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The Bead™

Sometimes I read a script that I just can’t figure out. I know it has problems, I can even put my finger on what they are, but I can’t offer up solutions; granted, some people don’t like solutions, but offering solutions while I point out problems has never failed me, and one of the unfortunate side effects of covering so many scripts is that I am, at this point, a better reader than I am a writer. The only way to solve this kind of problem is to figure out what’s causing it, but what happens when I can’t even do that? I know the characters are thin, but why? I walk myself through the story, reminding myself of surprising moments of nuance and subtlety that give the characters depth. Why is it that, at the end, I felt like they were paper-thin? Something went awry.

I can’t pretend to understand how it happens, but when I actually talk out these problems, I figure them out. It’s all in how you’re telling the story. Here’s the story, and here are its flaws. But what if the writer did this, that, or the other? The solutions present themselves, and if you do it right, you can solve every single problem in one fell swoop — and if you’re really good, you can do it without insulting the writer.

You’ve found The Bead™.

That’s right, I make up my own screenwriting jargon. Fuck off, motherfuckers. The Bead is mine. From the old marksman term “get a bead on,” corrupting the meaning slightly to apply to targeting the screenplay’s problems and obliterating them*, I’ve found myself defining “The Bead™” as an all-encompassing solution — one shot fixes everything, just like The Manchurian Candidate. Oh wait.

I was worried as hell last night because that script the Big-Shot Producer sent me had major problems, many of which stemmed from what I felt was a clash between writer and producer(s), and I had no solutions. Talking it out this morning, I figured that shit out. In fact, the solution is so simple, I’m both annoyed and disappointed that I agonized over it for so long to begin with.

Here’s the story:

Protag is a neurotic, passive office worker who’s in love with Love Interest, portrayed (in the writer’s exaggerated humor style) as the perfect woman. He has a friend, Antag, who has all kinds of luck with women, an endless parade of one-night stands. Through a wacky set of circumstances, Protag witnesses Antag faking a dangerous situation, filling the woman with raw animal lust. Protag wants to know how this is done, so Antag introduces him to an entire team of guys…who devote time, money, and a lot of effort to get Antag laid. None of them get laid — they just assist Antag. (Careful readers will note that’s a flaw.)

Protag sets his sights on Love Interest, but Antag has to talk him down — first Protag has to learn the basics, so Act Two is filled almost exclusively with slapstick set-pieces as Protag attempts to play the hero for women (with the help of The Team) but manages only to humiliate himself. Much of this is repetitive and while the set-pieces are funny in theory, in practice they come across as labored. The writer is operating on a domino principle: he spends all his time setting up the way it’s supposed to go, so we understand just how wacky things are when they go wrong. Again, it gets repetitive.

The big third act shift occurs when Protag humiliates himself in front of Love Interest (causing her to get angry, because she actually did like him). He quits The Team, realizing all it’ll get him are one-night stands when what he wants is true love. Antag agrees in a sleazy way — he decides Love Interest is the perfect foil for all his plans, and if he can win her, he can retire from his shenanigans and settle down. He asks her on a date, and she agrees far too easily. He acts overtly sleazy, even while taking her on a perfect date told to him by Protag earlier, but Love Interest has turned stupid and falls for his smarmy charm.

Meanwhile, Protag decides to fight for her honor, but first, he has to get past The Team. More slapstick. In the restaurant, Antag is accosted by a steroid case claiming to be Love Interest’s ex-husband (she admits he is, but she has a restraining order). He starts pummeling Antag, until finally Protag gets to the restaurant. Love Interest, appropriately charmed by Protag’s effort, calls off the ‘roid rager. Turns out, he’s not her husband; he’s her brother, and he’s just pretending. She knew about Antag all along and set up this dinner to humiliate him, which would somehow clear Protag’s name. This doesn’t make as much sense as it could if you keep in mind that if she believed Protag had somehow been set up, she could have just said something. Besides which, there was no guarantee Protag would leap in at the eleventh hour, or that Antag would ask her out…so what was the point? Also, while the twist ultimately redeems Love Interest’s intelligence, we still spend about 30 screen minutes thinking she took stupid pills, which is frustrating enough that the twist doesn’t make up for it.

Here are the three main problems:

1. Labored, repetitive slapstick gags occupying most of the story time
2. With few exceptions, thin characters
3. The whole third act

What we want to do is take these problems and find one way that both retains the obvious plot mechanics — emphasis on slapstick, surprise “twist” ending — while improving the weaknesses. I came up with a detailed outline of what I’d do differently, but the goal of coverage isn’t to rewrite somebody’s work; my main goal is to nudge the writer in the right direction.

Here’s the right direction: you have your klutzy, inarticulate Protag, and you have Antag letting him in on the secret of The Team. As he explains it, what if Protag unintentionally pointed out that The Team does all this work…for another guy. None of them get laid — they don’t rotate, some of them are married, one’s a kid, etc. — and as the script is now, we’re left wondering about that. In fact, the last-minute development that two of them are married (and one’s divorced, but still, there would be teams when he was married but still on this team), so you either have a bunch of cheaters or you have a bunch of guys getting someone else laid for no apparent reason.

(Why this Team exists is less important than what Protag does to it, although I did come up with open-and-shut backstory: the team did rotate originally, but it reached a point where Antag was just so damn good at closing the deal, while the others were hit-or-miss, each member of The Team found themselves rooting for Antag, wanting him to succeed, until it reached the point where now they’re just doing it out of habit, not even realizing they no longer get anything out of it, not even vicarious thrills.)

So The Team’s up in arms, which will add some development to those characters. Maybe one of the married guys wants his uninterested wife to get jealous (or hell, maybe he just wants to get some). Maybe the divorced guy wants to prove to his exes that he isn’t a loser. Maybe the kid wants to prove he’s a Real Man. Giving them each clear goals, along with new scenes and characters to illustrate their lives away from The Team (in place of clunky setups for slapstick gags), makes the more interesting and more sympathetic.

On top of the development, it’ll also fix the repetitive slapstick problems. There’s only one way you can go with “an individual klutz ruins a well-oiled machine” gag. We’ve destroyed the well-oiled machine; The Team is still operating, but they aren’t operating together. Each has his own agenda, and they’re all jockeying for the girl. It adds more dramatic conflict, for one thing, but it also adds more slapstick variety — and it doesn’t make Protag the endless punchline. The scenarios could end up any number of ways, depending on who does what wrong and for what reason, and perhaps Protag has assumed an unintentional leadership position because he opened their eyes. This gives him the confidence to create his own danger scenarios, which he’s as inept at as anything else.

Finally, it fixes the third act. First, you have to change any indication that Antag is a bad guy — in fact, it’s probably safest if it’s rewritten so Love Interest barely knows Antag exists. His Team has turned into a disaster. Antag wants things back to normal — he wants Protag off the team and wants to be able to manipulate his friends into serving his interests. This is a more logical motivation for asking Love Interest on a date. He just needs to act less sleazy so we’d believe she’d go out with him, at least once.

Rather than having Love Interest stupidly fall for Antag’s distinct lack of charm, perhaps she’s willing to “drown her sorrows,” so to speak, with a guy she doesn’t particularly care for, just so she can get over the guy she did care for. (Keep in mind, she liked Protag.) Meanwhile, Protag finds out about the date (as he does in the current draft) and goes on the war path. Maybe, instead of fighting the team, he enlists their help — but their own personal chickens come home to roost, with wives and ex-wives and girlfriends and junior-high kids and maybe even former one-night stand victims chasing them down.

They finally get the restaurant, and Protag is forced to finally stand up for both himself and for Love Interest’s honor, which impresses her (exactly as it does in the script, even though in both cases it’s a fairly cheesy reversal — but it’s necessary for the generic happy ending). They declare their love for one another —

— and then we’re hit with the surprise ending that this was Antag’s plan all along. He knew the only way to get him off the team was to get Protag and Love Interest together, and the only way Protag would finally pass her “tests” would be to grow a pair and stand up for himself, so it’s yet another scenario he engineered. It gives us the exact same ending: they’re in love, and Antag hasn’t learned a thing.

I really hate the kinds of romantic comedies that beat rote formulas into the ground. I’m surprised I came up with something that still fits the formula but is, at least to me, about 10 times more interesting than what I read.

I just hope they listen.

*Note: May result in death by sniper fire.

Posted by Stan on April 3, 2008 1:33 PM  | Permalink | Career-Based Rambling | Digg It