CARACTERÍSTICAS FUNDAMENTALES DE UN GRUPO

A Comic Premise is a lie that imagines an impossible or improbable world that could never happen, but what would happen next? The better the premise, the more the story starts writing itself in your imagination. For example, one time I was giving a workshop at Disney and I was talking to a room full of

animators. Ironically, animators tend to be the least animated audience ever. They’re usually withdrawn artists or computer geniuses, and it was hard to get them to respond. So I would try to get them talking to me in the beginning of class just to warm them up. One day I asked, “So what are you working on?” And they said, “Well, we’re finishing up this thing called The Incredibles.” “What’s that about?” I asked.

“Well,” they replied, “it’s this family of superheroes, but they have to give it up because it’s outlawed, and they have to get real jobs.”

Like I said, I’m a comic book nerd, so I loved this premise. I said, “Oh my God, that’s great! So there’s the scene where they’re being superheroes and then the scene where they have to be in an office somewhere? And then there’s a scene where they’re fighting like a family but with superpowers?” And I but it’s not a prerequisite. In that workshop, one group came up with this premise: “A losing college football team discovers that the only way they can win . . . is to get the nerd . . . laid.” There was a slight people in that workshop didn’t want to see this movie. But the point is that no one was suffering from writer’s block, from the paralyzing thought, “What do I do next?” We had enough scenes and segments to outline an entire film. In five minutes.

And which characters might be in the film? The nerd, the team’s quarterback, his best friends, a big lineman and a speedy wide receiver, the somewhat addled coach, a cheerleader. Note that it’s not cheerleaders, because we don’t want to have a dozen of the same character. When I read a script that has forty-five speaking roles, I can tell you there’s a mistake being made. That’s what Commedia teaches us

— that you can tell an entire universe of stories with a limited cast. And maybe the cheerleader is also the coach’s daughter, because Commedia also teaches us that comedy is a closed universe. The old man wandering around the streets in Act One always turns out to be the father of the orphans in Act Five — it’s blank screen or page that accompanies that block. The point is that a good premise has the power and potential to start writing itself and can be developed in any number of ways as long as you follow a few basic principles:

• Once the premise is established, YOU CANNOT TELL ANOTHER LIE.

You tell one big lie, but after that you have to develop the story honestly, organically, and truthfully. Big asks us to believe that a little boy turns into a man overnight, but from that point onward, the narrative proceeds truthfully, with no more lies being told. The premise of Groundhog Day is that a day repeats itself over and over again. Could that ever happen? No. But if it did happen, everything else that occurs in the story develops truthfully from that one lie. In Chicken Little, an anthropomorphic chicken tells his town the sky is falling, creating a rift with his father and humiliation for himself at a time in which kids United States, because it has nothing to do with politics; Phil’s mother, because the theme isn’t about family. And Stephanie. If you’ve seen the movie, you probably don’t remember Stephanie. In a version that’s online, there is a Stephanie. The studio demanded an explanation for the magic, so in the second draft Danny Rubin and Harold Ramis came up with Stephanie, a girl who works at the television station in Pittsburgh that Phil slept with and dumped. Stephanie, who’s into Ouija boards and crystals, is angry at him, so she puts a curse on him.

But what happens if you put Stephanie in the script? How does that change the theme? If you have Stephanie as the catalyst, a rejected, New Age, Ouija-wielding witch who puts a curse on you, it changes the theme from how can you be a good person to how can you be a better boyfriend? By calling in the wrong character, the theme, and the movie itself, is sidetracked and diminished.

• Characters determine Events and Structure; Events and Structure should not dictate to Character.

As Bill Prady of The Big Bang Theory puts it, “We follow the characters, and let them tell us what they’re going to do next.”

• Other characters’ needs are as strong as the main character’s.

In Head of State, the presidential and vice presidential candidates for a political party are killed in a plane crash — always a funny way to start a movie. The evil head of the party decides that he can’t run this year, so he makes sure that the least likely candidate for President ever is nominated. And that turns out to be an alderman from Washington DC, Mays Gilliam (Chris Rock). There’s a scene at a fundraiser, with Gilliam glad-handing rich white donors. Also at the party are his two political handlers. One is a woman, who’s in on the evil scheme, and the other is a man who’s clueless about the scheme and wondering why he got stuck with such a rotten candidate. There’s a point in the fundraiser when Gilliam, trying to “get the party started,” starts playing DJ. He gets all the old white people to start dancing hip-hop (always hilarious), and on the microphone exhorts them to “Throw your hands in the air, shake them like you just don’t care, and if I’ve got your vote for President, let me hear you say, Oh yeah!” And all the white people shout “Oh yeah!”

Watching this, aghast, are the two political handlers. The woman has a right to be aghast — she wants Gilliam to lose. But why is the man aghast? He just saw a whole room of rich white people connecting with his candidate. Why doesn’t that make him smile, or at least consider it a good thing? Because he’s not a real person, never was, and never will be. He’s there to be a predictable character, having a predictable reaction, in a predictable way. He’s there as a stick figure that some scriptwriter or director is pushing around because they’re the uptight handlers. The man should be deliriously happy. He should come in the next day dressed in a backward baseball cap and baggy pants. And this is what I mean about writing from the character’s point of view, through the character’s rods and cones. Every character, even minor characters, have to be allowed their integrity as human beings, have to be allowed their own point of view. And if they’re winning from their own point of view, you have to allow them that.

CAVEAT

Is it possible to write a brilliant, hysterical comedy about a boy and a girl sitting on a park bench talking for two hours? Sure. It’s just really hard to pull off. At some point, you face the possibility of hitting that writer’s block I’ve heard so much about. (OK, confession: I’ve more than heard about it.) A great comic premise makes the story and all its possibilities create an explosion in your imagination — kind of like a creative Big Bang. As the story starts to expand in your mind, you can’t wait to start writing it down.

When you tell your friends about it, they get excited too, because the story possibilities are so abundant.

After telling the initial lie, you don’t have to sweat or strain to invent comic bits. If the characters are human enough to be “Non-Heroes” — flawed and fumbling, like we all are, yet keep picking themselves up no matter how many times they get knocked down — the comedy will occur naturally.

PART III