WEDNESDAY'S SCRIPT TIP:
MIXED GENRE SALAD
Whenever I talk about genre, someone
always asks why they have to write in any genre... Good question. The answer is that
genres tell the audience what to expect from the movie. If we decided to go out to
dinner, I might ask you what kind of food do you like? That's genre. You might like
Italian food or Chinese food or Thai food or Indian food or Continental (French, or
"Freedom" as we call it today) or maybe just a hamburger. We categorize foods so that
we know which restaurant to go to to get the kind of food we have a taste for. It works
exactly the same with movies and screenplays. If you have a taste for a comedy you
might go to see HANGOVER. If you want a good scare you might to see DRAG ME TO HELL.
If you wanted a cute family comedy you might see UP. The
genre defines the type of experience you can expect from the film. If you went to see
UP and it was filled with zombie attacks that scared the poop out of you,
you probably wouldn't like the film... the same way you wouldn't like spinach ravioli with
sweet & sour sauce. Yech! So knowing your genre is an important element in creating
your story - you don't want to pour on the sweet & sour sauce if the genre is Italian
food. That doesn't mean you can't be a little inventive - Wolfgang Puck puts all kinds of
weird stuff on a pizza... but you knew that before you went to his restaurant. That's what
he's famous for - mixing genres.
And Mixed Genre movies are popular in Hollywood. RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK is an adventure
with fantasy & sci-fi elements, CASABLANCA has a little of everything.
I think mixing genres is a great way to come up with something new and interesting...
But you don't want to end up with an unfocused "kitchen sink" script. Figure out what
the "dominant genre" is going to be. You might end up with two dominant genres - but if
you end up with more than that you could be in trouble. An "Action-Comedy" or a
"Romantic-Comedy" are things we understand, but what's an
"Action-Horror-Western-Musical"? I have trouble imagining that... and part of selling a
film (through trailer or poster) is giving the audience basic information so that they can
imagine what the movie will be like.
This doesn't mean your Horror-Western can't have a great horse chase action scene or
a couple of songs that the leading lady sings in the saloon... but those aren't what the
movie is about. It's a Horror-Western. When the audience pays their $10 they are
expecting the emotional experience that a horror-western provides (whatever that is).
They have a taste for a Horror-Western, and they expect cowboys facing off for high
noon shoot outs with zombies or vampires or ghosts. They don't expect them to break
into song before they start shooting.
Even when we mix two genres, one will be dominant - it will set the tone for the movie.
So our Horror-Western may be a horror movie that takes place in the old west. or a
western about a gunslinger's ghost. The horror movie will focus on the horror aspects,
using the west as a location - maybe a haunted Wells Fargo Relay Station where
ghosts kill people who spend the night. The western version will use the conventions of
a western, but with a supernatural element - maybe a shootout at "high midnight". Both
are mixed genres, but each started with a different genre.
I think there's a difference between an Action-Comedy and a Comedy-Action. It all has
to do with the tone of the story. A movie like BEVERLY HILLS COP is an action movie
with a protagonist who is funny. The dominant genre is action. The story is an action
story rather than a comedy story. You could remove the comedy from the story and it
would still work as an action piece (in fact - it began as a Sly Stallone action film and all
of the funny lines came in when they rewrote it for Eddie Murphy). A movie like THE IN-LAWS (original version) is a Comedy-Action film. It's first and foremost a comedy. The
action is the background where the comedy takes place. A movie like HOT FUZZ does the "AIRPLANE thing" and sends up action movies - makes fun of them - while still keeping a straight face.
You might think because everyone is so serious and the story makes sense (in a nonsense sort of way) that this is an Action-Comedy. Nope.
The action scenes are over the top silly. You laugh *at* the action. That makes it a comedy first.
Knowing which is the
dominant genre is critical when you're dealing with tone - for an example of how
important knowing your dominant genre is, take a look at HOLLYWOOD HOMICIDE.
What a mess! It doesn't know if it's an Action-Comedy or a Comedy-Action and ends up
being neither funny nor action packed.
CHOCOLATE IN MY PEANUT BUTTER!
Last year when I was doing rewrites on my horror comedy that was supposed to shoot in Hawaii (but now looks to be shelved forever)...
I was thinking about this very subject.
First thing I had to figure out when I was writing this script was what my dominant genre was
going to be - did I want to write a comedy script with some horror or a horror script with some
comedy? Was my audience people who wanted to laugh or people who wanted to be scared? This script
already had a home - and the producer wanted to sell it as a horror movie. So the script would be
a clever horror movie, rather than a comedy with some scares. The current low budget DVD market is for horror movies,
not comedies.
SLITHER was probably one of the best reviewed films around when it came out - critics loved it -
but it flopped with audiences. The problem with the movie? Funny as hell, but not scary.
When audiences rent a horror movie, they want horror. That's the basic. Now, it can be funny as
well - but it *must* be scary. Horror is the default genre, if you want to attract an audience. This
makes complete sense if you think about the "horror audience" and the "comedy audience". Horror movies
have a loyal audience - there are horror movie conventions and horror movie magazines. No comedy movie magazines, though. A horror
movie audience might accept a little comedy in their film, but would a comedy audience accept suddenly having a character get
chopped up with a chain saw? It's easy to see which makes more sense as the dominant genre.
So I set out to write script a clever horror movie, rather than a comedy with some scares.
How something like this usually works is the ABBOTT & COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN theory -
the comedy makes us let our guard down, so that the scares are even more frightening. We're
expecting a punch line, but we get a jolt - and we jump twice as high. I like to think of it
as peaks and valleys - with the horror "valleys" as the comedy "peaks" and vice-versa.
Remember the Reeces commercials where the two guys collided, and "You got peanut butter in my
chocolate!" "You got chocolate in my peanut butter!" One of the things I noticed when I looked at
films like this is that the peanut butter and chocolate seemed to work better un-mixed. The horror
needed to be scary - and whenever a movie made fun of the horror, it didn't find a very big audience.
SLITHER, which I loved, was one of the best reviewed films when it came out... but audiences stayed
away. The most frightening scene in the film is when the girl in the bathtub is listening to her iPod
and has no idea a million spermies are crawling toward her. That's a real horror scene. But much
of the rest of the movie plays the horror for laughs - making fun of the "monster". That doesn't
work very well. It's funny, but not as scary. The main "monster" is scarier as an asshole husband
human than as a monster (where he does zany things) and the fat-chick who explodes is completely
played for laughs. You want to keep the chocolate and peanut butter separate! Don't make fun of
the monster!
A couple of my main examples when writing the script were THE HOWLING and PIRANHA (both written by
John Sayles) where the scares are real... but the people are smart alecs and quirky. Both films
are filled with real suspense, real scares, and the typical blood and gore you'd find in a horror
movies. The horror is real horror. Both of those films got great reviews, and made tons of money.
And spawned sequels (James Cameron did PIRANHA 2: THE SPAWNING). And remakes. Remake rights to PIRANHA sold
to Fox a couple of years ago for a whole bunch of money... they are planning a straight horror
version which will probably suck. I have no idea why they don't just remake John Sayles brilliant screenplay -
do you know how much a studio would pay for a John Sayles genre script today? They'd be bidding against each other
for *weeks* to get hold of a script like that... and Fox owns one and is going to mess it up!
While the pirahnas are eating the guests, or the werewolf is basically raping Dee Wallace Stone
in a porn theater (then, attacking and *eating* people at the resort), the characters react just
like I would when confronted with a monster - nervous humor. When characters end up in a crazy
situation, they acknowledge it. The films treat the threats as a *real threat* - never playing
it for laughs. Oddly, this makes the comedy more funny, because it's a tension breaker.
One thing that works in this cross-genre is a character who is more focused on some small issue
than the big one - like the Mayor in SLITHER who has a certain soft drink requirement while his
entire town is being destroyed by monsters around him (I have a character more angry about
missing a football game on TV than the monster attack).
So my theory is - respect the monster (or whatever provides the scares) and find the humor
in the characters and situations. But keep the chocolate and peanut butter separate. Make sure
the horror part is really scary.
Our script can't be all things - it has to be a specific thing. You need to be able to focus
your story so that the audience knows what to expect from the finished film, and so that
*you* know what sort of elements are going to work within the framework of your story.
You don't want to pour marinara sauce on your pork fried rice. Your story might
combine a couple of genres and have scenes that fit in a couple more genres. But
when that film ends up at Blockbuster they're going to put it on a shelf that has a sign
overhead - what does that sign say? What is the dominant genre? Even when you are
mixing genres, you need to know whether you have a comedy film (where people may
get punched but it doesn't really hurt) or an action film (where it hurts like hell when
people get punched). Knowing your genre is important in the creation of your script. If
you mix genres, you need to know what genre is dominant. So what's your genre?
What kind of food do you have a taste for?
