I don’t know, maybe it’s because I’m NYC-based, but I sometimes run into the following scenario when working with writers on their feature film scripts:
I’m analyzing a script that’s a rom-com or action film or buddy movie or any other of the established and well known Hollywood genres and it’s moving along nicely, hitting all the cylinders it should, and then …
I get to the end.
And suddenly the guy & girl in the rom-com decide they aren’t right for one another and hate one another’s guts, or the action hero fails to stop the antagonist’s nefarious plan and is killed, or the two buddies realize that despite all the bonding experiences they’ve underwent, they really can’t stand the sight of one another and pummel the crap out of one another.
And I go: “WTF!?”
So I talk to the writer and ask them why they decided, in the 11th hour, to destroy the genre they were working in and dump the ending the audience was expecting and looking forward to experiencing. And, invariably, I get some derivation of this:
“I didn’t want it to be too Hollywood.”
“Uh,” I respond, “then maybe you shouldn’t have been writing in a Hollywood genre!.”
Actually, I’m not as snotty as that (out loud at least), but I do point out that they’ve chosen a a certain genre to write in and that the audience will be disappointed if the writer doesn’t follow through on it. They usually then say something like:
“Yeah, but I didn’t want to do the obivous. I thought I’d be clever and change it up.”
And which point I figuratively put my arm around them and tell them that this is the deal with genres:
They are a pact you enter with an audience wherein you promise to deliver certain expected elements.
And if you break that pact, you will piss the audience off & lose them, no matter how clever you think you are.
You have two essential choices when choosing to write in a genre:
1) Embrace the genre and fulfill its expectations in the cleverest way you can, eg., SE7EN for serial killer movies, CHINATOWN for film noir detective stories or 40 YEAR-OLD VIRGIN for romantic comedies (yes, it really is, underneath it all)
or…
2) Acknowledge the genre expectations but twist them in an original way that actually ends up commenting on the genre itself, eg., UNFORGIVEN for the western or INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS for WWII war movie or SCREAM for slasher movies
The things about #2 is that you are still delivering on the expectations of the genre. UNFORGIVEN still has all the legendary elements of westerns: cowboys, horses, guns and frontier justice, but the script uses those to comment on the fallacy of the western legend in the first place. Tarantino still delivers Nazis, gun battles and valiant heroes in BASTERDS, but he uses those elements to help you buy into the WWII genre reality as he then pulls the rug out from under you by subverting history. SCREAM uses the very rules of the slasher films — have sex & you get killed, the virtuous single girl is the hero — as acknowledged & discussed plot elements to throw you off the trail of who the real killer is. And then still has them prove to be true!
So once I point all this out to the writer, I get to what I think the real truth is to reason to they sabotaged their genre ending:
They’re embarrassed.
And again, maybe this is a East Coast phenomenon … perhaps New York writers think they shouldn’t “sink” so low as to deliver on the expectations of a Hollywood genre, that they need to be different and unexpected and non-traditional. Well, yes … they should be — but in pursuit of fulfilling the expectations of the genre they are writing in!
This is not a business it pays to be embarrassed in. If you want to be produced in Hollywood, then unabashedly embrace the genre you’ve chosen and pursue it to the nth degree.
And please … don’t decide 90% of the way through your script that you are being clever by disavowing all the work you’ve done up to this point and reneging on a happy ending.
Because you will be the one who’s ultimately unhappy as you ride off into the sunset with your unsold script.
Yes. To paraphrase one of those long dead snooty privileged white men, a good script tells us something about its hero(es); a bad script tells us everything about its author.
[...] wrote blog today on embarrassed writers & working with 1 now! Too worried about being cheesy. http://scripteach.com/?p=287 [...]