Broad comedy tips: avoiding the "over the top" note

Jace asks:

Hope all is well! I'm hoping to get your insight on a topic based on your experience as a reader and observer of the industry. Specifically, my question is, is the word "broad" now a dirty word in the comedy spec market? I ask this because I've read a number of articles in the recent past that claim that buyers these days prefer comedies that are "grounded" - more realistic in nature. And also because I've seen a proliferation of these types of films at the theater, from "Horrible Bosses" to "Identity Thief" (notice how these scripts tend to have simple, obvious, straight-to-the-point titles).

My concern is that I've found a number of comedies that fall into this category well, rather unfunny. They take a situation that people can relate to, yes, but they seem to emphasize situations over actual jokes. As a result, they often leave me with a chuckle rather than an outright laugh. The 90s and the early-mid 2000s were rife with broad comedies, from "There's Something About Mary" to "Rush Hour" to "Anchorman", and the thing about these movies was, they were pretty much guaranteed to make you laugh because of their over-the-top situations. But it seems like managers/agents may look down on this category now. And also readers -- for example, I recently received feedback on a read for an R-rated comedy. The reader had mostly positive comments, but dinged it for being too "over-the-top". The thing is, that's exactly the tone I was going for! I thought people went to comedies to see exaggerated situations and characters -- things that would never happen in real life. I thought that's what made people laugh. But maybe I was wrong.

Anyway, was just curious about how you (and other readers) feel about broad vs. grounded comedies, and whether writers should try to "tone down" their scripts so they will have a more realistic shot in the marketplace (or avoid writing anything broad altogether). Would love to hear your thoughts!

Broad comedy is hard to do well, particularly on the page. I'd argue that when you're writing an ANCHORMAN-type film, it's critical that you nail the character voices. There's so much silliness in ANCHORMAN that in the hands of a lesser writer, it would probably read as if it's all over the map, with the writer just going broad in the hopes that balls-out jokes will be funny.

The reason ANCHORMAN works so well on the page is that Ron Burgundy and all of his news team are incredibly well-defined. You read that script (as I did a year before it came out) and you can hear Will Ferrell's voice delivering it. Champ, Brick, Brian - all of those guys have specific voices that don't sound at all like each other. The worst wacky comedies I've read often have interchangeable character voices.

Also note the size of the ensemble. If you're writing a two-hander comedy, you're going to have to give the characters depth beyond "One's the 'normal guy,' one's the fat, sex-crazed, beer swilling party animal.'" ANCHORMAN has guys who can be summed up in a line or two, but they're given really clever stuff to say and they all play off of each other like great jazz musicians jamming with each other.

Example - my favorite Brick bit might be the "I would like to extend you an invitation to the pants party." The joke is based on the well-established trait that Brick is really, really stupid. But that's just the starting point for the gag, which is that Brick mangles what the other guys told him to say to Veronica, "There's a party in my pants and you're invited." Also, it isn't just "Brick gag" as Veronica figures out what's going on and responds with exasperated patience while across the room the other guys snicker.

So we have a whole dynamic going on there - the middle-school mentality of the boys (they think this stupid joke is funny AND they have no problem taking advantage of Brick's nature to send him to do it), Veronica feeling like the only adult in the room and rising above it rather than railing against the immaturity, and Brick not really understanding what's going on. Everything there comes from character. It's not just a gag to check off the notecard "Brick says something stupid to rile Veronica."

There's a reality to that world, despite the broad gags. In a bad broad comedy, it feels like anything goes. That's where I - and I suspect many other readers - start to tune out. Give us character consistency and genuine development (by the end of the film, Ron has come around to Veronica in his own way) and you might see better reactions.

Tone plays into this too, and mastering the tone of a script that can go crazy broad like that news team rumble and snap back to something resembling reality is a high wire act. I don't even know if there's a good way to explain HOW to do it. It's more like the Supreme Court's definition of pornography - you know it when you see it. My own belief is that the characters and the story MUST be more important than the gag.

Character first. Elastic realties only thrive when the character is able to enter and exit them without being compromised.

"How Silly Can You Get?" - Top Secret oral history contains the secrets to writing spoof movies

These days, the term "spoof movie" tends to conjure up images of churned out hackery from the likes of Friedberg/Seltzer, whose films play less like the Airplanes and Naked Guns of yore, and more like restaged sequences from recent films with a fart joke or a pop culture reference tossed in.  Product like many of the SCARY MOVIE films plays less like satire on the works it references and more like a series of "Hey, remember this moment from a 9 month-old pop culture phenomenon?" The story is threadbare and many scenes are little more than gag after gag.

The godfathers of this genre are David Zucker, Jerry Zucker and Jim Abrahams, whose career-making film Airplane literally invented the spoof movie genre.  Only Mel Brooks could have a claim to getting there first, but there's a wackiness and joke density that permeates Airplane which films like even Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein don't match.

The ZAZ team made it look so easy with Airplane that when working on the film's follow-up, Top Secret! even they didn't seem to understand what really made the film work.  (I personally love the film, though.)  Its something they cop to again and again in this oral history of Top Secret!

I'm reprinting a number of their quotes here because it goes to the heart of what a good movie needs - a strong story and structure.  Everything else is gravy.

Jerry Zucker: We were funny guys who really didn’t understand, had no clue, about movie structure.

Jim Abrahams: ‘Airplane!’ was based on this movie ‘Zero Hour!,’ and that’s a story about a guy with post-traumatic stress disorder and, if you look at it in ‘Airplane!’ pretty carefully, that’s what Bob Hayes’ character had. He was plagued by demons from the war and it affected his personality.

[...]

Jerry Zucker: That’s part of the problem of doing a second movie after a big hit, everybody says, “Well, you must know.” And the fact is, we didn’t. We knew how to tell jokes, but we didn’t understand yet how to make a movie. I don’t know why nobody said, “Hey, take a structure course.”

David Zucker: We thought we hit it out of the park, because it was so funny. We knew we had the jokes. But I think we learned a lesson.

Jerry Zucker: I think some of our best jokes are in ‘Top Secret!,’ but it’s really hurt by not having a story. It doesn’t have much of a story or a hook … joke-wise, we started to run out of gas at the end of ‘Airplane!.’ But the movie doesn’t run out of gas.

Another lesson they touch on is the issue of topical jokes and references:

Jim Abrahams: Especially after ‘Airplane!,’ we started to figure out the rules of comedy beyond just our own instincts of “does that seem funny or not.” And one of the rules that we came up with was if we’re going to parody a specific scene from a movie, that it needs to work on its own. And if you get the fact it’s a parody of a specific movie, well that’s kind of frosting on the cake. 

 David Zucker: When I reflect on it, it’s better that we didn’t do topical humor. And the unique thing about movies like ‘Airplane!’ and ‘Top Secret!’ is that they are still funny. So, when I see them with audiences, they still laugh. 

 Jim Abrahams: There’s a scene on a beach in ‘Airplane!’ where Bob and Julie got wiped out by a wave. In reviews for ‘Airplane!,’ people said, “Wow, wasn’t that a clever spoof of the scene from ‘Here to Eternity.’ Well, we had never seen ‘From Here to Eternity.’ We had no idea that it was a spoof, we just thought it would be funny for a couple to get wiped out by a wave while they’re kissing on the beach. But that got us thinking that if you’re doing a spoof from a scene from a movie, it has to work regardless or not whether or not you get the reference.

 Comedy is about more than just silly gags.  Most comedy writers will tell you that the rules for writing a comedy are the same as writing any other film.  Build off of a strong structure, have a story that makes sense, and have characters who are consistently drawn.  Do all of that and the humor will arise naturally.

You can find the oral history of Top Secret! here.

First ten pages - High concept comedy

So what do you do when you’re writing a High Concept Comedy script that requires you to lay a little pipe before getting to the hook? Let’s say you’ve got a brilliant hook like “teenager goes back in time and has to get his parents to fall in love” but there’s just no way you’re going to be able to set that up in ten pages. How do you get fickle readers to keep reading?

Remember: Tone. Genre. Craft.

Look at Back to the Future. Remember the first image in that film? It’s a ticking clock. From the first line of the screenplay, we’re aware of time as an element. Even before Marty enters Dock’s workshop, the camera has panned across the room. It passes a few expository newspapers, all while showing off Doc Brown’s Rube Goldberg-like device for getting canned dog food. That tells us something about Doc. Then Marty enters and through his phone conversation with Doc, we get a decent sense of their dynamic. This is important because they don’t really interact again until about 15 minutes into the film, when Doc makes his first on-screen appearance.

There are plenty of things to learn from Back to the Future, but with a film like this, the important thing is to set up the dominos that will eventually be knocked down. For this film in particular, that includes details like Principal Strickland mentioning Marty’s father was a “slacker.” He also says, “No McFly has ever amounted to anything in the history of Hill Valley.” To that, Marty says “Well history is gonna change.”(THEME ALERT.)

Every subsequent scene contains details that are important. Marty’s band fails a tryout, and then he wavers about sending his demo in. Even with his girlfriend’s encouragement, he’s scared to take a chance. (CHARACTER TRAIT ALERT.)  As the two kiss in front of the Clock Tower, a woman comes over to solicit donations for the Clock Tower, which was struck by lightning 30 years ago (EXPOSITION ALERT.) Marty goes home to find his father being bullied by Biff…. (IMPORTANT SUBPLOT ALERT) and amid other details, his mother tells the story of how she and Marty’s dad first fell in love. (PAY ATTENTION – IMPORTANT BACKSTORY.)

There’s a lot of exposition there, but there are just enough hints of the script’s themes that most readers would probably have faith that this is all leading somewhere. We’ve got a teenager, a crazy inventor, lots of references to time and history, and Marty’s entire world established in about ten minutes, give or take. If you were to show those pages to someone with no prior knowledge of the film, it wouldn’t be a surprise if most of them guessed that Marty would somehow end up back in time and witness a few of the past events he’s been told about.

Most of the time in high concept comedy, your lead character HAS to jump off the page in the first few scenes. The character – not the plot – is really what carries the film. The hook is just a means to explore that character.

Liar Liar – a lawyer who lies as easily as most people breathe is forced to tell the truth for an entire day.

Bruce Almighty – An egotistical news reporter is given all of God’s powers and learns ultimate power isn’t as easy as it seems.

Groundhog Day – A jaded and selfish weatherman is trapped in a loop that forces him to live out the same day over and over again.

If you change the defining traits of those lead characters, the entire theme and story changes, even if the situation they are trapped in remains the same.

 So in high concept comedy, I’d say you can never forget this rule: Define your characters early and often

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.

Broad villains in comedies

Derek asks:

Hi Zuul, 

First, thanks for all of the knowledge you've passed down via the site. I've picked up a lot of stuff from it and I appreciate your efforts.

I'm writing a comedy, and the antagonist is an aggressive, serious, overconfident man, kind of like Bradley Cooper's character in Wedding Crashers. A typical d-bag, if you will. I can't help wondering if the script would be funnier if the bad guy was more over-the-top, the way the bad guys Will Ferrell plays are (Zoolander's Mugato is a good example). Seems like it's more meaningful if the bad guy really is just a terrible human being, someone we hate, someone we want to see defeated by the good guy. At the same time, lots of comedies these days go with the over-the-top, likable bad guy to cash in on as many laughs as possible, often at the expense of meaningful conflict. What do you think?

It's funny you should bring this up because I was recently thinking about villains in 80s comedies and how often they were treated much more seriously than modern comedy villains.  In fact, if you made some of those comedies today, they might not even have their "serious" bad guys and instead focus more on the high concept premise.

Consider Three Men & A Baby.  In that film, three bachelor roommates are saddled with an infant fathered by one of the men.  The comedy comes from the men awkwardly embracing fatherhood, only to bond with the infant and then be faced with losing her when the mother comes back into the picture.

Oh, and there's also a subplot about a couple drug dealers trying to get their hands on a package of drugs that was sent to one of the main characters on the same day that the baby was left on the doorstep.

Wait, what?

And then there's Twins.  Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny Devito are twin brothers engineered in an experiement who find each other in adulthood.  Not only are the two of different physiques, but also different temperments and lifestyles.  There's instant comedy conflict.

Oh, and in the middle of this film there's a subplot about the brothers having crossed a contract delivery man/killer who murders in cold blood anyone who sees his face.  (I'm vastly oversimplifying, but I don't want to get too much into that unnecessarily convoluted plot.)

I don't know exactly when the shift happened, but my point is that there was a time when even the most fluffy and escapist of premises seemed obligated to include bad guys willing to shoot our heroes dead if needed.  And then thing is, I wouldn't call the antagonists of either of those films "pretty well-developed."  It's not as if the gun-toting killers brought meaningful conflict.  The best I can figure is that those movies were a product of the times.

With regard to your specific question, I think that today, there's a stronger sense of matching the bad guy to the tone of the film.  You bring up Mugatu from Zoolander as an example of the over-the-top bad guy as contrasted with Bradley Cooper in Wedding Crashers.  First, I thought Cooper was pretty much one-dimensional in that film (but that might be because I've never, ever warmed to that actor).  But I think the more cogent point is, you couldn't put Mugatu into Wedding Crashers and have that movie work in the same way.  He doesn't fit in that reality at all.

Yet the other examples I cited would suggest that you can put a "serious" bad guy into an inherently light premise and not disrupt reality as much.  For your specific story, I think the answer probably lies in how elastic your reality is.  In a film like There's Something About Mary, there's enough latitude to go relatively broad with the antagonists without either making them cartoons or threatening the integrity of the film.

But this is probably a topic that could generate a lot of discussion, so what do you say, folks?