JaneEspenson.com

That recent post about the importance of having original specs, as opposed to specs for existing shows, cited one important exception. The Office. It is, right now, the ubiquitous comedy spec, so I want to talk about the special problems that accompany writing the same show as everyone else.

First, I want to mention that this all takes me back to when I was starting out. I attended a UCLA extension course on television writing during my first year in LA. The guy running the course asked us how many of us had Seinfeld specs. Every single hand went up — at least a hundred Seinfeld specs were represented in that room that night. I myself had *two* Seinfeld specs and should have raised both my hands. As The Office is now, it was simply the spec that every single comedy writer had. You know what I would love to see? A collection of the old Seinfeld specs of every high-level comedy writer working today. Because they all had them.

Anyway, keep the ubiquity in mind as you write your spec Office. Remember that it has to stand out from its siblings. And yet, it can’t be so outrageous, so unexpected, that it suggests that you’ve misread the source material. Big stories in spec scripts worry me, particularly for a show like this one that is about capturing small moments of personality. If a bus crashes into the building, I’m not seeing small moments anymore; they’ve been trumped by the Big Event. And I’ve lost the heart of the show. So make the emotions big — break someone’s heart, expose someone to ridicule, reignite joyous hope — but keep the events in the neighborhood of realism. Having to contain your sadness or your joy because you’re in the workplace doing something mundane… that’s powerful, it’s very “The Office,” and it doesn’t work if the workplace has been occupied by terrorists. (Remember that this doesn’t mean the actual show can’t tell these big stories — they get special leeway because they own the cameras.)

Not that you would do that. I’m just sayin’ that it can tend to be an impulse, when you know you’re writing a popular spec, to juice it up. Fine. Juice up the emotional content, not the event content. At least, that’s what I would do.

And, as long as we’re in the area, it occurs to me that some of you were undoubtedly in the middle of writing specs for existing drama shows when I put up that post about writing original pieces. Don’t stop what you were doing, please! Carry on. There is no reason to think that a spec for an existing show won’t be useful. There are certainly show runners who want to see exactly that. It’s simply that, right now, it probably shouldn’t be the only arrow in your quiver.

Lunch: leftover rice from the Persian place, with beans on top

You know one of the things I totally adore about The Office? Michael Scott is a really good salesman. He is an appalling boss, yes, but several times this year we have seen him sell paper really, really well. Every time it happens, I fall in love with the show all over again.

Michael is the embodiment of the Peter Principle. His competence as a salesman clearly got him promoted into exactly the job he cannot do. If he wasn’t a good salesman, we’d be wondering how he got his job at all. But the fact that Michael’s salesmanship makes logical sense isn’t the reason I love it. The fact that Michael is good at something makes him much realer, and *that* is what I love. Once I realized he could be competent, I wasn’t only more sympathetic toward him, but I also *believed* in him more. He was more like a real person, with lovely layers and contradictions and complexity. Wrinkles.

On The Office, these Michael moments have been lovely but small. However, moments in which unexpected – but plausible – traits are revealed in established characters are often among the most memorable moments in the history of a show. Sometimes, in fact, these moments are enormous, and get accomplished in “special episodes,” like Archie and Mike (“Meathead”) talking while locked in the basement on All In The Family, an episode that revealed a sympathetic, more humane Archie. This would be too heavy, too non-standard, for a spec. But often these moments are just right… they occur in ordinary episodes… the very best ordinary episodes. These are episodes that would have made the most wonderful spec scripts.

For example, the best-loved episode of Mary Tyler Moore is probably the one in which sweet, proper Mary laughs at a funeral. One of my all-time favorite M*A*S*H episodes is the one in which close-fisted Charles secretly makes a generous Christmas donation to the war orphans. The best episode of Lou Grant, in my opinion, is the one in which self-obsessed Rossi supports and listens to a colleague who is recovering from a rape — amazing television. And there was that stunner of a development on Battlestar last season, in which President Roslyn, our closest thing to a moral compass on that amazing show, tried to fix an election. It left me gasping.

Make a spec that does this, that reveals a shocking but believable new aspect to an established character… and you’ve really got something. Reveal the best part of your bad guy, the worst impulse of your hero, the serious side of your comic relief, the silliest moment of your stuffed-shirt or the paper-sellin’ soul of the incompetant boss. Go on, wrinkle ’em up.

Lunch: scrambled eggs with fried tortilla chips and hot sauce in ’em.

Let’s imagine that you’re reading a friend’s spec script, and there’s something in it that feels like a mistake. Let’s say it’s this weird scene transition. You thought that a scene was leading into another one in the same location at a later time, and then you realize that you’ve actually changed locations. It’s confusing.

So you give the note, saying that you found it confusing, jarring, and the writer says, “Good, because that’s what I was going for!” Well, yes, making something jarring on purpose is a thing you can do for a certain effect. A writer might very well want to employ it. But if it’s bothering the test audience enough that they’re mentioning it, that’ll mean it’ll bother the ultimate audience too, and then the writer won’t be there to explain that they like it like that.

If you’re the writer, and you’re getting a note like this, don’t feel like you’ve solved it just because you were able to convince you’re friends that you wanted that reaction. You really need to address it. Addressing it doesn’t always have to mean giving up on that special thing you were going for, either. Sometimes it’s just a matter of letting the readers know that what you’re doing really is a choice, not a mistake. If you really, really, want that transition, then you can actually say:

Caroline looks up from behind the wheel of her car at the cloudless New England sky, and then, suddenly, jarringly, we’re seeing RAINDROPS bouncing off the hood of a car — no, wait, it’s a pick-up truck, and that’s not Caroline behind the wheel. We realize that we’ve somehow been dropped into:

EXT. TEXAS RANCH

A WEATHERED-LOOKING COWBOY-TYPE wrestles his truck through the storm. Someone in the truck bed peeks out from under a mud-splashed canvas cover…

There. You told the reader that you want the change of location and conditions to be purposefully sudden and unexpected, and even, for a beat, confusing. You’ve managed that whisper in the ear of the reader, “I know, I know. I want it that way.”

Lunch: left-over Chinese food from P.D. House (I think it used to be called Panda House, but they lost the rights to the name somehow and painted out all of Panda except the P and the D. That’s what the sign looks like, anyway.)

Sometimes there’s something in your script that doesn’t *quite* stand up to logical questioning. Why didn’t the villain shoot the hero on the spot? Why didn’t the crew beam the alien directly into a holding cell? Why didn’t they rig that door, hide the treasure, have the pivotal conversation in the cab on the way home? In general, of course, you want to avoid stuff like this.

But…

The first priority is telling the emotional story. If there’s a little “buy” that the audience has to make in the logic of the piece, it’s often fine to simply allow it. Show runners, when they notice one of these little logic bumps, tend to turn to their staffs and ask: “Is the audience asking the question?” Sometimes the staff will decide they are. But often, it’s pretty clear, they are not. If they’re hooked into the bigger stakes, they’re along for the ride and they’re not asking why the hero’s wife seems to know where he is when we never actually saw her get that information — or whatever the issue is.

If there’s no cost to patching the logic, of course, do it. A spec script is your chance to present something that’s as close to perfect as it can be, and sloppy logic isn’t ideal. If it can be fixed without long labored dialogue or damage to the emotional arc, do it.

And if you can’t fix it, sometimes you can get good results by simply acknowledging the problem. This is called “hanging a lantern” on the problem. By this I mean something like having a character say, “Damn, we should’ve beamed him right into a holding cell!” This will at least let the audience feel that the issue has been addressed. I love this solution myself because it often adds a humorous – and human – moment right when you need one.

And then there’s the fudge. You know how that goes. It’s a sort of half-fix that seems to address the problem unless you look at it too closely. Have a henchman working in a way that seems to run counter to his boss’s plan? Well… the henchman misunderstood the plan. Sure. Good enough.

You’ll have to decide, of course, on a case-by-case basis, whether a logic problem needs to be eliminated, acknowledged, fudged or ignored, but it’s worth noting that those are all valid options. You don’t have to be on a water-tight ship to get where you’re going if you don’t mind getting a little bit damp.

Lunch: warm fresh-baked cornbread with butter and honey, and grapefruit picked fresh off the tree.

I was at my local coffee shop just now where they’re stocking lots of mugs and coffee kits or whatever, hoping for holiday sales. My eye fell upon a mug that read “Happiness is a Journey not a Destination”. I was filled with sadness/anger. That is too meaningful a sentiment to fall into common usage. I suppose it’s too late, but that is not a thought that I want to see degenerate into meaningless syllables through overuse. I suppose, if it does (or already has), as least it has the virtue of being true, unlike “Everything Happens for a Reason,” which is both untrue and dangerous. Really, have you ever heard a slogan that argues more against the concept of free will? Against any notion of self-determination, ambition or even charity, empathy, compassion? It’s just an inch away from “Nothing I Do Matters” and “Whatever Happens, You Deserved It,” and their neighbor “I Got Mine, You Get Yours.” Geez.

Thinking about world views like these isn’t a bad place to start looking for meaning for your spec scripts. After all, the thing that will make your spec stand out above all the others is that yours is going to MEAN something. What makes Groundhog Day a spectacular movie and not just a fun one is that isn’t really about time loops, it’s about living every day AS IF you had eternity in front of you… in fact, you could argue that Groundhog Day EQUALS Happiness is a Journey.

Your script shouldn’t preach. And it doesn’t have to be about a big principle either. It can be about a small observation. But it needs to be about something, and it would be nice if it was something you really believed. Think about your personal philosophy and the philosophies of the characters you’re writing about. What principles guide Gregory House? (“Compassion Blunts Excellence”? “Distance Lessens Pain”?) What events would bring out or test those guiding principles?

By the time you’re done writing, the meaningful underpinnings may be so subtle that the “about” is almost subconscious. But it’s going to serve you well to have it there.

Lunch: Udon with Mentaiko — do you know this? A hot Japanese noodle soup with a sort of casing full of fish roe in it? Like noodles with caviar. Fantastic.

« Older Entries

Newer Entries »