Friday Free-For-All: Brad Pitt and Johnny Depp on 21 Jump Street

Remember a while back when I said everyone starts somewhere?  Here's a good reminder of that - Brad Pitt appearing with Johnny Depp... on 21 Jump Street.



Who would have thought in 1988 that those two guys would be some of the biggest stars in Hollywood?

Minor characters, major opportunities

Another thing that struck me about 21 Jump Street is how effective the script was at creating memorable supporting characters, even if a few of them only pop up for a scene or two.  This is one of those things that can elevate a screenplay and often show the difference between a seasoned pro and a newbie.

There's an early scene where Parks & Recreation's Nick Offerman plays the typical world-weary police captain who has to reprimand the main characters.  In most scripts, this character would just be there to yell at the guys, transfer them to a new division and then throw them out of his office.  It could have been purely an A-to-B plot moving scene, but the script does a little bit more with it.  Through his interactions with Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum, Offerman creates a character who feels three-dimensional.  Some of this credit goes to Offerman, but the writing gives him plenty to work with.

Offerman gets one of the best lines in the movie when he says that the Jump Street program is just another idea from the 80s that's been revived because no one has any original ideas anymore.  There's a sort of bitterness in his tone, and it sells the verisimilitude of a line that easily could have reeked of meta-humor and nothing more.  You buy this guy as someone who's counting the hours to retirement.

Another good example - the science teacher played by The Office's Ellie Kemper.  She's pretty much the only character in the high school to remark on Channing Tatum's attractiveness and it makes for an awkwardly funny scene as she trips over her tongue.  Is the scene necessary?  Does it really move the story forward?  No, but it's unexpected and makes for a funny moment.

Weak scripts only worry about making the main characters pop off the page.  Excellent scripts make every character memorable and distinct.  Always push yourself to make these smaller roles pop.  Write each part as if it could be a cameo by a gifted comedy star or a strong character actor.

21 Jump Street - a lesson in economical story set-up

I've talked before about how important the first ten pages of a script are.  One of the biggest issues I seen in amateur writing is writers taking too long to get their story in motion.  A bad writer thinks he needs 30 pages to set up his premise; a good writer can explain a lot in a third of that time.

I saw 21 Jump Street this weekend, and was impressed at how much the writers packed into the first ten minutes or so.  These are the plot-points that the script blows through:

- Jonah Hill was an awkward dork in high school.  Girls didn't like him (we see one hot girl rather cruely reject him) and Channing Tatum's popular jock character often teased him.
- Tatum's character couldn't go to prom because of bad grades, leaving him as humiliated as he made Hill feel.
- After graduation, the two re-encounter each other at the police academy.  It turns out, Hill is an ace at the academic stuff while Tatum is equally gifted at the physical challenges.  The two become friends and help each other through it.
- The two are assigned to bike patrol in the park.
- After botching a drug bust, the two are reassigned to an undercover unit at 21 Jump Street.

All of that only takes about a minute of time to set up in the trailer, and to be honest, in the movie, it feels like there's not much else added into those scenes.  I could easily imagine the hack writer version of this idea dragging its feet and not arriving at the church on Jump Street until p. 25.




Hack Writer would have insisted on a full 10-minute prologue in the school, driving home the point again and again that Jonah's a nerdy outcast and that Channing's big man on campus.  Here the point is made quickly - Jonah tries to ask out a girl way out his league, she crushes him, and Channing taunts him.  We don't need three scenes of bullying, we don't need to see Channing treated as the star athlete who has girls practically throwing their panties at him.  Their characters are such understandable archetypes that the script need only suggest these aspects of their characters and let us fill in the blanks.

Ditto for the police academy scenes.  The dynamic there really is established as fast as it is in the trailer.  We don't need a whole classroom scene to show off Jonah's smarts - just have him get back an A+ grade.  Similarly, two shots of Jonah being taken down by Channing in a wrestling match easily establishes the dichotomy.  From there, all it takes is a montage of them helping each other and we're off an running.

Why is it okay to do this ADD version?  Because as important as the set-up is, it's not the point of the story.  The story is about two guys who go back to high school while undercover and find that all the rules have changed.  It's about how it affects their friendship.  It would mess with the pacing to establish them as enemies, spend a whole act making them friends, then spend most of the movie with them breaking up only to make up at the end.  We just need a hint of how they became friends so we can take it as a given, and then enjoy how the rest of the story challenges that.

So when setting up your story, trust the audience to fill in the blanks.  Brevity reigns when getting to the main hook of your story.