Case study: La Cage Aux Folles vs.The Birdcage

I've mentioned my love for "La Cage Aux Folles" (Edouard Molinaro, 1978) before. Written originally as a play by Jean Poiret, and later adapted to the screen by Poiret, Molinaro, Marcello Danon and Francis Veber, this movie is definitely one of my all time favorite comedies.


Before writing this case study, I watched the American version of the film for the first time (Mike Nichols, 1996). What a sad and interesting experience that was. Sad - to see such a great story translate into such a (I thought) mediocre film. Interesting - to try and understand what it is exactly that makes it mediocre. I guess for someone who hadn't seen the French movie, the American one might be hilarious, but for me, a devoted fan of the French version, it wasn't. I guess it's s little like watching the American version of "The Office" after adoring the British one.

The plot (you can skip this if you've watched the movie)

The American "Birdcage" is very similar to the French in terms of story, with some adjustments to the American society of course, and a few original scenes that were written especially for it. So here is the basic plot of both films:

The son of a gay couple (owner of a drag shows club and his life partner, the main performer) is set to get married with the daughter of a member of the government's conservative party. The son has no relationship with his birth mother. The fiancée, scared of her conservative father, lies to him and says the boy's father is a diplomat (cultural attaché) and his mother is a house wife. The girl's parents decide to drive up and meet the boy's parents. The boy asks his father, just for that night, to pretend that he's a diplomat, remove any signs of him being gay from the house, and get rid of his partner for the day. While the media is following every step of the girl's father, whose party just gone through a major scandal, the girl's family enters the boy's parents' house. And the mess continues.

What makes the French movie so much better:

Music
First difference that comes to mind is the beautiful soundtrack by Ennio Morricone (the American movie begins and ends with the cheesy "we are family"). Here's one of Morricone's beatiful melodies:


Screams
In both films, the boy's adopting father is an insecure, neurotic, high maintenance type of gal. One of his main comic features is a hysteric high-pitch scream that comes out of his mouth once in a while. But while the American character seems to scream only when he encounters an alarming or surprising situation, the French one does it as a general attitude. He screams when he's scared or alarmed, but also out of joy and enthusiasm. Watch the magnificent Michel Serrault (sorry, no subtitles on this one, but that's a scene where he enters the dinner with the girl's parents dressed as a woman, pretending to be the boy's mother, even though the boy and his father asked him not to take part in the dinner):


Attitude
In the French film, when the boy tells his father he's marrying a girl, the father immediately calls her a "whore", then asks him what’s the whore's name. The next day, the father tells his partner that the boy will marry a girl, and he too replies by calling her a whore. In the American film, both fathers are also upset by the news of the marriage, by they don’t use the word "whore". It might sound like a small detail, but to me it definitely sets a different comic mood.

Fear
In the French film, it is well established that both the girl and her mother are afraid of the father. In the American version, set in a different year, most of the time it seems like deep inside, the girl (Calista Flockhart) doesn’t really care what her father thinks, and has an ironic approach towards her parents – which makes the whole encounter between the families a bit less dramatic.

Resolution
Both movies end the same way: two mothers arrive to the dinner in which the parents of the boy and the girl meet for the first time, both of them claim they are the boy's mother. The first mother to arrive is the father's male companion, dressed as a woman, playing the part of a woman. The second mother to arrive is the boy's actual mother, whom he hasn't seen since he was a baby. At this point the girl's father asks: how many mothers does he have?

In the French version, it's his father who removes the wig from his partner's head, and says: he has two fathers. Us. In the American version it's the boy himself who removes the wig, saying: I have two fathers.

For me, the French resolution is more natural – the main characters are the two fathers, they didn't want to lie in the first place, so it makes sense that the father reveals the truth. In the American version, the boy becomes a character who has gone through some change during the day, coming to terms with his family, deciding not to lie anymore. It seems a bit forced and out of context, not to say educational.

A word about female characters

The only thing I don’t like about "La Cage Aux Folles" is the pour female characters. There are two couples of parents in the story. The two gay fathers are funny. The girl's father (at least in the French version) is hilarious. And only the girl's mother has hardly any comic depth. They could have played with her dreams of a wedding with a diplomat's son, make her more pathetic, but they chose to make her anemic.

I had the same issue with "Meet the Fockers", that has more female characters in it to begin with. And I want to declare here again, that I will try as hard as I can to make the female characters in my movie just as bold, funny and pathetic as the male ones.

It must have been awkward

I finished reading "Screenplay". As Field suggests, I copied 10 pages of a script ("There's something about Mary"), as an exercise to help me get used to writing in proper screenplay form. I think I'll do it more than once. It's not only helpful, it's also fun. I enjoy technical exercises. It's much easier to copy a few pages of script than to write biographies for my leading characters. The thing is, I know how the characters behave today, but I'm not sure how I should go about inventing their history, inventing major events in their childhood etc.

As I'm writing this, I suddenly realize that the key for my characters' past is their parents. I mean, their parents also star in the movie, so I already know what kind of people their parents are. So what I should do, given the leading characters' behavior and their parents' characteristics, is imagine what kind of (funny) situations could have happened between them while they were growing up. So hopefully this will get me somewhere. And if this doesn't help, maybe going over awkwardfamilyphotos will serve as inspiration:

Don't tell Syd

I'm currently reading Syd Field's book, "Screenplay". Like I already wrote, among the many examples he brings up, Field returns quite often to scenes from "Lord of the rings". He also gives examples from other movies I either haven't seen, or I saw yet I don’t care for. When I come across these paragraphs (and sometimes full pages), I find myself in a dilemma. I want to skip them, but I feel bad. Thinking about it, I found that the bad feeling is in fact a combination of two sub-feelings:

- I might miss something. Yes, it looks boring, but maybe it's worth the effort, maybe there's some magical moment of revelation hiding in there.

- I'm cheating. My nerdy soul won't let me say I read the book knowing that I skipped a few pages in the middle.

When I was reading "Writing the comedy film" (Stuart Voytilla and Scott Petri), I did allow myself to skip some chapters. A big part of the book is dedicated to different comedy genres. I decided it was ok for me to read only about genres that are relevant for my screenplay (ensemble comedy, farce) or genres that interest me (fish out of water, romantic comedy), and skip other genres (sports comedy, military comedy).

But in Syd Field's case, it's different. It's not that easy to let go. The book's subtitle is "the foundations of screenwriting". Can I really allow myself to miss a foundation? Finally, I decided - yes. It's ok. I can read the chapter titled "plot points" and skip the three pages about "Matrix". I can read the "sequence" chapter and skip the two pages about "Seabiscuit". And I'll sleep well.

And another thing: Syd is quite strict about his screenplay paradigm. On one hand, he says there are no rules. On the other hand, he says you should use 14 cards to write the first act. If you only have 12-13 cards that usually means your first act is too thin, and if you have 15-16 cards then your first act is too long. That's pressure right there. I mean, his whole approach to the first act is very helpful – stressing how important it is, looking at it as if it was an independent story with a beginning, middle and an end – but when it comes to having exactly 14 cards, that's a bit too much for me. He also says you should have 14 cards for the first half of act II, 14 for the second half of act II, and another 14 for act III. He mentions films that used less or more than that, but he definitely gives you the impression that you won't be able to pull that off yourself. I have to say I like Robert Mckee's looser approach to the cards: No numbers. Just write all your scenes on cards and shift them around till you're happy with the order.

Anyway, yesterday I went out and bought a stack of cards. I feel like soon I'll be able to fill them.

Beginnings and endings: The graduate

I'm launching this series of "Beginnings and endings" posts with Mike Nichols' 1967 classic, "The graduate". Based on a novel by Charles Webb and written for the screen by Calder Willingham and Buck Henry, "The graduate" has a great opening, and a tremendously iconic ending. (By the way, this post turned out to be very long. my apologies).

The beginning of "The Graduate"

What I like about this beginning is that it dives directly into the story – it's not the common "short story that precedes the actual story" kind of beginning, that's meant mainly to establish the characters and context of the story (Like the high-school sequence in "Something about Mary", or the beginning of "Tootsie" that shows Dustin Hoffman's life before he starts impersonating as a woman). In "The graduate", the characters and the context are established as the story happens. I realize that not every story can begin this way, but I enjoy stories that do.

The first twenty minutes of "The graduate" take place in three different locations: airport, Ben's parents' house, the Robinsons' house. Interestingly enough, all following scenes are built "by the book" (Robert Mckee's book) in terms of conflict: the different characters in each scene have conflicting desires, which means that every scene has a conflict or several conflicts in it:

0:00:00 - 0:02:40 , Opening credits
Ben is at the airport, back home after he graduated college.

0:02:40 - 0:04:07 , Ben tries to avoid his parents' party
Ben sits in his old room at his parents' house. There's a party celebrating his coming home from college. All the guests are Ben's parents' friends and he doesn't want to get out of the room and face them. He feels bothered and confused about his future. His parents make him get out of the room.


0:04:04 - 0:06:15, Ben runs away from his parents' party
Ben joins the party. Different guests congratulate him for the different awards he got in college. They ask about his plans for the future. He's embarrassed. He tries to avoid them. Eventually he runs back to his room.

0:06:15 - 0:08:26, First encounter with Mrs. Robinson
Ben is alone in his room. Mrs. Robinson enters, says she's looking for the bathroom. He tells her where to find them it she stays in the room. After a short conversation in which Ben asks her to leave him alone, she asks him to drive her home because her husband left earlier with their car. Ben unwillingly agrees to take her home.


0:08:26 - 0:12:50, Mrs. Robinson starts seducing Ben
Ben and Mrs. Robinson arrive at her house. She demands he will accompany her inside because she's afraid to enter a dark empty house. He unwillingly agrees. They enter the living room .He wants to leave, she demands he stays till her husband comes home. She pours him a drink, puts on music and tells him she was an alcoholic. Ben panics, accuses her of seducing him, he wants to leave. She tells him to relax, denying any seduction attempt. She offers to show him her daughter's (Elaine) portrait.


0:12:50 - 0:15:57, Mrs. Robinson officially seduces Ben
They're up at Elaine's room. Ben admires the portrait. Mrs. Robinson asks him to unzip her dress because she wants to go to bed. He unwillingly agrees. After opening her zipper he starts heading towards the door. Mrs. Robinson is left with only a bra and a slip on. She asks what is he afraid of, still claiming she is not seducing him. He says if anyone walked in on them, they might get the wrong idea. She walks towards him, asking if he's trying to say that he wants her to seduce him. He says goodbye, walks out of the room and starts getting down the stairs. She asks him to bring up her purse from the living room before he leaves. He unwillingly agrees. He's back upstairs with her purse, in Elaine's room. Mrs. Robinson enters the room naked, blocking the door. He panics. She says she's available to him anytime if he wants to sleep with her, and that she finds him very attractive. He feels nervous and uncomfortable. There's a sound of a car stopping outside the house. Ben understands her husband has come back home, he pushes her from the door, and runs downstairs.


0:15:57 - 0:20:00, Mr. Robinson comes home
Ben is in the living room, holding the drink Mrs. Robinson poured him earlier. Mr. Robinson enters the house. Ben quickly explains he's there because Mrs. Robinson asked him to drive her home, and to wait for him to arrive. Mr. Robinson thanks him. Ben starts to leave, explains he is concerned about his future. Mr. Robinson insists he stays for a drink. He unwillingly stays. Mr. Robinson tells Ben he should take things easier, have a few flings this summer. Mrs. Robinson joins them (dressed). Ben starts leaving. Mr. Robinson asks his wife if she agrees with him that Ben should have some flings this summer. She says yes. They escort him out of the house. Mr. Robinson tells Ben that Elaine is supposed to come for a visit from Berkley, and suggests Ben will call her. Mrs. Robinson reminds Ben to think about her offer. Ben enters his car.


Actions and dialogues

I like that the films starts right at the crucial night of the inciting incident (Mrs. Robinson's act of seduction), and that the dialogues and situations give all the needed information about the characters without drawing attention to it. The opposite would be, for example, the beginning of "The Royal Tenenbaums", where a voice over tells the family history before the actual story begins.

Here are a few examples for dialogues and action that demonstrate character in "The Graduate":
When Ben's father asks him to join the party, he says "these are all our good friends, Ben", which tells us that his parents see him as an extension of themselves, rather than an autonomic entity. Their friends, as they see it, are his friends.

When Mrs. Robinson visits Ben's room and attempts having a conversation with him, she notices he is bothered. She asks him "Is it a girl?", while looking to her left. As a respond, Ben looks at the same direction as she did, searching to see what it is she's looking at: "Is what a girl?". Ben is not only stressed, but he's obviously not squealed enough in conversation nor in flirtation, to understand her.

Seeing his panic and embarrassment during the entire interaction with Mrs. Robinson, the climax being when she enters the room naked, you understand he is basically an inexperienced and clumsy nerd, calculated (what will people think) rather than passionate (young men tend to be horny, so I hear).

The ending of "The Graduate"

The end of the film finds Ben much more assertive. If at the start he had no idea what he wanted (in terms of career), now he knows what he wants – he wants Elaine (he doesn't care about his future career anymore).



He drives to Berkley and asks her to marry him. She almost agrees , though she already agreed to marry another guy. Then Mrs. Robinson (who forbade Ben to see her daughter) tells Elaine that Ben raped her. Elaine believes her and tells Ben she never wants to see him again. Her parents arrange for a quick wedding with that other guy she planned to marry, in order to get Ben out of her life. When Ben finds out about the wedding he drives up to the church to stop it. When he runs out of gas, he starts running. When he get there and realizes they are already married, he still doesn't give up, banging on the church windows, calling "Elaine!". To her parents' and husband's surprise, she answers by crying back "Ben!". She runs towards him, while her parents try to block her and block Ben from reaching her. They manage to escape and run together from the church after leaving everybody else locked in it. They stop the first bus they see and get on it.

A quick search on YouTube shows just how popular this ending scene is. In part, I guess, because it answers Francois Trufaut's advice (as brought by Robert Mckee) - end with memorable images, that incorporate the movie's story and message. The church and the bus scenes both answer that.

"The Graduate" also offers a good example of Sid Field's argument (mentioned previously here), that the beginning and the end should reflect one another. There are a few themes that appear both at the beginning and the end of the film.

The theme of motion and transportation, that demonstrates Ben's transformation: from a naïve and lost young man, to a decisive man who goes publicly against his family and after his own desire.

The movie begins with a shot of Ben sitting in a plane, a face in the crowd (close up of his face, followed by a long shot of him surrounded by other indifferent passengers), traveling back home after graduating college. After landing in L.A., alongside the movie credits ad Simon and Garfunkel's "Sound of silence", we see Ben riding the airport's automatic sidewalk for 2 minutes. This opening sequence shows Ben as someone who's being led automatically rather than initiating any action.

At the end, Ben is driving a car, then running, and finally boarding a bus to an unknown destination – all of the above are actions he initiates for himself, not designed by anyone else.

The theme of aquarium and glass: Ben sitting next to the fish aquarium in his room at the beginning vs. Ben hitting the church glass walls at the end, and looking back from the bus window. At the beginning he's clinging to his fishes, avoiding life, while at the end it's his life (or the life he doesn't want) that he's looking at through the glass after defying them.

Mike Nichols' terror

At the very final shot of the movie, Ben and Elaine sit on the back seats of the bus, all the other passengers staring at them with astonishment. Ben and Elaine first laugh, then smile, then just sit there with serious, almost concerned, faces.

When Mike Nichols was a guest at the actors studio, he spoke about the movie's final scene, stating the significant role the unconscious has in making films. Nichols says he actually wanted Dustin Hoffman and Katharine Ross to laugh all the way till the end of that bus scene, only he had been obnoxious to them that day, yelling at them to laugh (since they stopped traffic for that scene they didn't have time for many takes). As a result, Hoffman and Ross were so afraid of Nichols that they couldn’t manage to maintain the laugh, and so laughter was replaced by terror. When he saw the footage the day after, Nichols understood that this is what the end was really supposed to be like, realizing he unconsciously made them do that.

Transformers?

I'm entering the last week of my July deadlines - studying my leading characters, thinking of beginnings and endings. My goal is not to solve both missions completely by the end of the month – they require much more time than that. My goal is to spend enough time tackling them in ways that will get me deeper inside my story.

Both missions are related. Understanding how my movie ends implies understanding whether my characters succeed or fail in achieving their goals, and also implies understanding what kind of change my characters go through, or whether they change at all.

It's conventional for a leading character to go through a certain change or transformation, to learn something about him/herself. But what does that mean exactly?

Does it have to be that redemption type change that Melvin (Jack Nicholson) goes through in "As good as it gets"? A misogynic lonely man with a bad OCD case who's ready to let go of his habits for the chance of loving and being loved? There are also the Dustin Hoffman cases: The chauvinist actor who finds sensitivity after experiencing the everyday life of women by pretending to be one in "Tootsie"; Or the man acquiring fatherhood squeals, and fighting for his right to be a full-time father in "Kramer vs. Kramer". And then there's Jack (Robert de Niro) in "Meet the Fockers", who learns that in order to make peace with his family he must let go of his obsession to control them.
As opposed to the examples above, my characters are not the "problematic" types you automatically accept to be transformed by the end of the movie. Must transformation be so obvious, so easy to put in words? Do Jack Lemon and Tony Curtis experience a transformation in "Some like it hot"? Clearly, they go through a significant experience pretending to be women - but is it so easy to sum up their transformation in words?

This sends me browsing through film history, looking for characters who don't change. One of the strongest examples is Trevor (Tim Roth) in "Made in Britain" (Alan Clarke, 1982) – the teenage skinhead who ridicules the authorities' attempts to make him a better, civilized man. On the other hand, there's Nola Darling in "She's gotta have it" (Spike Lee, 1986), who almost changes but at the end chooses to stay true to herself and not to commit to one man. Nihilism, feminism. These two characters win by not changing. They choose not to change though society tells them to, and they are happy with their choice – even if for Trevor this choice means a life of going in and out of prisons, even if for Nola it means forever being referred to as "freak".
And then there are Woody Allen's characters in "Annie Hall" and "Manhattan". Both movies are love stories in which the woman, his love interest, is the one going through changes, maturing, and he stays pretty much the same. He doesn't want to change. He wants to change them, educate them – but doesn’t want them to go through any autonomic changes. Both movie endings are melancholic. He had the girl, and the girl moved on.

I feel that in this specific screenplay I'm writing, a comedy, I'm more drawn to characters who refuse change. Doesn't change make comedies less funny, more didactic?

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.

Jacques Mesrine/Vincent Cassel

This weekend was dedicated to watching "Death Instinct" and "Public Enemy number 1" (both by Jean-François Richet, 2008), a two-part movie based on the life of French gangster Jacques Mesrine. Above are Jacques Mesrine himself (left) and Vincent Cassel as Jacques Mesrine (right).

I'm always a little agitated before embarking on a movie longer than 120 minutes, and in this case it was two movies longer than 120 minutes, but there wasn't a dull moment. I won't get into details and spoilers, I'll just say it's a breathtaking story, as thrilling and violent as gangster movies get, and excitingly and unbelievably based on a true story.

Mesrine's character is a combination of a cold-hearted gangster, a charming Clyde Barrow (with more than one Bonnie on his side), and a self-acclaimed and self-marketed megalomaniac revolutionary. Some of his actions are inspiring, others are horrifying, but always fearless. What I especially loved about him, and about Vincent Cassel's performance, are the humorous ego-tripping moments in which he indulges in his portrayal by the media (he was titled 'Public Enemy number 1'). I will definitely use it as inspiration for the main character in my screenplay (who's not a criminal in any way, but is an aspiring revolutionary).
Here's Jacques Mesrine in a series of photos taken by Alain Bizos in 1979, a few month before Mesrine's death. See the rest of the photos here.

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: a study of form, content and antagonism

Speaking of dance/music numbers in films: I was watching "Rachel Getting Married" (Jonathan Demme, 2008) lately (since it's about a family, it was on my to-watch list). Many people I know loved this movie. Even those I know who didn't love it, praised the soundtrack; the fact that all of the music numbers are diegestic, that is, the music always originates from the cinematic world: a band rehearsing for the wedding inside the family house, and playing at the event itself.

Watching the movie, I found myself indifferent towards the characters and somewhat antagonistic. Thinking about it later, I realized I especially didn’t enjoy that the dialogues so bluntly tell the audience: "there are things we're talking about that you still can't understand. They're meant to intrigue you. It's a secret for now, you'll understand later". It's always a challenge to manage how much you reveal to the audience and when to reveal it, and I felt that in "Rachel Getting Married" I was too aware of this mechanism being pulled.

What I'm getting at here, is that I didn't experience any intellectual exhilaration just knowing that the music I hear is the music the characters hear. And I guess it annoyed me that that's even an option, to not enjoy the movie, and at the same time marvel at the music.


Which brings me to "the Royal Tenenbaums" (Wes Anderson, 2001) – another family centered movie, hence on my watch list. And another movie that leaves me antagonistic, today even more than when I watched it for the first time. The reason for the antagonism here is the feeling of self Indulgence that's present on every frame; the feeling that the art and costumes replace emotional depth; the fact that some of the people I know who love this film lack emotional depth themselves. But most of all it's the fact that I didn't care what happens next, and was willing to stop the DVD at any minute. I hate the term "love it or hate it" artwork, but I guess it applies on this film, so maybe I love this term after all.


Anyway, Wes Anderson debates are so 1834. This post is just an excuse for me to show clips from "Zatoichi" (Takeshi Kitano, 2003). "Zatoichi" is the story of a blind masseur and former samurai, an old woman who lets him sleep at her house, and 2 geishas (a brother and a sister), who are chasing after the killers of their parents. This is my example for form and content reinforcing one another, instead of annulling. This movie has both emotional depth, and great story and characters, as well as wonderful use of music.

First, let's go back to this scene, in which the soundtrack is a harmony of diegestic sounds (men building a house) and non-diegestic music:



And I'll leave you with the ending scene of "Zatoichi": the mob tap-dance. After you go through the movie's emotional journey, watching this scene can be truly cathartic (Or not, if we learned anything from this post). How beautiful is the bit where the adult brother and sister become young again for a few seconds?

Research and inspiration: Family dramas

And now for a quick study of families in dramas. Indeed, I'm writing a comedy, but I want my screen family to capture the true ingredients and textures of a family. So here are a few films that excel in that department.

1. Ordinary People (Robert Redford, 1980)

This film deals beautifully and sensitively with a family who lost her eldest son and hasn't rehabilitated since: a guilt eaten brother, a mother who can't love her only living son, and a father who desperately tries to keep the family together.

Not that we haven't seen cold, abusive or neglecting mothers at the movies before, but this mother seems to be different. She's not the cliché of a self-absorbed retired from the show-biz mom ("September", "Short Cuts", "Postcards from the Edge"), nor is she a woman who's not satisfied with family life, and decides to look for excitements outside. Beth (Mary Tyler Moore) is a woman who simply can't (or won't) adapt to the tragedy and the changes her family has gone through, and can't find compassion for her son and her husband. She wants a family, but she wants the family she had.

Also, there's something about Donald Satherland as a father that brings me to tears – not only in this movie, but even in "Pride & Prejudice" (my secret is out now).


2. You Can Count on Me (Kenneth Lonergan, 2000)

This is the film that made me love Laura Linney and Mark Ruffalo. What's special about "You Can Count on Me" is that it does a defamiliarization of a brother-sister relationship, presenting them like a turbulent lovers' relationship. For Samantha (Linney), reuniting with her brother Terry (Ruffalo) is much more emotional than any other relationship she has with men at the same time (an old flame who asks her to marry him, and a married boss she an affair with). I think it's a brilliant way to tackle a siblings' relationship.


3. The Squid and the Whale (Noah Baumbach, 2005)

Here's another movie with Laura Linney. "The Squid" is rather funny, but in a brutal way. It's about a Brooklyn family, back in the 80'. The parents (Linney and Jeff Daniels), both writers, get a divorce, and their 2 boys get dragged between the two homes, witnessing their parents' weakest and most selfish moments. It's a mocking and painfully realistic portrait of neurotic intellectual parents, and the pain and heartaches they bring on their kids. I love the dialogues, and the absurd and unfortunate situations this family brings on itself.

Research and inspiration: TV families

This is not a list of all the TV shows I love that revolve around families. I chose 4 sitcoms that I both love and feel that are relevant to my screenplay, either in terms of comic voice or subjects they approach.

1. The Royle Family (1998-2000)

This British sitcom takes place in the living room of a working class family in Manchester. They don't have money, all they do is watch TV, talk about their day, mock and insult each other (especially the father). Much like "The Office", it plays on the tension between cruelty and humor – except "The Royle Family" came first.

In each episode, the family sits in front of the TV. Everything happens in front of the TV, whether it's on or off. The dad wears the same t-shirt every day, makes rude remarks and farts. The mother smokes like a chimney. They have a spoiled lazy girl who always comes over with her loser dj fiancée (played by Caroline Aherne and Craig Cash, who also created and wrote the show). In later seasons they are married and have a baby, who the girl does not care about and hardly takes care of. There's also a boy who goes to high school, and a grandma that sometimes comes to visit.

I guess you could say it's reminiscent of "Married with children" (1987-1997), but it's much more raw and nerve racking to watch, and there are never any fantasy leggy girls around. It's just the family.

I get the feeling that not enough people have watched this masterpiece, so here's a taste (taken from the Christmas special).



2. Arrested Development (2003-2006)

Here we have all the ingredients for a family farce: selfishness, apathy, lies, revenge, doing things for spite, not learning from mistakes, never over-sentimental, not to mention great cast. I especially love the Mother's character (Lucille Bluth) played by Jessica Walter.

Things to look out from: I found that watching "Arrested Development" episodes for the first time is pure joy, but if I get to see an episode for the second time, I usually find myself bored. Why is that?


3. Everybody loves Raymond (1996-2005)

As opposed to the other shows I mention here, this one is a proper mainstream, genre-obeying, cheesy sitcom. And yet, I have a thing for it. I guess it's because it's down to earth, and it deals effectively with everyday situations you can imagine a co-worker telling you about (I'm talking about a specific married man I used to work with, a web developer who was constantly joking about marriage life. You'd say to him "Hey, that thing stopped working", and he'd say, grinning, "That's what my wife tells me").


4. Flight of the Conchords (2007-)

Jemaine and Bret are not a proper family, but since they are a band, and they sleep in the same room, there's sufficient intensity and dependency to their relationship to qualify as a family-model. Add to that their relationship with Murray, the band's manager, and you do get a sort of alternative family. Things to watch here: funny brawls, and great dialogue.

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.