Christoph Waltz / Rob Brydon

I finally saw "Inglourious Basterds". I won't write a review here, but I will say that I loved it, and that it made my heart beat like no other film ever did. It actually went BOOM - BOOM - BOOM throughout the last act.

While watching the movie, the brilliant Christoph Waltz (Col. Hans Landa) kept reminding me of Rob Brydon, one of my favorite current British comedians. I'm not sure what Brydon is up to these days (the last time I saw him was as a guest on "Little Britain"), but I do know that watching his TV shows "Human Remains" and "Marion and Geoff" somewhere around 2001 was really an eye-opener.

Both shows were mockumentaries. "Human Remains", starring Brydon and Julia Davis, featured 6 episodes, 30 minutes long. Each episode focused on a different couple, usually an unhappy one. "Marion and Geoff" had 17 episodes, 9 minutes long, and always had Brydon as a loser, driving his car, talking about his ex wife Marion and her new husband Geoff, with whom his kids live.

These shows didn't invent the genre of course, but I think it was my first encounter with a mockumentary that wasn't only funny, but also very dark and cruel. Needless to say, this was a few years before Ricky Gervais came along.

So here are a few videos, to honor this talented and funny man (mind you, some of the accents are hard to follow):

Home is where the road is

Following John Hughes' death, I decided to watch "Planes, trains and automobiles" (1987) for the first time. Though the movie's strong 80's vibe holds it from being a timeless piece, I did enjoy it. I especially enjoyed:

- Steve Martin and John Candy

- The opening scene, in which Page (Steve Martin) sits in an office meeting, anxious to leave so he can catch his plane, while his boss takes his time to conclude the meeting. This scene has almost no dialogue, mainly face gestures, and it's remarkably funny.

- The bromance atmosphere, which is so dominant in comedies nowadays. When Page and Dell find themselves sharing a hotel room (and a bed) for the night, they keep making sure there's nothing gay about it. The climax is the moment when they wake up in each other's arms, and jump out of bed, terrified (watch video below). Of course today it's ok for guys to say "I love you" in comedies ("Wedding crashers", "Superbad", "I love you, man").



- The moment when Page understands that Del (John Candy) has nowhere to go to for Thanksgiving. After he hated him throughout the entire movie, you really get the feeling that now he loves him. And in terms of transformations, it's nice that the film offers a minor change, not drastic. Page is not a whole new person when the movie ends, but he did learn to enjoy the presence of someone different, and to accept that things don’t always go as planned.


A day after watching "Planes", "Something Wild" (Jonathan Demme, 1986) was on TV, and I sat down and watched it. I remembered watching it as a young girl, and had a vague recollection of what it was about. I remembered the sex scene at the beginning (the bob haircut and the handcuffs are too iconic to forget). I also remembered the scene where Lulu (Melanie Griffith) leaves the restaurant without paying, forcing Charlie (Jeff Daniels), who has no money either, to run out without paying. However, I did not remember the radical shift in the middle of the movie, when it stops being a comedy and becomes a dark drama, thriller almost.


What's interesting, though, is the similarity between the movies. Both "Planes" and "Something Wild" are road movies, in which one of the main characters has no home to return to (either physically or emotionally). In both movies, the character keeps her "no home" situation a secret, and the secret is revealed towards the end of the film.

Del (John Candy) doesn't tell Page (Steve Martin) that his beloved wife had been dead for 8 years. Page finds it out by himself only at the end of the movie, by adding up all the small clues that were dropped along the way.

Charlie (Jeff Daniels) doesn't tell Lulu (Melanie Griffith) that his wife left him a few months earlier. Lulu's husband, who just got out of jail and tries to get Lulu back to him, tells her the truth about Charlie.

So I guess that in both movies, the primary idea is you can only truly dedicate yourself to a road trip if you have nothing (no one) to lose. In "Planes, trains and automobiles", Del craves Page's company because he's lonely, and his loneliness explains why, unlike Page, he only wants the trip back home to be longer. In "Something Wild", we first think Charlie joins Lulu to escape his boring family life, but it turns he's lost his wife and kids to another man. Hence, he joins Lulu because he has no family.

J'adore: Agnès Jaoui and Jean-Pierre Bacri

If I were a curator of a film festival, one of the first things I'd do is dedicate a soiree to this French duo. Jaoui (born 1964) and Bacri (born 1951) started working together in the theatre, and continued to co-write and co-star in four films: "Same old song", or in French "On connait la chanson" (directed by Alain Resnais, 1997), and later three films that Jaoui directed herself: "The taste of others" (2000), "Look at Me" (2004) and "Let's talk about the rain" (2008).

In this interview with the couple, Bacri talks about their writing process: "When we get an idea, we start exploring the theme; we start out with characters we need, then we'll say, 'OK, now we need someone who such-and-such...', 'Yes, but we also need someone who...', 'Yes, but then what about someone else who...', and we end up with five or six interlocking stories. That's why it's so hard to sum these films up."
Jaoui and Bacri specialize in ensemble comedies, filled with smart dialogues and bitter-comic moments, some of them are almost as cruel as the cruelest moments in "Extras" (Ricky Gervais' TV series about two movie extras who lack any tact and consistently get humiliated by others. See video below). Such is "Look at me", that tells the story of a successful and egocentric writer (played by Bacri) who prefers his angelic young daughter from his second marriage over his older fat daughter from his first marriage. Like in Ricky Gervais' merciless world, in "Look at me" the egocentric father doesn’t change his ways - he stays egocentric and insensitive till the end.

"Same old song", homage to Dennis Potter's work, was very popular for its use of old French chansons. But I personally think that Jaoui and Bacri's best collaboration so far is "The taste of others", mainly because it demonstrated a perfect combination of humor and emotions. The main character in "The taste of others" is an over-confident, married factory owner (Bacris, in the picture below) who has to take English lessons to present himself better in business meetings. His teacher is a theatre actress (Anne Alvaro) whom he gradually falls in love with. In her company, and her intellectual-bohemian friends' company, he feels ignorant and incompetent for the first time in his life. It's a beautiful story, and both characters – the factory owner and the actress – go through funny, surprising and touching metamorphosis.

Jean-Pierre Bacri, to my opinion, is one of the strongest comedians of the past two decades. And what's so fascinating about him is that he co-writes his parts – which means he truly enjoys playing either the loser ("The taste of others", "Let's talk about the rain") or the obnoxious guy ("Same old song", "Look at Me"). I only recently found out that Agnès Jaoui and Jean-Pierre Bacri are married. This revelation filled with me with joy, that was only replaced a couple of weeks later with the deep disappointment of finding out that they'd already separated. In any case, I thought it's extremely funny that she directs her husband playing such unflattering characters. It's also interesting that they always co-star in their films, but never as a couple - always as other actors' partners.

I watched "Let's talk about the rain" (their latest collaboration) for the first time a few days ago, for the purpose of writing this post – and was quite disappointed. There are many funny/cute moments, but the story itself is much weaker than it was in "The taste of others" and in "Look at Me". Disappointed as I was, I'm still anxious to watch Jaoui's future films.

In this scene from "The taste of others", the main character reads to his English teacher an exercise he wrote, in which he confesses for the first time about his feelings for her. She doesn't like him at all, there for she chooses to ignore the gesture, and go over his grammar mistakes.



And here is a scene from "Extras". In each episode there's a guest star, playing supposedly as himself, but actually displaying an ugly/mean/egocentric/perverted grotesque character that makes fun of show biz people. In this episode it's Clive Owen, who's being very nasty towards female extra Maggie.

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.

Research and inspiration: back to basics

The tricky part about writing this blog is that I don't plan to share my actual idea for the screenplay, at least not for now. I'm sure my anonymous readers will understand. All I can say for now is that I'm writing a comedy about a family, and that it involves some unlikely situations.

I've read 3 books so far:
- "Story" by Robert Mckee
- "Writing the Comedy Film – Make 'Em Laugh" by Stuart Voytilla and Scott Petri
- "Conversations with Wilder" by Cameron Crowe

"Writing the Comedy Film" had me focusing on my film genre: farce. This book isn't as elegantly written as Robert Mckee's "Story", but it does offer some good basic exercises to get you started. Both books tell you to research your genre. Watch over and over films you love. Study them. Watch over and over films you don't love. Study them. Write down a list of comedy films you love; scenes you love; characters you love; directors you love; actors and actresses you love.

So I feel I have to start with setting my territory. In terms of general plot and atmosphere, I chose 4 films that I feel I relate to, and should learn from.

1. Some like it hot (Billy Wilder, 1959)

Reading "Conversations with Wilder", I learned "Some like it hot" is based on the 1951 German film "Fanfaren der Liebe", which is also about 2 out-of-work musicians who dress as women in order to get jobs in an all-girl band. I found this piece of information very encouraging: even Billy Wilder used other people's ideas.

What I love best in "Some like it hot" is how Jack Lemon's character gets caught up in his lie, till the point where the lie takes over. Memorable scenes here are the ball room scene, where Jack (Daphne) has a wild tango with her Millionaire suitor, Osgood Fielding III, and of course – the last scene of the movie, in which Daphne, trapped on a boat with Osgood who's going over their wedding plans, finally tells him he can't marry her, because she's a man, followed by Osgood's famous comeback - "nobody's perfect". This is exactly where I'm going in my script – lies and secrets that evolve into a presence that is much stronger than the truth.



2. The apartment (Billy Wilder, 1960)

Wilder and Lemon again. After watching many films in the past couple of months, what stood out for me the most is that comedies used to be much less cheesy than they are today. I'm really aiming for a lack of cheesiness in my script.

I only saw this film for the first time a few months ago. I heard the name, but I didn't even know that it was about a nice guy that lets his bosses use his apartment as an after-work free of charge motel to bring their mistresses to. I love the freshness of the story – a story that is funny on its own, before you get into its details, I love how it's an extreme situation but still believable, and I love Jack Lemon's character – the archetype of a man who can't say no.


3. La Cage aux Folles (Edouard Molinaro, 1978)

I just love this film so much. I didn't see the American version, and I don't know if it's as chic as the original. Again, the story itself, of a gay couple - one of whom owns a drag club, the other performs there – who pretend to be straight to impress their son's fiancee's family, is funny as is. On top of that, the dialogues are exquisite, as are both leading actors. My favorite character here is Albin (played by Michel Serrault) – the extremely vulnerable drag performer, who is almost cast off the family because he can't pass as straight.

Here's a scene in which the two men go to a restaurant, discuss the straight performance they plan to display in front of the fiancee's family, but can't even manage to lift their cups without holding their little finger in the air.



4. There's something about Mary (Farrelly brothers, 1998)

What I love about this film is the great rhythm, and the genuine farce atmosphere: Anything crazy can happen but life/story goes on; every character has a selfish motive; no one is who he seems to be; and opposed to all that there's Mary (Cameron Diaz) - a calm rock of compassion, kindness and inner peace, in the midst of all this commotion. I find that Mary somewhat resembles Suagr (Marilyn Monroe in "Some like it hot"). It has something to do with both characters' friendliness, willingness to accept whomever and whatever happens around them and blonde hair.