JaneEspenson.com

Did you know we’re famous, Gentle Readers? This very blog was mentioned on stage as part of the hilarious and wonderful This American Life Live Tour ’07, which I attended in Los Angeles tonight. Ira Glass mentioned on stage that this blog sometimes engages in joke analysis. So I’ve decided, in honor of that, to indulge in some joke analysis this evening. The twist is… I’m not sure why this joke works.

SPOILER ALERT…

Here is an excerpt from the script for “Fairway, My Lovely,” the episode of Andy Barker, PI which I co-wrote with Alex Herschlag. (You can watch it here). I wrote the following exchange, which had to convey loads of information, but which also needed to have some funny in it. (Note that Lew is an aging retired private-eye of the hard-boiled variety.)

ANDY
It does all add up. The affair, the pills, the condo, the fight they had during his lesson. Of course, she says they were just arguing about his grip…

ANDY
Nope. Wait! Yes I can! I mean, they taped the lesson! They probably still have the tape at the club.

And the scene continues from there. Lew’s repeated rephrasing of the same information just struck me as funny. And even though I wasn’t sure why, I kept it in, and I still find it hilarious, and I’m still not sure why!

It’s absurd, of course, but absurd never really works on its own. A character doing something nonsensical might make us laugh for a moment, but if it’s truly random, it’s not all that funny.

So I think the joke works because it reflects so much about both characters. It speaks to Lew’s dogged persistence combined with creeping forgetfulness, and it also illustrates Andy’s infinite patience. I also think the joke plays with the viewers’ expectations of how a scene is structured. We’re so used to scenes in which a character lists a series of good reasons to do or think something, that there’s something startling and refreshing about a scene with the rhythm but not the content of such a list.

Of course, if you don’t find the exchange amusing, then that is also a valid answer to the puzzle. Why does the joke work? “It doesn’t” is also an answer. (I still think it’s funny.)

Lunch: Universal Studios salad bar and a very dry granola bar that caused me to have an impressive coughing fit in the writers’ room.

Well, gentle readers, you will notice that I’m actually posting this very late on Sunday night. Although it is late, I wanted to post a tidbit for you! You know how, in a short story you might write something like this?

“You two,” the Sheriff began, looking back and forth between the two men, “have a great deal of explaining to do.”

That technique, of splitting the dialogue to suggest a pause or simply to create suspense, might feel like something that’s very specific to prose writing. Screenwriting by its very nature is about the raw dialogue, after all.

But look. You can create exactly the same effect in a script just by doing this:

SHERIFF
You two…
(looking back and forth between the two men)
…have a great deal of explaining to do.

It’s a little unorthodox to put an action in a parenthetical like this. Technically it should be a stage direction, but I think that doing it this way more clearly recreates the pacing and intent of the prose. And if you can make reading your spec feel like reading a short story, you’ve just made it transparent, readable, enjoyable in a way that scripts often are not. And can’t you just hear the Sheriff’s slow boil?

By the way, use this sparingly. It’s a spice, not a sandwich. Too much, and the script will start to feel choppy and labored. Just here and there, please.

Lunch: Buffet City again! Coconut shrimp and prawns with cheese and loquats and other wonderful items!

I just got the best letter, gentle readers. Seriously, this is one to frame. A regular reader, Amanda from Los Angeles, writes to let us know that she has landed an agent! At a big agency, too. This is a huge accomplishment! Cue the party music, but not too loud, because she’s going to tell you what the key was:

…My Office spec took me a month to write and I’m so glad I took my time to make it right. I studied four produced scripts (as you recommended), and I spent a LONG time finding the averages: how many jokes per page, how many scenes per act, how many talking heads, how many pages in the cold open and the tag, etc. That way, when my spec was done, I could hold it up to the averages of the produced scripts. It helped a lot to approach the script that way.”

YES! That’s exactly right. That is *exactly* the way to do it. Study those produced scripts, people! They’ll help you make a spec that feels so real that your readers will forget it’s a spec. Make them believe it’s a produced episode they happened to miss. The only way to do that is to be authentic. Even if your reader isn’t terribly familiar with the show, there’s something about getting it *right* that just shines off the page. (And I can pretty much promise you that with a show like The Office, your reader will be very familiar with it.)

I love that she didn’t just count scenes and pages and jokes, as I have indeed recommended, but that she also categorized the *kinds* of scenes. As she mentions, The Office has those “talking head” scenes. And I bet Amanda didn’t just count them. I bet she also checked on how many other scenes, on average, separate the talking head scenes — are there ever two that are adjacent? I believe there are, actually, but I’m not certain. See why you need the produced scripts?

I had a friend when I was starting out, who prided herself on the speed with which she wrote specs. Problem is, no one can smell the speed on your script. Slow down and do the math — or at least, the counting. Take a month, take two or three.

Amanda took her time, made a script that smelled not of speed but of Steve Carell, and look what it got her: a shiny agent all her own!

Lunch: tortilla soup and a Caesar salad from Mexicali

I know from your letters, gentle readers, that many of you have ethnic and cultural backgrounds that aren’t currently overwhelmingly represented on the writing staffs of television shows. Does this help you or hurt you? Well, probably a little of both. “Diverse” writers are under-represented precisely because they haven’t been hired. On the other hand, there are some efforts being made to fix the sitch.

The ABC/Disney program, for example, has as one of its stated goals, “to employ culturally and ethnically diverse talent.” Also, show runners can get a financial break for employing diverse writers. If this is you, I recommend that you mention your background on any application for a writing program, and I also recommend that you mention it in any cover letter to a prospective agent.

Does this mean that you straight white males should despair? Not at all. And to answer a question in a recent letter, there’s no need to fake a disability or a sexual preference. I think that could be a very dangerous, although quite possibly hilarious, route. And it wouldn’t help anyway. I am told that there is no financial break for show runners employing writers in those groups.

There may be a few new doors now open to some writers, but that doesn’t mean that any of the old doors have closed. ABC/Disney encourages diverse applicants, but also has admitted many white writers, including straight white male writers, in the past.

This is a very hard business to get into. The hurdles are high, the open doors are few, and the metaphors are mixed. Anyone who gets hired can be assumed to have talent. So I encourage *all* of you to look for any open door you can find. And once you’re in… stretch a hand back through and help others follow you.

Lunch: a chicken-cheese omelet and a waffle

I don’t normally like to tell tales from the writers’ room in this blog, gentle readers. But I do have to let you in on this. Every day, at 4:15, guess what happens in the writers’ room at Eureka? Automatically, apparently unbidden, bowl after bowl of hot fresh buttery microwave popcorn is loaded onto the table in the writers’ room. Every day.

That is just *one* of the reasons that you guys should keep polishing those spec scripts!

Speaking of your spec, let’s talk stage directions for a moment. You’ve probably figured out that I’m a big fan of them. I’m always telling you to make them poetic, to use them to convey a sense of style, of fluid storytelling, to do the work that visuals do in a produced episode. However, they do slow down a read, and you need to be careful not to overuse them.

Let’s imagine, for example, that you have scripted the following moment (this is adapted from a moment in last week’s episode of The Office):

MICHAEL
Wouldn’t you ladies like a male stripper at your party?

The camera finds the owner of the voice — it’s MEREDITH.

In my opinion, this reads better without all the information about how you intend it to be shot — without the indication that the speaker is off-camera, and without the stage direction. Like this:

MICHAEL
Wouldn’t you ladies like a male stripper at your party?

MEREDITH
Shut the hell up, Angela!

The joke still plays, and it reads cleaner, quicker, and I think funnier, without the indicated direction. I think the second option is preferable, even though the reveal of the usually quiet Meredith was very funny in the produced episode.

It can be tempting to use directions all the time, in order to transfer the episode as it exists in your head, into someone else’s head, but you have to be careful not to try to stuff too much in there. You’re auditioning for the role of writer, after all, not director.

Lunch: chicken piccata with mashed potatoes and broccoli

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