For the comedy writers out there - here are a couple of gems. The Napoleon Dynamite script (which I’ve been periodically chasing for years). And the script for Pee-wee’s Big Adventure. Oh, also, I read the Get Him to the Greek script today - thought it was pretty funny.
I recently had a two hour phone meeting with script guru, Michael Hague. Over the course of the call we went deep into my story and the psychology of my main character.
It got a bit weird at one stage when I realised I’d put so much of myself into the character that we were basically talking about me. It turned into a psychotherapy session. Have a listen to this brief extract in which Michael cuts to the core of me/my main character:
I’ve been on a writing retreat in the North Queensland rainforest for the past month and all this writing time has got me thinking about “off” writing days – the ones where you seem to get “nothing” done – the ones that make you feel like a fraud. Like a loser. Like masturbating.
In a world ruled by the ideology of more today than yesterday, and more tomorrow than today, “off” time is generally considered negative. It’s unproductive, stuck time. Dead time. Frustrating time. Periods of “nothing” while you wait for “something”.
But there seems to be a fundamental problem here, because you simply can’t have the good without the bad. You can’t have on without off. You can’t have yin without yang.
Think of it like music.
Music a series of notes in a sequence, right? Well, it can also be understood as a series of spaces between notes. You can’t have a rhythm or melody without empty spaces of different lengths. In fact, the spaces are as important as the notes. You can’t have one without the other. You can’t have music without silence.
It’s the same with writing. The bad days allow the good to exist. So instead of seeing the off days as negative, perhaps we can see them as being part of the process.
But can we really be content with an “unproductive” writing day? Even as I write this I’m thinking it’s a load of crap. But there’s also some part of me that knows it’s just how things are. No amount of frustration is ever going to change the fact that I can’t be on all the time. I need to be off to be on, and vice versa – just like rhythm and melody.
My writing rhythm over a given week is going to be made up of a series of ons and offs, and if I can come to see the offs as being as valuable as the ons, then perhaps I can inch toward avoiding the pain, anguish and orgasms that come when I feel off.
Actually, it’s not about valuing them – it’s about accepting them. It’s about seeing the relatively empty part of the canvas as being as vital as the detailed part. If you look at a painting of a country house at night, the black sky is as fundamental to the painting as the glowing lights of the house. Without the empty space the meaning of the painting would be completely different. It wouldn’t be a little house on the night prairie. It’d be a little house in the sunshine. Or a little house among flying sugar sachets or whatever else replaced the empty night sky.
Nothing is something. So on those days when you’re actively working but seem to be getting “nothing” done, know that you are, in fact, getting something done – and, ultimately, that is everything and all you can do.
So Film Victoria have been kind enough to award me and my producer, Polly Staniford, outline to treatment funding for a new feature script. It totally rules. Here’s an Encore magazine article on the funding round.
Now all that’s left to do is write it. Easy, right?
Have you ever noticed that sometimes dreams have set-ups and pay-offs? I had one last night in which I was doing something or other when I saw a small group of people that looked like a cross between Devo and a diver from The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou – they had these coloured breathing apparatus on. They didn’t serve any real function in the rambling story of the dream – they were just there. I noticed them and moved on.
So the dream continues and I’m trying to outrun something. Anyway, I get to this cliff-edge and I have to jump off into the water. But guess what? I can’t because the group of divers are down there swimming around in the water!
So what’s going on here? If the story was being constructed by my brain, then how come I didn’t know that the divers were a set-up when I first saw them? It was like I was watching a story constructed by someone else and they wanted to establish that these divers exist in the world so that later on in the climax they could use them as an obstacle for the main character - me. See what I mean? It was good storytelling. Bad storytelling would have had the divers just appear in the end as deus ex machina.
But who is setting this stuff up? How come I experienced the story for the first time even though I had made it up? How did I not know that the divers would come back later? How can my brain be one step ahead of… my brain?
Well, I’ve been beavering away for a year or so on a script that I’ve not talked about in any detail on this blog (or anywhere online), but yesterday a friend pointed out that the synopsis is up on the Film Victoria site, so it seems there’s no point sitting on it any longer. Might as well put it out into the world.
It’s called Tinyband. I love it. Here’s the synopsis:
“Two rock musicians move to LA to make it big, only to find themselves mysteriously shrunk to the size of Ken dolls and thrust into the spotlight as the weeny-pop sensation, Tinyband. One falls into in denial that he’s tiny. The other falls in love with a normal-sized woman. The record company uses them as a promotional machine. Groupies use them as human dildos. It’s Spinal-Tap meets Step-Brothers, all reduced to the size of Chipmunks.”
I’m about to start a new draft, so hopefully I’ll have it done by mid-year. Then it’s really time to go into labour. Woot!
So my favourite comedy writer, Chris Morris, has just premiered his first feature film at Sundance. It’s called Four Lions and it looks shit hot.
I posted a clip from the film on Videosift and it shot to number 1. So hopefully that gives the film a weeny bit more buzz.
Yesterday I listened to an interview with Chris Morris in which he talked about making the film. As a comedy writer, I was particularly into his comments on staying with the funny:
“If the writing gets too far away from sitting around trying to make each other laugh then you’re in trouble. So I think that’s where you keep forcing funny ideas into the centre of the room. You can have a very rambling run-up to that point, but as long as that’s what you keep trying to do then you’re heading in the right direction”.
I totally get this. It’s so easy to get so caught-up in theme and structure that you lose the funny. It’s a fine balance, and I think it’s what makes writing comedy so difficult. You have to be aware of all of the intricate elements of good drama, PLUS it has to be funny!
But that’s not to underestimate the importance of craft. The “rambling run-up” Morris mentions refers to research and outlining. For me it’s important to get things sorted in my mind and in an outline so that when I start writing the script I can let go and have fun with it. If it keeps me laughing then I keep it going, but always with an eye to the spine that I’ve set up in the outline.
Anyway, I’m looking forward to tracking the progress of Four Lions.
Freelance copywriting subsidises my masochistic obsession with screenwriting. For a long while I’ve justified it by focusing on how writing copy benefits my screenwriting craft.
Copy and screen writing are similar in that you’re always presented with too much information and it’s your job to find the spine of the thing. In both forms you need to whittle infinite possibilities down to a sharp point. But I recently realised another similarity between copy and screen writing that I think is pretty interesting - it’s got to do with tone and character.
The other day I was writing some copy for the Mitre 10 hardware and the biggest challenge was getting the tone right. How does Mitre 10 speak? How does Mitre 10 behave when engaging with the world? This stuff has to be clear because a brand is more than a business, it’s something people have a relationship with, and like our human friends and colleagues, a brand should have a way of speaking and acting that is consistent and identifiable. Your mum acts differently from day to day, but underneath there are fundamentals to her character that remain fairly constant. Same goes for a brand.
In the advertising world the character of a brand is kept on track through the “style guide” — a document that outlines key words, colours, fonts and designs that should remain consistent. It’s not too dissimilar to a script outline.
One of the quickest ways to fuck up an early screenplay draft is to go charging in before you’ve got your characters figured out. So a thoughtful writer will create an outline (and perhaps character breakdowns) that establishes who their characters are before they start making them interact with an imagined world.
Creating brands is like creating characters.
So while I’d rather be writing for the screen everyday, I can see how writing copy can inform and hone my screenwriting skills. So if you’re a writer wrestling with the perennial dilemma of whether you should take a job at the periphery of the film industry as a way in, or take something outside the industry but vaguely writing-related, then I’d consider the merits of the latter. At least that’s how I’m justifying the precious hours I have to burn in order to afford to sit down and write for the screen.
John Pace is me. I'm a Melbourne-based screenwriter drawn to write broad, bent comedies. I also write and direct ads and short films. I hope you've found something either useful or irritating on this site. For queries and random attacks contact: john (at) howlingpictures (dot) com
