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Suppose you walked into a room and found me in the middle of a conversation with someone else. You didn’t hear what he just said, but you heard my reply. You heard me say:

What? He fired you? When?
or
Well, I think you’re the one who’s cheap!
or
I’m not going to steal for you even if we are still married!
or
Mom said I could have some!
or
I don’t know what you have, but that’s not a mosquito bite.

In each case, you have a very good idea of what the other person in the room just said. You know something about both characters and the nature of their interaction, with one line. A scene that starts with a line like these — a reaction line — catches your interest fast and plunks you down in the middle of the relationship. Sure, you could start the scene with “I think I have a mosquito bite.” Or you could get all the same info in half the time.

I use this all the time. All the time. I don’t even think about it and wasn’t consciously aware of it until I started looking for it. Here’s one from a recent script. The scene starts with this line:

SHADY GUY
I promised you a half-ton of frozen fish. That’s a half-ton of frozen fish.

When we hear that, we know that the previous line was some kind of protest about whether or not Shady Guy met his end of the bargain. We’ve established the attitude of both characters by the end of line.

As you look through your own writing, you may very well discover that you’ve been doing this automatically, too. If not, try knocking off a few opening lines, see if it doesn’t jump-start the scene!

Lunch: Leftover Thai food. Garlic noodles are better the second day.

There’s a funny book called “Artistic Differences” by Charlie Hauck, which is a novelized account of working as a television comedy writer. I read it years ago and I remember enjoying it a great deal. It spins out into fantasy toward the end, but the stuff early on is gripping in its truthfulness.

I don’t seem to own a copy any more, and I can’t find excerpts on line, but I seem to remember a certain list in the book. It was a list of signs that you’re working on a bad sitcom. I might have this quote slightly wrong, but I remember that the gist of one of the listed signs was “You’re on a bad sitcom if characters use the word ‘bingo’ to mean ‘yes.'”

Well, yes. No one is going to laugh, hearing someone say “bingo” instead of “yes,” or “you got it.” It’s not a joke. And it doesn’t help define a character except to suggest a certain flippancy which most sitcom characters have built-in anyway. And it’s not novel. We’ve all heard it before. AND YET…

I’m not sure I’ve ever worked on a sitcom in which someone HASN’T used “bingo” in exactly this way, at least in some stage of some draft.

Here’s how that happens. When a roomful of writers is punching up a script, they’re looking for any way to put a comedic twist on every line they can. And the little humorless “yes” is unlikely to escape untwisted. We all know it’s not a big laugh, but the “bingo” seems to add… hmm… flavor, you know? And ever since I read that list, I’ve cringed when I’ve seen it make its way into the script. It feels so cheap now. So limp and exhausted and “written.”

As you’re going through your own spec script, watch out for these little temptations. Bingo and its friends. A room full of exhausted writers trying to wring every chuckle out of tomorrow’s run-through may end up with “bingo.” And I don’t blame them one bit. But if you find yourself putting in tired old twists like this, dig a little deeper, see if you can find something new. Your spec is a sparkly thing, treat it well.

Lunch: Mm. Thai food. Sticky rice and pad thai and tofu salad and basil chicken and thai ice tea. Now that everyone has peanut allergies, should we worry about the future of Thai food? I wonder.

Remember earlier this year on Project Runway when the contestants were asked to design something for Banana Republic? There was this distinct vibe from some of them, like they were above designing clothes that might show up in a display case at a mall. On the runway, when the final product was criticized, you had the feeling some of them were all, yeah, well, it’s crap. That’s what you wanted, right? And others (Santino) presented totally non-Banana clothes with the attitude, I love this and this is what Banana Republic SHOULD be doing. Neither approach was entirely successful.

There’s a completely analogous situation that you might find yourself facing about now. What do you do if the show that you’re specing has things about it that you don’t respect? In general, of course, you should only write specs for shows that you love, but this isn’t always possible. And even your favorite show might have some qualities that you don’t care for. Maybe the women are generally portrayed as decorative obstacles, or the dialogue is clunky, or the stories make logical jumps. What do you do, as the writer of a spec episode? Faithfully recreate crap, demonstrating your skills as chameleon? Or make it better, at the cost of no longer “sounding like the show”?

Take the second path, the Santino path, but walk it carefully. The truth is that chameleonship is an important skill, but it’s only one skill and there will be plenty of opportunities to show it off throughout your spec. The ability to create a great story with sparkling dialogue – that’s at least two skills that you desperately need to demonstrate, and you can’t forgo any chance of making that happen.

There have been a number of times when I’ve read the spec of a young writer as a favor. Often, I’m reading a spec of a show I don’t know terribly well. Then, when I criticize some element of the script, I’m told “but that’s how they do it on the show.” Okay, but if the show-runner / agent / fellowship judge doesn’t know the show any better than I do, they’re going to have the same problem.

Note that I’m not saying to make your script an editorial comment on the show; don’t make it all about correcting a problem. Avoiding the issue is smarter than confronting it, usually. If you don’t like one of the characters, simply minimize his or her involvement in the story. If the dialogue is clunky, make it slightly more natural, but don’t take it so far that you’ve created completely new voices. It’s a difficult line to walk, of course, and it’s all entirely subjective, but do your best. Ideally you should still “sound like the show,” but better. Like the episode they’d do on their very best day.

Of course the beautiful irony is that once you’re actually hired on a show, the other path is usually the wiser one!

Lunch: Noodles in an asian sauce that I improvised with hot-and-sour soup mix, soy sauce, lemon juice and siracha sauce. Ooh!

I did the most interesting thing yesterday. I’ve been trying to research a fact about the history of the MGM lot. Internet searching revealed nothing, so I set out to find where that kind of information could be found. I ended up at the Margaret Herrick library at the Motion Picture Academy.

If you know LA, the building I’m talking about is the big one on the corner of Olympic and La Cienaga. I think it looks like a Morman Temple, but I’m told I’m wrong — it is, apparently, “Italianate.” Whatever, it’s big and beige and churchy. The library is inside, open to anyone with an ID. It’s full of silent people in cotton gloves, looking through old publicity stills. And others, without the gloves, studying old files of clippings or massive books containing collections of old issues of Variety and Hollywood Reporter. I spent a delightful afternoon looking at, among other sources, 1947 issues of “The Lion’s Roar,” the internal newsletter of the MGM studio. The librarians are eager to help, and know everything about everything. The one who helped me, was cited in the acknowledgments of one of the books she helped me locate.

What’s striking is how little the business has changed. I was looking through Hollywood Reporter issues from 1950. It was certainly a snippier little publication than it is today, full of snide little gossip bites. (Reconstructed from memory: “Could it be that a long-legged bird is circling the house of a certain movie star? A house where the sound of recent wedding bells is still echoing?” Oooh.) But the general issues remain the same. Who’s making money? What’s winning awards? What’s the newest threat to the industry?

There were delightful and distracting nuggets. Overhead shots of the old MGM studio revealed a sprawling and ornate backlot where homes and businesses lie now. The ridiculously young Ricardo Mantalban, fresh off starring performances at Fairfax High School, was being predicted as the newest Latin hearththrob. Lassie was listed as one of MGM’s major stars; Elizabeth Taylor, as one of its minor ones. The growing impact of television on every aspect of Hollywood life was debated, including its impact on the babysitting business, as more couples stayed home at night. Lucille Ball’s mother weighed in with memories of her daughter’s childhood. Fantastic stuff!

If you live near LA or if you’re going to visit, this is worth a trip. I never found what I was looking for, but I found a dozen things that made me happy I’d come. Check it out!

Lunch: One of those Turkey-Pesto sandwiches from Starbucks. These are strangely good. I think the secret might be loads of mayonnaise.

Hey there! I was talking with an executive this week who told me about the best spec pilot she had ever read. After you’ve written some specs for existing shows, you may want to write a spec for a show of your invention, so that you can show off your own original voice. Well, this particular spec pilot that she described was called “Depressed Roomies,” and was written by a writer named Charlie Kaufman who has subsequently shown himself to have a VERY original voice.

I was so intruiged by what she told me that I did a little looking, and instantly found the script online. Here. Take a look, just as a treat for yourself. It’s funny, totally original; it MOVES; it has jokes; it has distinct and funny and sympathetic characters. I felt like I was learning about pilot writing just by reading it. I suspect you will too!

Lunch: An avocado and heirloom-tomato on rye sandwich. Summer-y and nice.

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