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More from the mailbag. Sometimes, I get letters from the most amazing people. Daniel Wallace, who wrote the book Big Fish, which became the movie Big Fish, wrote to say he likes this humble blog – how cool is that? Check out danielwallace.org for more on him and his work. Great stuff!

Less famous ’round these parts is Monty Lo, the Hong Kong-based author of a kids’ graphic novel called Captain Fried Rice. The book itself is a thick horizontally-arranged number with parallel text in Chinese and English, about a boy who has super powers only when he eats with impeccable table manners. Wild! Monty recommends spicy thai chicken feet and durian, thinking I might not have tried them. He compares the spiky appearance of durian with the demonic version of Doyle’s face from Angel. Gotta love that. But, oh, Monty, I am no stranger to the stinky creamy goodness of durian. And I have had chicken feet, although not the boneless variety you describe in your letter. (Isn’t it nice when people know the sort of thing that’s going to provoke my genuine interest?)

Finally, Lilia from Houston, who writes of many things, includes a discussion of a number of problems with The Da Vinci Code. She provides an interesting analysis, with a specific point that I want to discuss more. She says:

“The author has Wizard of Oz syndrome, in which all the pretty characters are good and all the ugly ones are bad.”

Nice observation, Lilia. It’s really shocking the degree to which this particular rule is applied, not just in art, but in our actual interactions with the world. Positive qualities get attributed to attractive people. Negative ones to unattractive people. And it sucks. It sucks both if you’re an ugly person trying to get respect for your good qualities, and if you’re a pretty person seeking to discourage unwanted attention with your evilness.

When television writers apply this rule, of course, they are relying on human nature to do some of the work of characterization for them. Which saves time and space. If the fat guy is greedy, the short guy is petty, and the ugly woman is clingy, you don’t have to do a whole lot of set up and explaining. Conditioning has the audience half-expecting those traits anyway. Another word for this sort of expediency is laziness. A clichéd description is just as bad as any other sort of cliché.

In a spec, you don’t tend to rely on physical appearance as much as in a produced script. Your reader doesn’t see a bald actor. But they do still read your description of the character as a bald man. And if you’re using that trait as a sort of shorthand to suggest a character trait, then you’re missing a chance to execute a trick of much higher difficulty – making the character’s words and actions do that work. And any chance you have to show off a difficult trick – you should take it. A spec is an excuse to show off. Take it!

Lunch: a goat cheese and greens sandwich. Accompanied by a salad that was identical to the contents of the salad. Good but redundant.

(A final word to letter-writers. Although I was tickled to look through a comic book from Hong Kong, that was pretty much the one exception. I cannot read your specs, or fan fic or screenplays or plays, or even scripts for shows that are no longer on the air. This protects you, and it protects me and my time. )

We’re in for a treat today! Jeff Greenstein, the extraordinary showrunner/writer (Dream On, Partners, Will & Grace, Jake in Progress…) has been persuaded by this very blog to compile his favorite episode titles of the ones he has written. I adore this list and I thought you all might enjoy it too!

“Lows in the Mid-Eighties.” A flashback to 1985: Will and Grace have been dating for six weeks, and Will is increasingly certain he’s gay. When he finally comes out to Grace, it nearly ends their friendship. David Kohan told me at the wrap party he thought it was the best title we ever had. Certainly it was one of the few that didn’t contain a gay pun.

“Polk Defeats Truman.” My very first W&G, with a suitably smarty-pants title. A hubristic Will Truman cuts loose all his faithful clients in order to service wealthy Harlan Polk (serendipitously, the character was already named that when I got there!); shortly thereafter, Polk cuts Will loose, and Will’s business collapses. I even Photoshopped the famous photo for the script cover. These are the sorts of things you do when you’re in a new job and are trying to impress people.

“The Weekend at the College Didn’t Turn Out Like They Planned.” This was the last of my Dream Ons, the longest episode title in the history of the series, the longest episode title I’ve ever seen, and a cool steal from a Steely Dan lyric (it’s from “Reelin’ in the Years”). When Martin and Judith take son Jeremy to visit Ithaca College, Martin and Judith end up sleeping together, rekindling their relationship; meanwhile, Jeremy thinks a hot coed has blatantly offered to sleep with him, but she definitely, definitely hasn’t, and much embarrassment ensues.

“One Ball, Two Strikes.” Also Dream On. Martin’s obnoxious boss Gibby (Michael McKean) is convinced that all of his failures with women stem from the fact that he has only one testicle. Seriously. One of the funniest scripts I’ve ever been involved with (and the whole thing was David Crane’s crazy idea). “It makes them ill, you see — the thought of a man with only one plum in his lunch sack.”

Dream On had lots of great titles, many of them smart parodies: “Three Coins in the Dryer” (Martin finds romance in the laundry room); “The Rocky Marriage Picture Show” (a photo album prompts Martin and Judith to revisit scenes from their stormy relationship); “The Trojan War” (Martin and a girlfriend debate whether to get an AIDS test so they can stop using condoms); “The Undergraduate” (Martin dates a college girl, then falls for her mother)…

All the Partners episode titles were questions, an idea I stole from a Garson Kanin novel, Cordelia? Hence gems like “‘Why are the Blumenthals living in my house?” “Who’s afraid of Ron and Cindy Wolfe?” “Soup or a movie?” and the inevitable series finale, “Will you marry me?”

The much-discussed Friends “The One…” bit initially hamstrung any writer’s attempt to make a title interesting, but once Jeff & I entitled an episode “The One with the East German Laundry Detergent,” all bets were off. And I loved that they called their hundredth episode “The One Hundredth.”

Thank you, Jeff! Well, gentle readers, I think I’m going to have to work on a similar list myself! Stay tuned!

Lunch: the “kung pao spaghetti” from California Pizza Kitchen

Someone I know sends out a semi-regular email questionnaire with really cool thought-provoking questions. The most recent one asked what the reader would call their first album, should they ever have one. It’s one of those questions where you think you’re talking about a trivial physical object, and then you realize you’re being asked to summarize your own soul. Titles are huge.

The lovely Jeff Greenstein (our showrunner at Jake in Progress, with whom I had a delightful lunch today), had a standing rule that an episode title should not be the title of a preexisting work. Until he let me call my episode “The Two Jakes.”

I think he must be almost the only showrunner with that rule, since finding a name of a pre-existing book or movie or popular song or Shakespeare play that fits your episode is, of course, a classic trick. Sometimes a twist or a pun is added (allowing the title to skirt Jeff’s rule). As a variant, sometimes the reference is to a *quote* from a pre-existing work. Titles like this, that refer to previous works, are so common, in fact, that this blog entry will talk only about titles of this type.

Here’s how common it is: the first 13 eps of Battlestar include ones called “You Can’t Go Home Again,” “Six Degrees of Separation,” and “Tigh Me Up, Tigh Me Down.” (which focuses on the character of Colonel Tigh.) House, which usually has very spare titles like “Kids” or “Autopsy,” has also had “Clueless,” “Failure to Communicate” and the especially amusing “TB or not TB.” Grey’s Anatomy eps include “A Hard Day’s Night,” “The First Cut is the Deepest,” and “Shake your Groove Thing.” One Buffy episode title is even a play on a product name! (“Life Serial”)

Note that it’s best if you don’t have to reach too far for the title. “Devil in a Blue Dress” might be a cool title, but not if you have to painfully insert both a devil and a blue dress into the episode just to make it make sense. On the other hand, if the title is SUPER cool, it might be worth a BIT of a stretch. The fact that the Frasier ep “Miracle on Third or Fourth Street” required that Frasier be unable to recall the street number, somehow made it even more charming.

You can even use titles like these as part of your I-need-an-idea-for-a-spec brainstorming. Since Grey’s Anat seems to use a lot of song titles, it wouldn’t be insane, if you want to write a Grey’s spec, to write down every song title you can think of, and then use that list as part of your brainstorming process as you’re casting about for stories. What would an episode called “You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman” look like? Hmm.

So why would Jeff have a standing rule against these types of titles? Here’s what he says: “Look at Aaron Sorkin’s West Wing titles. They’re all provocative, interesting, distinctive, memorable, and not one of them is the title of something else.” I looked them up, and he’s right. These West Wing titles include: “Five Votes Down,” “Let Bartlett be Bartlett,” and “What Kind of Day Has it Been.” And it occurs to me that another reason to abjure name’s-the-same titles is because the practice helps reinforce the idea that television is the lesser medium, eating the crumbs that fall from the corners of the mouths of Motion Pictures.

By the way, while we’re on this topic, one of my regrets in this career has to do with the title of my Ellen episode, in which she sleeps with her girlfriend for the first time and finds herself feeling shy and reluctant and virginal. It was called “Like a Virgin.” But I wish I had called it “Maidenhead Revisited.” Classier. In other words, don’t jump on the first virgin that walks by. Think it over, make sure you’ve got the best title for your spec. And consider Jeff’s advice… maybe there’s something even better than someone else’s slightly-used title.

Lunch: Spicy BBQ chicken from Ribs USA! And the leftovers will make an excellent dinner, too!

On Monday morning, gentle readers, I am headed off to a new job. I’m going to be on the staff of the new Andy Richter comedy “Andy Barker, PI.” I’m so excited – the pilot is great and I think it’s going to be a really strong show. The new staff had our first get-to-know-you dinner last night, and I can report that it’s a fun and accomplished group. The new schedule will mean I’m going to be a lot busier all of a sudden, and the blogging frequency may drop a bit – from once a day to once or twice a week, but I’m going to be here as much as I possibly can, my friends.

I’m way behind on addressing all the fine questions that arrive in the mail – I love these! And I wanted to talk about what may be the most delightful one yet. Jenn in L.A. asks “How do you deal with henchmen?” Oh my. Well, I punish them harshly if they fail to protect my mountain lair.

She explains what she means: “Lots of times in Buffy, she’ll come across a cluster of vampires, only one of whom has a speaking role. Still, the rest of these vamps might appear throughout the episode / die in interesting ways. How do you keep them alive on the page without taking up too much space?”

Thanks Jenn! That’s an interesting question. And, I should note, it’s not just relevant to Buffy and similar shows with an action element. Doctors, for example, might have to break some hard news to a gathering of a patient’s family members, and those might also be characters that reappear throughout the episode. This is a very similar situation since, again, it’s likely that only one of the group will have a speaking role. (You have to pay people a lot more to speak – even if it’s only one line – and writers will go to great lengths to keep extra characters from piping up.) For the sake of making me laugh, let’s continue to refer to these silent supporting characters as “henchmen.”

Usually, these kinds of characters don’t really get names, just the barest of labels. Here’s a chunk of stage direction (I believe this was written by the impressive David Fury) from a Buffy episode in which she fights some silent henchmen-types. Note that in this case there was no central speaking villain, just a band of silent equals:

—

BACK ON BUFFY as she is about to engage the Monster. When she hears a SNARL and turns to see ANOTHER ONE on her right.

NEW ANGLE as she takes a step back, sizing up the beasts, when a THIRD MONSTER leaps in behind her. She’s surrounded.

She spins around, catching the third monster in the head with a roundhouse kick. MONSTER #3 is knocked back as MONSTERS #1 and #2 charge her.

—

If you want to give them each visual defining characteristics, these could well have been called “bumpy-headed monster,” “extra-strong monster” and, I dunno, “mangy-furred monster” or something.

In our analogous doctor show, you could imagine something very similar:

—

BACK ON HOUSE as he straightens up from questioning the patient’s DEVASTATED MOTHER. He hears a CLEARED THROAT and turns to see the patient’s ANGRY-LOOKING SISTER on his right.

NEW ANGLE as he takes a step back, sizing up the sister, when a RED-EYED BROTHER steps in behind him. He’s surrounded.

—

At this point, he might dodge through the group to the safety of his office. Buffy’s roundhouse kick is cool, but House has got that bum leg…

Now, as the writer, you can just refer to ANGRY-LOOKING SISTER and RED-EYED BROTHER as being present in any scene in which you need them to be standing around silently. That’s all you need to do to keep them alive on the page. If they had importance to the story, you’d give them names and lines. But since henchmen really are just there to fill up the room, you should spend as little ink as possible on them. Similarly, if the Monsters in the Buffy story stuck around, you’d simply mention in stage directions something like “the three MONSTERS from earlier glare at Buffy from across the crypt.” Nothing more is needed.

Note that you can also fill up scenes with extras just by mentioning: “The deli is moderately busy” or “The halls are full of students.” Silent people are pretty cheap when producing an episode, and even cheaper in a spec.

Lunch: chicken and salsa in scrambled eggs

There’s a very funny joke on the always interesting Bob Harris blog today. Put in script format, and adapted into, oh, say… a House spec, it would go like this:

Cutty looks up from reading the newspaper.

CUTTY
Why would Rush Limbaugh take Viagra to the Dominican Republic?

HOUSE
To keep his pants up?

Haw! I love it. And I simply *must* discuss this unusual joke form distinguished by a punchline lifted from another joke. Delightful. I was sure I’d occasionally seen other jokes of this type, but I couldn’t recall specific examples.

And yet my mind was fizzing with that feeling of recognized similarity. I finally realized that I was being reminded of the amazing cartoons at Spamusement.com. Have you seen these? They’re cartoons fitted to the subject lines of actual spam emails. Just like the Bob Harris joke, these rely on the humor of working around a pre-existing punch line. I love these cartoons. I’m helpless in their grasp.

But what is it that makes this type of humor so irresistible? Personally, I think it’s because these jokes have a perceived high level of difficulty. It’s like the difference between a prop comic who uses custom-made props, versus an improv guy who has to make funny out of whatever bizarre unexpected object he’s handed. You laugh more at the improv guy because you’re giving him credit for the harder job of being fast and adaptable. As a script writer, you create the illusion of spontaneity. And a joke like this makes you seem really quick and clever, no matter how long you labor over it to get it just right.

If I were teaching a class, I think I’d give an assignment: come up with a new set-up for “to get to the other side.” I bet we’d have some great ones.

Afterthought. After I wrote this it occurred to me that if this were in an actual House script, House’s line might very well be prefaced with “Wait. I know this one…” It feels slightly more like him that way, don’t you think?

Lunch: eggplant stew over tofu noodles.

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