Cowboys & Aliens? I'm laughing already! Oh, it's not a comedy.

Rainer Wolfcastle on his new movie, "Help, My son is a Nerd!"

Wolfcastle: "My son returns from a fancy East Coast college and I'm horrified to find he's a nerd."

Kent Brockman: "I'm laughing already!"

Wolfcastle: "It's not a comedy."

This quote was going through my head many times during my recent viewing of Cowboys & Aliens. You might recognize "It's not a comedy" as the talking point that ended up in virtually every promotional interview given by a member of the C&A team, pretty much from the point that the marketing campaign started. It's easy to see why that happened, "Cowboys & Aliens" is a whimsical title that suggests camp, or at least B-movie hijinks, much in the way that "Help, My Son is a Nerd!" primes the viewer to expect comedy.

I'm going to join the chorus on this one and agree that Cowboys & Aliens was a mostly disappointing experience. It's not a terrible movie, but it's not a particularly good one either. Genre mash-ups are hard because the filmmakers have to take two flavors that don't usually go together and make them taste appealing. Sometimes it works, and sometimes you let down fans of both genres. Take it from a guy who tried to mash up a Grisham courtroom thriller with a Superhero movie.

Unfortunately, Cowboys & Aliens plays it straight, trying to mesh the tones of True Grit with Predator. It's a fundamental miscalculation of everything appealing that the title promises. I have a hard time thinking of a successful mash-up film that didn't include some measure of comedy, as that sort of self-aware winking usually is what allows viewers to suspend their disbelief.

The first 30 minutes or so attempt to be indistinguishable from any other western. It wants us to accept this as the world of Unforgiven and Wyatt Earp. I'm not inherently against this verisimilitude. Just to name one example, the Nolan Batman films have worked remarkably well in their attempts to be more reality-bound than their predecessors. The Western aspect could have worked as the "straight man" in this routine. Where it goes wrong is in making the alien elements just as serious. The idea of gunslingers taking on H. R. Giger rip-offs is so inherently ridiculous that it's a crime the film doesn't even attempt to have a little fun with it.

This movie needed to be more in the vein of Tremors, an underrated Kevin Bacon film that tipped it's cap to the B-movies of the 50s and 60s while still being sophisticated enough for the early 90s. C&A seems scared to really cut loose and go over the top for fear of being cheesy, and that unfortunately makes the entire affair feel too earthbound.

And again I return to the message of "Know what your audience wants to see." If you entice an audience with a title, then what you give them had damn well come close to - or better yet, exceed - their expectations. I'd say this is especially true when trying to get someone to read your script. As much as we might mock the profanity and the whimsy often seen on the Black List scripts, those titles are memorable - and they tell the reader exactly what they're about to experience.

To Wit:

Your Bridesmaid is a Bitch
He's Fuckin' Perfect
Dirty Grandpa
Sex Tape

As Scott Myers pointed out in announcing last week's sale of The Incredible True Story of Jessica and Drew Who Accidentally Boned on the Way to the Wedding, American Pie was once called, "Untitled Teenage Sex Comedy Which Can Be Made for Under $10 Million Which Studio Readers Will Hate But We Think You Will Love."

How ticked would you be if you picked up ANY of those titles expecting to laugh and instead ended up with something deep and emotional such as "Like Crazy?" The only way to overcome that potential hurdle is to deliver a damn good story - and Cowboys & Aliens definitely isn't up to the task. The film looks pretty, but with Jon Faverau directing and Steven Spielberg producing, how could it not?

I've got a host of other issues with Cowboys & Aliens, but that might be best left for another post.  I'll just say that it would be nice to get some original creature design and not have aliens that look like generic versions of Predator or Independance Day critters.

Tuesday Talkback - Retitle Classic Films in the style of the Black List

The Black List has become known for outrageous titles along the lines of F**kbuddies, and I Want to F*** Your Sister. Often, the brash titles like those can help the film stick in the mind of a reader or a development executive, even if that catchy title is going to be homogenized by the time the film sees release. Case in point, F**kbuddies was retitled something so bland that I had to look it up to remember it was released as No Strings Attached.

So as a fun exercise, why not retitle classic films in the crass style of The Black List? See if you can recognize these classics and no-so-classics.

I Will Become My Mother Even if it Kills You
Escape of the Face and Liver-Eater
My Mom Has the Hots for Me
I Want to F*** My Daughter's Classmate
Eddie Murphy and Four of his Favorite Co-Stars
Naked Kate Winslet Comes Before Sinking Seamen are Swallowed Up
Dead People Have Issues Too
Everyone in LA is Racist
Fat Guy Fall Down (Kevin James attached)

I had some for Rain Man and Forrest Gump that were SO wrong, but so Black List-y, but I imagine I'd have gotten some sternly written emails over them... and probably a call from my mother.

Let's see you guys get creative.

Avoid generic titles!

I've probably ragged on this before, but in the past few weeks I've had more than one run-in with a script with an unmemorable title. This is a silly tip, I know... but keep in mind that anyone in the business who looks at your script is probably going to read 15-20 other scripts that week. That's a lot of plots, characters, and names to commit to memory.

So does it do you any good to slap a generic title on the script? I've had a couple instances where an exec has asked me for my verbal take on a script I read just a few weeks ago - and let me tell you, when the title is something like "Life" or "The Tree" or "Moving" my recall might not be extremely sharp at matching that script to its main plotline.

But something like "Spring Break Antarctica '12" or "The Siege of Waldorf University" or "Killer Klowns from Outer Space" lodges in the memory. True, most of those sound like schlock titles, but consider these memorable titles:

Back to the Future
Pirates of the Caribbean
Hot Tub Time Machine
Four Christmases
Knocked Up
The 40 Year-Old Virgin
Zombieland

Those titles are memorable and they offer enough of the premise that they're likely to trigger memories of the script.

So give some thought to your titles. Anything you can do to make your writing memorable can help you in the long run.

Reader questions: Titles and Celebrity cameos

I've got a couple questions that have been answered in various versions before, but it seemed like a good time to restate them in their own entries rather than as passing comments made in larger reviews.

This question comes to us from Anthony via the Bitter Script Reader Fan Page on Facebook:

Vulgarity in titles. It seems to becoming more acceptable. Ie: Kick-Ass and Inglorious Basterds. I have a dark comedy titled Stupid Bitches. Acceptable? Lol seriously the title could not be anymore perfect, I can't bring myself to change it.

At this point, I'd say that it's not something you need to worry about excessively. At present there are scripts called "Fuckbuddies" and "I Want to F**k Your Sister" floating around in development, and several people observed that last year's Black List had several titles of this ilk. I'd say that it can work as a gimmick to make your title - and hopefully your script, by extension - memorable. So long as the crass or vulgar title fits the tone of your script, I'd say you're on safe ground.

In other works, I wouldn't suggest retitling "Up" as "Fuckin' House on Balloons, Man!"

Odds are that the most crass titles will be renamed before release, though. The MPAA (or the FCC, I can't remember which) has pretty strict obscenity limits on what words can be used in film advertisements that air before 10pm. Thus, A Couple of Dicks becomes Cop Out, and Zack & Miri Make a Porno gets advertised as Zack & Miri.

If Fuckbuddies gets made, they'll totally rename it Friends With Benefits. Mark my words.

David asks:

I've had a fairly decent idea for a script that involves a celebrity acting as themselves. Is it worth going beyond the "Yeah, that's a funny idea" stage with something like this? Is an unknown writer going to be able to sell, for example, Jack Nicholson solving crimes in his spare time?

In my humble opinion - it's a bit of a risk. To restate what I said back in my Zombieland review, The celebrity cameo is something that usually makes my eyes roll in a spec script, mostly because my first thought is "What happens to this scene if Alan Thicke says 'no?'" This sort of gimmick got popular after Neil Patrick Harris popped up as himself in Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle and stole the movie. Now, you could say that if NPH had turned down the cameo, they just would have offered it to Fred Savage or Jaleel White. As true as that is, I think it's a risk when you put something like this in your spec.

The way I see it, throwing in a celebrity is a lot like specifically naming an expensive song for your musical montage. Suddenly, you're mandating elements that could back the producers into a corner. For example, if your joke is crucial to the second act climax, and it only works if Dean Cain shows up in Superman tights and reveals he really can fly... well, you might be setting up a difficult problem to solve if Dean decides he doesn't want to play ball - or he will, but only if he gets paid through the nose.

On top of that, a lot of celebrity cameos usually feel like weak attempts to just get a laugh out of how out of context the appearance is. I'll admit, I enjoyed when William Shatner played himself (or at least a version of himself) in Free Enterprise, but Bruce Willis' cameo in Ocean's Twelve was just painful to watch. You could practically feel the filmmakers elbowing the audience in the ribs saying, "Well? Well? Aren't we clever?"

Now, in your case David, you're talking about centering an entire movie on this sort of actor-playing-himself premise. In that case, take every warning I gave about cameos and quadruple it. It's a risk to do something like that in your first script because it makes all the odds you're up against that much longer.

Tuesday Talkback: What's in a name?

Movies like HOT TUB TIME MACHINE and SNAKES ON A PLANE give the impression that they were developed with the title first and the actual plot later. Inspired by that, I thought today it would be fun to challenge everyone to either pitch a ridiculous title and a quick logline to go with it, or see what great loglines you could come up with for some of my own silly titles.

Here are my suggestions for inane titles that may make their way to a multiplex near you. See if you can come up with a funny pitch:

WET T-SHIRT CONTEST
USED CAR BLOWOUT
EXHIBITION GAME
DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME
VALET PARKING

Do any of these sound like titles that would get you to the theatre on name alone?

Reader mail - titles

Figured it was about time I responded to some reader mail about my post a while back about choosing strong titles:

E.C Henry writes:

Isn't "She's Out of My League" ALREADY the title of some teenie bopper's romantic comedy vehicle of a few years past? Why would you want to read a title that SUGGESTS a rehash of that?

Also the title, "You Again" sounds awfully vague to me. This sounds like something saying someone might utter in a return from the grave scenario. But to me this phrase needs more to suggest what tone of movie follows this title: comedy or horror.
Anyways curious to know what about that title pricks your interest, and leads you to want to read it. Perhaps a "buzz" factor that neither I nor your readers are aware of.

As far as I can tell with Google, there is no such earlier movie named "She's Out of My League," and you sort of prove my point by indicating that the title totally suggests a romantic comedy, probably with young leads. As far as the marketing of spec scripts go, that's like hitting a gold mine. Rom-Coms are perennial scripts - they never seem to cool off as a genre. And the young audience is among the most coveted by studios. Given a choice, readers would rather "discover" this one than waste time reading yet another World War II script about the first integrated unit from Iowa.

And if you somehow get the impression from that that I'm advising you NOT to write a WWII script, you're right.

As for "You Again," you're right in the scenario that you set up there. My assumption was that it had to do with two longtime adversaries confronting each other again. I think it does suggest genre, though, as the line itself is self-aware in a way that hints at comedy. Your point that it could be a literal "return from the grave" and thus suggests horror is well-taken, but I'd argue that in that case it would be camp or comedic horror. I can't picture any "serious" horror film titling itself that. (Can you really picture something like "The Unborn" being called "You Again."

My feeling was that it had to be comedy, and that it was a script about a long-time rival coming back. From the brief blurb I saw a while ago, that's essentially correct.


Jasph asks:

Also, how often do you find an interesting title attached to a piece-of-crap script? How about a great title, great first act, and crap the rest of the way through? Since titles can't be trademarked, do they get cherry-picked and used by studios, with the original script in the recycle bin?

As to the first question - there are TONS of interesting titles attached to terrible scripts. I could rattle off several of those right now if it wouldn't get me in trouble with some of the writers.

As to the second question - I've read thousands of scripts over the years and most of them fade into memory, so I can't recall any specifics at the moment, but I'm sure it happens.

As to the third - I doubt it.

He goes on to write:

I know a great movie with a lousy title. No hint of genre or premise, and hardly memorable. But it's one of the best scripts I ever read. More interesting titles might have come from its content ("God of Death" or "Untrue North" or "The Fixer" or "The Bagman" or "The Gamble" or "Realm & Conquest"). Would you be more likely to read one of those than a script called "Michael Clayton"?

I guess you probably would.

Don't misunderstand my point. I'm not saying "Bad title always equals bad script." No one is going to read something like fantastic and go, "This is a great script, but I can't give it a consider because they titled it 'Sofa.'" But, I'm assuming most of you who read this are going to be submitting to agencies and production companies from such a low level that your script is going to be tossed into a low-priority slush pile. I'm just telling you how to get out of that stack faster.

Also, strong titles help a reader remember a script later. I can look through my massive coverage file and find hundreds of generic script titles that I can't remember a single thing about the story. In fact, when I organized the files by date and looked at the list from three months back, I could barely recall the stories attached to most of the scripts because the titles were often so generic.

Once when I was working at one production company, the VP of Development came to speak to me with questions about a script I had covered for him less than a month ago. I guess he'd forgotten to call the agent and needed a few details that he couldn't find in my write-up Well, it had a very generic title and the plot was almost as bland. Embarrassingly, I couldn't recall the script off of the title, or the vague description he gave me. I looked up the coverage and reading my own words jogged my memory enough to give him what he needed, but it was a good lesson in how easily the unmemorable becomes... well, unmemorable.

You know what does stick with me? The clever titles, the unique ones. Sometimes the clever title attached to a bad script ends up helping me remember some of the worst scripts I've ever read. More than half a decade later, I still recall "Mime Cop" as a script with a spectacularly awful premise and execution.

So let's say someone reads your script, gives it a mild consider and the higher-ups pass on it because it's not the sort of film they're making right now. Six months later, the head of development decides he wants to do a movie that's right in that genre. Wouldn't you want the development assistant to instantly perk up in the room and say, "I've got the perfect script for you. It's called 'Terror-forming.' I read it a while back, and I'll send the coverage on to you."

One of the first rules of breaking in to writing has to be "Be memorable."

Quick tips #3 - Generic titles

Today's tip: catchier titles get read sooner and instill more goodwill.

Your title is the first thing any reader will see. In some cases - who am I kidding? - in EVERY case it will determine which script they pick off the slush pile next. A good title should give a sense of the genre, hint at the premise and be memorable. Bad titles tend to be generic, bland or pretentious.

To give you an idea, I went over to ScriptShadow's site and took a look at the titles of the script's he's recently read. Here's what I'd pull from the reader pile, and here's what I'd leave for the next schmuck to get stuck with (after doing a check on the page counts of course. If any of the "bad" ones were 90-100 pages, I might take them anyway.)

Good titles:
She's Out of My League
Van Damme v. Seagal
The True Memoirs of an International Assassin
You Again
I Want to F___ Your Sister

Bad titles:
Taxonomy of Barnacles
Gone
Villain
Conviction
Dubai
Hearafter