Case study: "There's something about Mary"

Just to get started, here's a quick look at the film's main characters:

Mary Jensen (Cameron Diaz) - Miami based, beautiful, kind and compassioned orthopedic surgeon who men tend to fall in love with.
Ted Stroehmann (Ben Stiller) - awkward and naive man who's been in love with Mary since high school.
Pat Healy (Matt Dillon) - sleazy private detective who's sent by Ted to find Mary, falls in love with her and tries to keep her for himself.
Dom "Woogie" Woganowski (Chris Elliott) - Ted's best friend, who later turns out to be Mary's creepy stalker from college.
Tucker (Lee Evans) - Mary's disabled British architect close friend who later turns out to be a pizza delivery boy who fell in love with Mary and created this persona to woo her.

I already mentioned "There's something about Mary" (1998) as a primary inspiration for my screenplay – not in terms of story, but in terms of comic voice. I love this movie's approach to comedy:

- Memorable slapstick scenes: Ted getting his dick caught in his zipper; Mary's hair standing up; Healy trying to wake a dog from a coma.

- Distinct physical characteristics: Ted's hair and braces in high school; Tucker's exaggerated limp; Woogy's face rashes.

- Surprising, exaggerated and unlikely turn of events. I'm not talking here about "crazy" situations like the dog being in a coma, or the dog being on speed. I'm more interested in formalistic exaggerations such as: After Ted's dick is caught in a zipper and Mary's parents try to help him, suddenly a cop enters through the window, joined later by a fireman – just to make the scene more ridiculous; Ted not knowing his married best friend is obsessed with Mary too; Tucker making up that false persona for so long and winning Mary's trust.
About Mary's trust: I remember after watching the movie for the first time, years ago, I noted to myself how comic Mary's character. She might not be a "crazy funny" character, but her reactions to whatever happens around her have a big part in making this movie funny (I've argued before that she's a reincarnation of Sugar from "Some like it hot").

"There's something about Mary" structure analysis:

Like in my previous case study, I watched "There's something about Mary" and broke it down to a list of all the movie's scenes - just actions, not dialogue. Then I started analyzing it.

First, I looked for the movie's "inciting Incident". An inciting incident is basically what gets the story started. It's an event that (usually) happens at the beginning of a movie and (usually) turns the protagonist's world upside down, creating a certain desire, and triggering him to embark on a journey, at the end of which he will hopefully fulfill that desire. Other simple way to describe it, is an event that disrupts the balance in the protagonist's life, forcing him to actively bring the balance back. Every screenwriting manual will tell you it's a crucial part in every (mainstream) movie.

On "Meet the Fockers" there was no inciting Incident, but since it's a sequel, it seems understandable: It relies on the first movie's inciting Incident. On "Meet the parents", the inciting Incident was Gaylord finding out that he needs his girlfriend's dad's approval if he wants to marry her, which makes him abort his planned proposal operation, and go on a "make her dad like me" mission. On the sequel, Gaylord is still on that same mission, only now it's extended: "make her dad like my parents" – and in fact, as I argued, the actual mission is reduced back to the original "make her dad like me".

Examining "Mary", I found that (surprise!) there's no prominent inciting Incident. There's an 18 minutes long setup of Todd and Mary's high school failed romance, and then cut to the present (13 years later): It was actually a memory Ted was telling his shrink. But the shrink wasn't really listening. Ted then tells his best friend that Mary was his only love and that he can't forget her. His friend tells him – why don't you look her up? So Ted goes looking her up.

The only thing resembling an inciting Incident can be found in what Ted tells his shrink. The shrink is out of the room during Ted's entire story about meeting Mary, going to pick her up to the prom, getting his dick caught in his zipper, missing the prom, never seeing Mary again. Ted doesn't notice he's gone, because he sits with his back to the shrink. When the shrink gets back to the room, this is their conversation:

TED
Anyway, it's not something you exactly
forget about, but I guess I must've blocked
it out of my head. Then about a week ago
I'm driving on the highway and I got to
thinking about Mary and suddenly I couldn't
breathe...I couldn't keep up with the flow
of traffic anymore I felt like I was
going to die. I pulled into a rest area,
parked the car, and just started shaking.

PSYCHIATRIST
You know...rest areas are homosexual
hang-outs.

So apparently Ted forgot all about Mary until suddenly, one day while driving, he got to thinking about it and got a panic attack. So the panic attack is the inciting Incident - except it's hardly noticeable. It is never shown on screen - it is just told about, and then completely ignored by the shrink. It's the movie's way to show (once again) how naive and clueless Ted is (he has no idea that the shrink left the room), but it's also the movie's way of saying - fuck the inciting Incident. Ted is going to look for Mary. Why now? Because we're filming now.
Now that we've established that, let's look at the entire picture. Here are the main plot's turning points:

0:18:05
What happens: Ted (reportedly) gets a panic attack when he thinks about Mary for the first time in years.
Consequence: This is the inciting Incident, after which Ted is going out on a journey to find Mary and win her love again.

0:30:54
What happens: The private detective tells Ted that Mary is a fat wheelchaired single woman, who has 4 children from 3 different fathers.
Consequence: Ted lets go of his dream of finding Mary.

0:41:13
What happens: Ted's friend tells him he saw Mary a few months earlier, and that she was hot.
Consequence: Ted understands the detective was lying. He decides to continue looking for Mary.

1:02:05
What happens: Ted finds out that Mary got involved with the detective.
Consequence: He will have to compete over Mary's heart.

1:32:28
What happens: After she's already dating Ted, Mary gets an anonymous letter telling her he send that private detective to watch her.
Consequence: Mary loses her trust in Ted. She doesn't want to see him again. How will he get her back?
If we put aside the unconventional lack of proper inciting Incident, the rest of the film's structure is pretty conservative. I'm not sure that I have much to say about it, except that it's easier for me to do these technical exercises than actually work on my screenplay.

I switched my deadlines around so I did one case study after another, instead of mixing them with my writing assignments. So now I'm left with only writing assignments until the end of the month.

Case study: "Meet the Fockers"

Following the doctor's orders (Robert Mackee), and my own deadlines, I took on myself the exercise of analyzing the structure of "Meet the Fockers". My main purpose here is to study the rhythm of a comedy and see how a movie develops step by step. "Meet the Fockers" is not the most classic choice because it's a sequel – which means that a lot of the setup was actually done in a previous film. The reason I chose this movie after all is that like in my own screenplay, "Meet the Fockers"'s story revolves around the dynamics between a couple and the parents of each side. It isn't on my funniest comedies list, but considering its story and its success, it's certainly a must for my research.

A quick reminder before we dig in: "Meet the Parents" was about a male nurse meeting his girlfriend's parents for the first time, and struggling to get her strict father's approval. "Meet the Fockers", the sequel, sees the same couple when they are already engaged. In order to plan the wedding, their parents meet for the first time: the girl's conservative parents vs. the guy's free minded and spirited parents.

The main characters are Gaylord "Greg" Focker (Ben Stiller); his fiancée Pamela "Pam" Byrnes (Teri Polo); Gaylord's parents: Bernard "Bernie" Focker (Dustin Hoffman) and Rosalind "Roz" Focker (Barbra Streisand); Pam's parents: Jack Byrnes (Robert De Niro) and Dina Byrnes (Blythe Danner).

"Meet the Fockers" structure analysis:

I timed the movie, wrote down all the scenes, and tried to find the turning points. A turning point is usually defined as a surprising development that ends an act, by radically changing the hero's positioning.

While studying the film, I realized that although the relationship between the two couples of parents take a big part of the story's time and jokes - which gives the impression of an ensemble comedy – it is not truly the center of the movie. The main plot, as in "Meet the Parents", is the relationship between Gaylord and Jack: Gaylord's efforts to make Jack accept him, and Jack's continuous tests that are meant to break Gaylord and prove that he's not worthy of entering Jack's "circle of trust" and marrying Pam.
Here are the main plot's turning points, as I see it:

0:10:05
What happens: Gaylord finds out that Pam's parents had planned for the 4 of them (+ Pam's nephew) to travel in a trailer (instead of by plane), thus arriving earlier than Gaylord has intended, and spending more time with his parents than he wanted.
Consequenc: Gaylord lost control over this weekend, Jack took over.

0:34:49
What happens: Gaylord finds out Pam is pregnant. He panics because he knows her father will hate him for getting her pregnant before they got married. They decide not to tell Jack till after the wedding, and to try to have the wedding earlier than planned. Gaylord panics again because this means he will have to hide something from Jack, thus betraying Jack's "Circle of trust".
Consequence: Till now, this weekend was focused on making sure the parents get along. Now there's a new threat on Jack's and Gaylord's relationship – what will happen when he finds out she's pregnant?

1:04:01
What happens: Jack meets Jorge, the 15 year old son of the Fockers' house keeper, who Gaylord lost his virginity to 15 year earlier. He sees a physical resemblance, and decides Jorge is Gaylord's son.
Consequenc: Jack has a new weapon he can use against Gaylord: the 15 year old son he's been hiding from Pam and her family

1:26:21
What happens: At the engagement party Gaylord's parents organized, just before Gaylord's speech, Jack injects him with a truth drag. Jack does it to make Gaylord confess that Jorge is his son, which he does, but he also announces that Pam is pregnant in front of a room full of party guests.
Consequenc: Jack succeeded in proving that Gaylord betrayed his trust. Not only did he hide a 15 year old child, but he also got Pam pregnant and kept it a secret. Jack gives up on Gaylord and is ready to abort the wedding. He's leaving the next day.

1:38:18
What happens: Jack gets a phone call from a lab, telling him the results for the DNA test he ordered: Gaylord is not Jorge's father.
Consequenc: He realizes his instincts were wrong in this case, and if he was wrong here – maybe he was wrong all along with the way he handled his family. He turns the trailer around and goes back to the Fockers' house.

The conflict between the two couples of parents, as I see it, is only a subplot in "Meet the Fockers". As crazy as it gets, it's only a sidekick in Gaylord's and Jack's relationship. This basically means that the main plot is somewhat hidden in a louder commotion – or at least that's how I see it.
What did I learn here? It mostly gave me a sense of what a list of movie scenes looks like, that is, how a screenplay looks when it's compressed to actions only, without dialogue. I'm sure that studying the scenes order and timing, and the main plot-subplot dynamics, will be helpful later on when I finalize my own scenes list. Also, the more movies I study this way, the bigger the benefit will be. It also got me thinkng about my characters.

Reflecting on the female characters in "Meet the Fockers"

This movie has six main characters: all three male characters are comic, while on the female side only one character is: Roz (Barbra Streisand, Gaylord's mother) is funny, but Pam (Teri Polo, the fieancee) and Dina (her mother) are extremely dry and dull.

This gets me thinking: Must there be a "dull" character in every comedy, as some sort of balance to the "crazy" characters? And if so, must it be a woman?

My conclusion: My leading female characters are all going to be funny and eccentric. No nice and characterless women in my screenplay.

Appendix

As a young girl I used to hate Ben Stiller because he was the bad guy on "Reality Bites". Living outside of the US, I wasn't aware of the Ben Stiller show, so for me Stiller was simply the guy from "Reality Bites".

When I think of it today, he wasn't the bad guy, he was the uncool guy. Ethan Hawk, the guy with the shitty attitude, who wouldn't shower but would break your heart, he was the cool guy, right? I haven't seen "Reality Bites" for years, but I did see it many times as a teenager, so I think I remember enough of it to know I wouldn't enjoy it today (especially Winona Ryder's mannerism). But I did love the movie back then, and loved Winona and what she wore in it, so had I realized that Stiller directed it, I'm sure that would have changed my attitude towards him.

As I grew up, I realized that Ethan Hawk is not the heart breaker movies told us (girls) he was, and that Ben Stiller is in fact a very uniquely funny guy. Plus, he's been going through a serious makeover lately. This is Ben Stiller looking very dandy at Wimbeldon last week.