crowd we find our hero. His jaw clenches as he realizes that this changes everything.” Or, you know, something in that area.

Of course, there are exceptions. Maybe your act break scene is a reveal that your protagonist is being betrayed by his best friend, and the protag isn’t even in the scene. If you remain convinced that you’ve got the act break in the right place, you don’t need to agonize over the fact that we’re not close on his big glorious face when you head into the commercial break. Never panic if your script doesn’t fit every guideline. But given the choice, if you’ve got a character that you want the audience to hook into… hook into them early and often.

Lunch: hummus on a tortilla with shredded parm cheese on top. Impromptu and fabulous.

Friend of the Blog Alex Epstein sends along an interesting contemplation on a certain type of joke. I’m going to let you see his explanation and then present mine, which differs on a certain point. Here is how he explains it:

… Sometimes, I see good writers make fun of bad, obvious dialog and cliche. Saw a bit on Steven Moffat’s JEKYLL, ep. 3. A bunch of suits and techies watching the usual assortment of screens tracking Dr. Jackman:

I bet that sort of retort comes up a lot in story rooms; I wonder how often it makes it to the screen. (Network exec: “But how does the audience know he’s moving?”)

Oh, this is very interesting. I agree that this is totally about subverting the expectations of the listener. It never would have occurred to me, though, that this had to do with a response to exec-driven overwriting. I would have taken this (at least the first joke) more as a response to the real-life human tendency to state the obvious. And the second one I take as a response to the expected structure of normal conversation (i.e. “ever since…” is supposed to lead to a anecdote.) So for me, both of these are about someone reacting to a statement that was deficient in some way, but deficient because of the foible of a character.

However, I’m open to Alex’s interpretation, now that I hear it. Certainly, the first joke illustrates an excellent way to turn a “make it clearer” note into a benefit — have someone hang a lantern on the over-clarity and then, if possible, slap a topper onto it! (So much writers’ slang! Yay!)

By the way, the Buffy example reminds me of another classic Joss joke, in which someone tries to deflect a question by saying “it’s a long story,” only to have another character quickly sum up the situation, leading the first character to lamely say, “Guess it’s not that long.” The standard conventional rule is that “it’s a long story” ends any discussion. To go past it and deflate it is funny.

It’s making me curious about other jokes that do this. Oh! How about the Princess Leia/Han Solo moment: “I love you.” “I know.” That’s certainly a violation of how we know that exchange is supposed to go. If you’re writing a comedy or a drama with wit, it’s worth doing a bit of thinking about this kind of joke since there’s something so ingrained about conversational assumptions that these jokes always pack a nice punch.

Lunch: salad bar, squash soup

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