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Steve Kaplan’s Comedy Workshop Part 2 Author: Trevor Mayes Jun 09

Steve Kaplan Comedy IntensivePart 1 can be found here.

Steve Kaplan’s Comedy Intensive is hailed as “The Industry’s #1 Course on Comedy.”

This past weekend I had the opportunity to check it out. So this week I’m imparting a few of its key teachings to all you aspiring comedy writers out there.

Today I’ll tell you about another one of The Six Hidden Tools of Comedy that I found to be particularly useful.

Note: All of the examples are my own, based on my understanding of the material. For a definitive discussion of the concepts, you’ll need to take Kaplan’s workshop.

Metaphorical Relationship

A metaphor is when something literal is used in place of another to suggest a likeness between the two ideas. In film it can be used to great comedic effect.

Remember this scene from Planes, Trains and Automobiles?

The bedroom scene starts out looking like a classic moment where two lovers wake up together. While that’s obviously not what’s going on here, it suggests the bonding of these two friends, and we get an immediate understanding of the predicament they’re in. The result is pure hilarity.

There’s actually a double whammy of the Metaphorical Relationship in this scene. After the two characters leap out of bed, horrified, they go into a stilted discussion of football. It’s a metaphor for the stereotypical conversations that all red-blooded American males of course have.

More Examples

Suppose you have to create a scene in a living room where Friend A needs to tell Friend B about something that’s troubling him. If you played it straight, you might end up with just a couple of talking heads.

But what if, when the two friends walk into the room, Friend A lies down on the couch and Friend B sits next to him in a chair like a psychiatrist? When Friend A starts unburdening himself, Friend B says things like, “And how did that make you feel?”

Or suppose you had to write an office scene where your nervous protagonist is about to go in to an important meeting. What if he gets a pep talk from his coworker in the style of a cornerman giving advice to a boxer, complete with a swig of bottled water and a spit into a garbage can?

“I want you to go in there and keep the witty banter up, dodge those budget questions and pepper them with your statistical reports. This is your meeting! Got it?!”

***

This tool is just that — a tool. It doesn’t have to appear in every scene, but it can certainly help you craft a comic moment if you’re stuck for an approach to use.

Are there opportunities to ramp up the funny in your scenes by using a Metaphorical Relationship?

Note: There’s never a good substitute for taking a class yourself, so if any of the ideas posted here intrigue you, I encourage you to sign up for the workshop the next time it’s offered (December 4-5, 2010 in L.A.).

For more information go to www.kaplancomedy.com.

Need someone to review your screenplay? Please take a look at my script services.

Category: Comedy, My Experiences, Steve Kaplan  | Leave a Comment
Steve Kaplan’s Comedy Workshop Part 1 Author: Trevor Mayes Jun 07

Steve Kaplan Comedy IntensiveThis past weekend I attended Steve Kaplan’s Comedy Intensive workshop in Los Angeles.

He had some pretty nifty insights for comedy writers. So over the next few days I’ll try to decipher my chicken scratchings and post a few of the key things I learned or that I think you’ll find interesting.

The focus of day one was The Six Hidden Tools of Comedy. I’ll tell you about three of them that I thought were especially compelling.

First up…

Non-Hero

Great comedies tend to feature “an ordinary guy or gal, struggling against insurmountable odds, without many of the required tools to win, yet never giving up hope.”

Of course many great dramas also feature ordinary guys or gals struggling against insurmountable odds, but the main point he was making was that the comedy protagonist is so woefully unprepared as to be laughable.

Those characters in Tropic Thunder had zero actual skills to survive in the jungle. Whereas Schwarzenegger and his team in Predator were army commandos.

Paul Blart was just a mall cop, who had difficulty detaining an old man in a wheel chair. Whereas John McClane in Die Hard was a trained police officer with a gun.

And so on…

Does the protagonist of your comedy have too many skills at the outset? Is (s)he too aware of what’s going on? “In drama your characters know too much. In comedy they don’t know enough.”

***

Tomorrow I’ll go over another one of Steve Kaplan’s comedy tools — the “Metaphorical Relationship.”

Note: There’s never a good substitute for taking a class yourself, so if any of the ideas posted here intrigue you, I encourage you to sign up for the workshop the next time it’s offered.

For more information go to www.kaplancomedy.com.

Need someone to review your screenplay? Please take a look at my script services.

Category: Comedy, Humor, My Experiences, Steve Kaplan  | 3 Comments
Bad Parking and Screenwriting Author: Trevor Mayes Dec 24

“If a job is worth doing, it’s worth doing well.” – ProverbNot a Screenwriter

Holiday Hypothesis

Today I was out and about (or as my Canadian friends would say — “oat in a boat”), doing my usual last minute holiday shopping (God bless the inventor of gift certificates).

When I arrived back at my car, I noticed the person next to me had parked at a severely deranged angle1, effectively occupying space in two stalls. The person wasn’t attempting to prevent door dings — it was just a case of careless parking.

My first thought? “This person would never make it as a screenwriter.”

It’s All About Attitude

It occurred to me that there must be a correlation between bad parking and bad screenwriting.

As any screenwriter with a modicum of success will tell you, screenwriting is about striving for greatness. Taking great pride in what you do. Hollywood recycle bins are littered with scripts from writers who thought: “Ah it’s good enough.”

Making the Cut

Of the tens of thousands of spec screenplays written in 2009, only 436 spec scripts were circulated in Hollywood. Of that number, only 72 were sold — 72 out of possibly 50,000 scripts! That’s about 1 in 700.

To make the cut, your script has to be extraordinary. That means striving for perfection and never settling for a mediocre story beat, scene, punchline, hook, concept, title, structure, whatever. It means having that spark inside you that absolutely refuses to let your final draft be anything less than its best.

I believe that spark must be so great it suffuses who you are. It influences everything from your regular day job to the way you park your car. Essentially, any task that impacts others.

Conclusion

If “good enough” is still part of your vocabulary… If you could leave your car parked this way without thinking twice about it… I suspect screenwriting is not for you.

Time to sound off. Are there any screenwriters out there who are content to park like Stevie Wonder? Or does my hypothesis have merit?

  1. Note: The car shown in this post is not the same one that triggered my grand hypothesis. However, it is a fairly accurate representation. ↩
Category: My Experiences, Writing  | 3 Comments
Secret Panel Discussion Author: Trevor Mayes Dec 16

Secret PanelShhh, it’s a secret!

A few days ago, I attended a secret panel discussion of A-list screenwriters in Los Angeles. Technically, the meeting wasn’t a secret, but we were all told at the outset of the discussion to keep the content to ourselves — especially if we had blogs or were reporters.

Well that put a damper on things.

But all is not lost. I’ve decided to post a few general insights from the panel. The intent of the privacy request was to keep secret those intimate and sometimes unfortunate incidents that were discussed that may get the writers into hot water with some Hollywood big wigs.

So by not revealing the specifics of certain anecdotes, or even who told them, I don’t feel I’m betraying that confidence… At least that’s what will allow me to sleep tonight.

Incubation

One of the new dirty words (for screenwriters), in this new cash-strapped Hollywood, is “Incubation.” It’s a disturbing new trend that’s quickly becoming commonplace.

It’s where writers are asked by production companies to work full-time on rewrites for several months or more without any type of payment for their writing services and no guarantee of an eventual sale. One of the writers said his friend was in incubation for a year and a half!

I’ve had producers flat out tell me that I should never work for free. While that may be extreme — so is working for over a year without any compensation.

I think everyone needs to set their own maximum limits before entering an incubation period, and then stick to their guns. Otherwise, what will happen is a development executive will tell you “just one more month”… and then they’ll recite that mantra every single month. Before you know it, you will have invested too much time to quit. So watch out!

Page-One Rewrites Days Ahead of Filming

Something I found curious was that a many of the writers had experiences rewriting the entire script of a movie just days in advance of production.

I’ve always known that many big Hollywood movies have their scripts thrown out weeks before shooting and are given page-one rewrites. I was also already aware that many individual scenes are rewritten sometimes “on the day.”

What surprised me was that on some very big tent-pole movies, the entire script was being rewritten with only 1, 2 or 3 days lead time of shooting the actual scenes. And these were some fairly complex stories!

Pitching

Writers aren’t typically great pitchers. They don’t like to take center stage — that’s why they’re writers!

The cool thing is that there will be times when you’ve just bumbled your way through a terrible pitch meeting thinking that you’ll never work in this town again, only to discover days later that you got the writing assignment.

Execs don’t expect you to be experts at the pitch (though if you’re a naturally good at it — that certainly helps). They just need you to know your stuff. You need to be the script expert and the fountain of ideas. That will get you noticed, and represents your best chance for getting the sale or the writing assignment.

Category: General, Industry Advice, My Experiences  | 2 Comments
The Creative Screenwriting Cyberspace Open – Part 2 Author: Trevor Mayes Nov 19

Cyberspace Open

Recap

A couple of weeks ago I wrote an article about my experience in the first round of the Creative Screenwriting Cyberspace Open writing tournament. After spending a weekend crafting a decent five page scene, I had made it to the quarterfinals.

Round Two

I was feeling good heading in to round two. 16 hours to complete the next assignment? Pshaw — piece of cake. I eat stress for breakfast.

The rules of round two were simple — you would be given a story premise at 5 PM and had to complete a 3 – 5 page scene, based on  the premise, by 9 AM the next morning. What could possibly go wrong?

The Preparation

In anticipation of having to stay up all night and write, I had already started modifying my waking hours. I was getting up at noon and going to sleep at 5 AM so that I would be footloose and fancy free come competition day.

Oh they did not know who they were messing with! Heck, they might as well give me the winning check now.

On The Day

5 PM. I get the premise… This was not going to be a walk in the park.

The Premise

“Your PROTAGONIST’S allies have turned on him (or her). His reputation is now in tatters, largely due to his own screw-up — which has been magnified and broadcast by the ANTAGONIST. Write the scene in which the protagonist tries to win the allies back. The scene should include a heartfelt mea culpa. You may use any setting, era or characters in addition to the ones indicated, as needed.”

Hmmmm

Remember, unlike a real world scene assignment, this competition required that you come up with a unique concept for the world of the scene (i.e. a movie) and introduce/develop your characters — all within five pages. Now they throw a premise at us requiring “allies” — plural — to be in the scene.

At first I thought I could simply have the protagonist walk onto a stage, or some such, and offer his heartfelt apologies. That way I wouldn’t have to necessarily create and develop a number of specific allies in such a short page span.

But having my hero give a speech in that manner seemed lame to me. 25% of the score was originality after all, and that felt like a cheat. Nope, I was going to have to create a team of allies, each with unique personalities, having it out in an original location.

That Sounds Easy

Now all I needed was an original concept and location. Damn — was it really 8 PM already? Okay think brain, think!

9 PM

The plan for my scene finally crystallizes. I am ready to write.

Midnight

I have 2 or 3 solid pages. Things are looking good. I’m in the zone, wide awake and just hitting my stride with plenty of time left.

Feeling a little peckish, I take a fateful trip to the kitchen.

Fridges by Mother Hubbard

Bare! Except for some banana bread. One week old. Maybe two. But banana bread doesn’t go bad, right? It lasts on the shelves for months. Or maybe that was Christmas cake… Oh well, whadayagonnado?

2 AM

You know that feeling when you’ve been in the sun too long and you start to feel nauseous? Yup. As a tethered Ralph Wiggum would say, “I don’t feel right.”

But I was almost done. Only another half a page to finish the scene. Then maybe an hour or so to tidy things up.

Why was it so damned hot in this house?!

3 AM

Things are swirling. I was on a Charlie and the Chocolate Factory boat ride, with a pack of angry Oompa Loompas inventing a new farewell dance on my stomach.

CUT TO:

The too-gross-for-theaters deleted scenes of Trevor Will Never Eat Banana Bread Ever Again.

5 AM

All is lost.  My main focus has shifted to simply surviving the night… and stopping the room from spinning.

8 AM

I look at the clock. I only need like a 1/2 an hour to finish this damn thing! But alas, I can’t even sit up without a wave of nausea overtaking me.

This year’s victory dance was not to be. I spend the rest of the day in bed. The almost completed script was never submitted.

The Following Day

The contest deadline had long since passed. But I did spend like 10 hours on this bloody scene. I figure, I might as well spend an hour polishing it off.

And so I did. It’s not my strongest work, but it’s not too bad given the circumstances.

If you’d like to take a look at how I tackled the premise, here’s my unsubmitted scene.

Would it have made the cut?

Moral of the Story

Never leave your fate up to questionable banana bread.

Category: My Experiences  | 2 Comments
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