Tips and Techniques on screenwriting comedy

Len Blum Tips and Technique on Screewriting

An interview with Len BlumMontreal, March 27, 2006

Len Blum has written many hit comedies in the past 30 years, such as Over the Hedge, The Pink Panther, Heavy Metal, Feds, Beethoven's 2nd, Meatballs, Howard Stern's Private Parts. He lives in Montreal.

Len Blum:

Let’s discuss the physical experience at the movie theatre. The audience paid their money for a good time, their body feels pretty good. The very first joke in a comedy is very important. Because it either gives them the confidence that they are in good hands, and their chest begins to open with the first laugh, their voice relaxes, it gets easier to laugh. So they feel that they made a good choice, the anxiety goes away, or they begin to worry ... “that wasn’t very funny, maybe I wasted my money” . The chest and the throat tighten, the second laugh is even harder. So the first joke needs to be strong.

Sometimes if you laugh a lot, your voice will actually hurt at the end of it. And you can hear the audience laughing. Certain things are funnier to women, with high laughter, other things to men. Very often, one person has a very funny laugh. Or something happens on the screen, you don’t find it that funny, but you hear the funny laugh, and you go “hey, somebody out there thinks this is funny” and it makes you laugh. So that vibration gets shared, and it becomes a powerful physical experience…

THE HOLLYWOOD READER

The important reader is a person who can sign a check that will deliver a lot of money to the writer. That reader tends to be a man over the age of 40, sometimes you get a woman in which case you are luckier, they are more patient, their eyes will move more slowly and they will take it in better. Chances are, it will be a man over 40, and the first thing you need to know about him is that the Hollywood reader hates to read. Repeat that: HE HATES TO READ! He has a staff between three and thirteen people, who read everything that comes in. They have a young Chinese woman, a young black man, a young MBA from Harvard, they all read stuff that come from agents ( a lot of stuff), because these readers form a large cross-section of the audience. Each reader might read 10 pieces a week. Only one of those pieces is good enough to be sent to the Hollywood reader. These are scripts or books, but they won’t be treatments or synopsis (a treatment is usually pitched in person , for three or five minutes). And the person who is pitching is very open to ideas, it usually is not a set thing. If the executive suggests ideas, or changes, the writer is responsive to them.

It is a team sport. So let us say the Hollywood reader has 10 readers sending him one script each. He has ten scripts to read on Saturday morning. He hates to read. He wants to go play tennis, gold, have a swim, or watch movies on the screen, but he cannot until he finishes reading those 10 scripts. He is expecting that they will all be "shit". He is motivated to throw the first one in the garbage can, as soon as he can. So if he can reject it on page one, it is a good thing. At this rate, he can go golf by ten in the morning. He picks up the first script, the first thing he does is look at how many pages it contains. If it is 130 pages, he thinks “this asshole, thinks he is gonna keep me interested in hundred and thirty pages, let’s see!”. He is feeling negative, he has got a chip on the shoulder, and if he can reject it on the first paragraph, he will throw it away. If he sees the script has 119 pages, he will feel okay, if it is 109, he will feel good, it won’t appear too long.

His eyes will start in the upper left hand corner, page one, and it will move to the bottom right-hand corner. Job number one is legibility. It means that his eyes have to have the easiest task of moving, which means no complicated words – use the shorter simpler words – and minimum description. Don’t describe a room with four pictures unless one of those pictures becomes a murder weapon. You don’t mention anything specific, unless it plays a part in the action. Describe the room in 2 or 3 words, so that you convey the attitude of the decoration, for example, rather than the details. Understand that his eyes are going to go much too quickly! So job number one, give him an easy time, and you want to slow down his eyes by creating some interesting things.

At the end of page one, something has to compel him to turn to page two. He would rather throw it in the garbage. That “thing”, for my purposes, is a joke. Then as he is reading, his eyes are moving smoothly, nothing complicated intellectually, he laughs, visual stream freezes, he still sees the joke, chest is pleasantly shaken, eyes re-attach to top left corner of page two, hungry for the next happy experience. The eyes are going to move down to the bottom of page two, happier than it was on page one. Where should the next joke be? On the bottom of page two. The reader will be greatly disappointed if there is no joke. He is going to think “Maybe the thing is running out of steam”. If he laughs again at the bottom of page two, he will turn the page.

The next best thing, if you don’t have a joke, is a compelling question, at the bottom of page one. “Did you sleep with her?”. He will turn the page just to find out if he slept with her – a very simple transaction. This approach is very important for the first twenty pages. Why? Because the Hollywood reader has no emotional commitment to your story, he does not know your characters, he doesn’t care about their problems yet. By the time he gets involved, it becomes easier to turn the pages. It is a relationship, and you the writer, are manipulating the reader. A little treat at the end of page one, to make him turn to page two. You have to keep those pages turning to increase his sense of commitment and interest in your characters and their problems.

You cannot introduce their problem on page 25, you will not get him to page 25, their problem, or the extraordinary event has to happen rather quickly. YOUR JOB IS TO KEEP HIS EYES MOVING SMOOTHLY AND HAPPILY, WITHOUT A LOT OF WORK, AND KEEP THE PAGES TURNING.

Within that architecture of the page, there are a few things that I do. I have a paragraph of description, let’s say a 3-line log, then I have dialogue. Let’s say the first and second lines are very long, and the third one is just 2 words. This is not good. His eyes are a muscle, and he is over 40. His eyes get tired easily. Here, his eyes are going from the far left to the far right, twice. Then he has to jump in the middle for the dialogue. I would rather have a three-quarter length line, a second three-quarter length line, and the third line would be half the page, so that it ends right above the dialogue line. That said, I want this to be logical syntax.. I don’t like to end the line with a word like “of”. It looks funny, it is incomplete. Sometimes, I will end the line with something like “and”, because I want his eyes to find out “and what?”. You are manipulating his eyes all the time. I know this sounds like a lot of work, I know you want this to be about your brilliant idea , but he will not get to the content, unless you reward him all the time, for keeping his eyes moving and turning pages, that is your first job.

THE CHARACTER NAMES

The names of characters: no 2 names should begin with the same letter, or should be the same length. A character name is like a brand name. A very good character name is for example AZA, because the reader’s eyes don’t even have to read it, he can tell from the way it looks who is talking. You can have a character named Beatrice, but you can’t have another character named Bettina, because remember, he wants to play golf, he hates reading. Try to have the main characters names have a look, that he will take in. The name is a logo.

Introducing your main characters, generally, the first reference does not use their name. “A young man, filled with energy, walks into the room, and trips over a dog. This is Bobo”. You give him an action before you give him a name. The action has to be a distinctive happening. So you first have the picture, then you have the label. Then, right after you give him a name, you go over to the dialogue “Who put this god dam dog here?”. These are not strict rules, but for a comedy, if he says something funny, then our reader gets to laugh. You established a positive relationship. Or if he is the villain, you visualize him doing something evil, you see the name, and then the villain says whatever evil thing he wants to say. The villain has to say something more imaginative and more creative than the reader expects. The villain has to be smarter than the reader expects. The first thing the characters say is a wonderful thing, that sets the character in the reader’s mind. Unless he is a silent character, as a Ninja, he can come in and kill someone and leave. But he still has to do something distinctive; he still has to paint his mark on the forehead of the victim, before he leaves. Then you know, you are dealing with an interesting character.

THE EYES

In movies, they say it is about this (Len indicates a close-up of the eyes with his hands). The close-up is the most important shot in any movie. The eyes are in fact a window to the soul, and the actors who become extremely successful can say anything just with their eyes. When Rudolph Valentino died (he was the first romantic silent movie star), thousands and thousands of women threw themselves to the ground weeping and screaming because their lover had died! Why was he so powerful? Cinema was relatively new, and his eyes would say “Now, I’m gonna make love to you”. The women would be turned on by him because the message in his eyes was so powerful, they would have a physical response. Film still operates at that level. John Travolta is very successful because, as he says, he has a very transparent face. You could see what he thinks, what he is feeling, it is not that hidden. He is not overacting and you can just see what he feels.

So how does the writer deal with the eyes? When we want to provide a look into the character’ soul, into his emotions, after the character’s name (in the dialog mode), you put brackets and write “eyes brightening”, or “eyes narrowing”, because the reader suddenly feels he is looking into the character’s face. You can do that only for main characters, only at the most important time, as a way to look into the character.

CHARACTER DESCRIPTIONS

The main female character in my most recent screenplay was described something along the lines as “She is so beautiful you can’t stop looking at her. She is so beautiful, you hate yourself for looking at her, and you wished you could stop, but you can’t. She is just that beautiful. Her name is … “. You might think it is pretty transparent, but in fact, when the actress reads it, she is saying “that’s me!”, because she is beautiful and men have responded that way to her beauty. What she wants is to magnetize the men, unconsciously. So she identifies with the description, and so does the studio executive, who wants to put her in his movie, because he thinks she is so beautiful. Not every character has to be beautiful, of course, but if you are writing for a beautiful woman, I use that kind of language because I am selling it both to the executive, and also to the actress.

The description of your main male character is about energy, or attitude, such as “he has a special magnetism, that is almost never seen, but when you see it, you know he definitely has it”. It is bullshit, but they believe it! Then you give him a good initial action, so that he is memorable.

By: Alex Vachon