Best Of: 2012 -- the creative process

Earlier today I posted a humor piece I wrote for the blog.  I followed it up with a detailed explanation of my thought process in writing it.  Here's that follow-up piece that originally was posted on Oct. 4, 2012.

Yesterday’s piece was purely for laughs. But today I want to use it for instructional purposes. The scene could easily be the opening of a pilot (albeit a premise pilot). Now that you’ve read it and (hopefully) found it amusing (one reader said it was very stereotypical. I prefer to view it as recognizable legitimate behavior. But you decide), let me walk you through my thought process on how I wrote it. 

Start with a funny premise. Give yourself a situation ripe for comedy. The Superman legend is so white bread middle-America. I thought a Jewish couple would put a good spin to it.  If the premise is funny, the ideas and jokes will easily come.  If the premise is not, you're passing kidney stones for forty pages. 

EXT. CORNFIELD – SMALLVILLE, KANSAS -- DAY (1990)

I chose 1990 so that if I want to continue this series and put Superman in the present day, this is when this scene would occur. When I settled on the year I went to Google and looked up events, movies, and TV shows of the era. The more specific the better.

A rocket hurtles out of the sky and lands with a crash, a plume of smoke trailing behind it.

A 1988 Kia comes down the road. Inside are Yetta and Morris, a middle-aged Jewish couple.

What would this couple drive? It’s just the two of them so a small car. They probably don't buy a new car every year. And of the small cars out there Kia seems the funniest.

YETTA: Morris, stop the car!

MORRIS: Why?

YETTA: What do you mean why? Didn’t you just see that?

MORRIS: Let’s not get involved.

To me this one line tells you exactly who this character is. Every line, besides being funny, needs to better inform us of who these characters are. They tell us by their attitudes, their decisions, their language.

YETTA: Stop the car or so help me I’m taping over BAYWATCH.

BAYWATCH – cheap thrills for repressed middle-aged men.  They don't even watch porn.  They watch BAYWATCH.  And this shows Yetta knows how to get to him.

MORRIS: Alright. Alright. I’ll stop the car. Leave it to you to want to examine every little object that falls out of the sky.

Mission accomplished.  But he needs to save face, hence the little dig at her.

YETTA: You know that's a terrible show, right?

He made a point of quickly changing the subject away from BAYWATCH. She gets back at him for the little dig by bringing it up again. And it suggests that they’ve discussed this topic before and perhaps he defended it, which has to be the most transparent defense in history.

MORRIS: Look, I stopped the car, okay?!

Again, he doesn’t want to talk about it. She knows how to push his buttons.

YETTA: Let's have a look.

She gets out of the car.

MORRIS: What? We're getting out of the car? Aren’t we trespassing?

It always helps to have two people with differing attitudes. So if she is gung ho to explore this, you have more to play if he doesn’t.

YETTA: Oh shut up.

He follows her across the field.

MORRIS: Who knows? Someone may come and think we did this.

You have to cover their crossing the field. He offers lame justifications for his position.

They arrive at the scene.

YETTA: It’s some sort of rocket.

MORRIS: Great. You happy now? It’s a rocket. Let’s go.

YETTA: Aren’t you even curious as to how it got here?

MORRIS: No. It’s a rocket. Who shoots rockets? Kids. Skinheads. For all we know there’s a Hitler Youth group in Smallville and it's der Fuehrer Air Power Day.

He wants nothing to do with this. His assumption is that it’s anti-Semites. And he exaggerates for comic purposes.  If the scene were today the first guess would be terrorist.  And if it was set in 1962 the suspected culprit would be Russia. 

YETTA: That’s ridiculous.

MORRIS: You haven't been to the Dairy Queen lately.

Yeah, like that's proof. 

YETTA: (examining closer) Wait a minute. Morris, I think there’s a baby inside.

MORRIS: Okay. Now we’re leaving for sure.

YETTA: I swear I'm erasing all eight episodes of BAYWATCH.

Pushing his buttons. For all his bluster, this is a woman who gets what she wants. We see the dynamic of the relationship.

MORRIS: Well then just kill me!

He gives up.

YETTA: Who do think would do such a thing?

MORRIS: I told you, the skinheads. There's probably a new chapter -- Hitler Toddlers.

The one explanation they don’t consider is that it’s a rocket from outer space. Rational people tend to consider the more logical, plausible explanations. But what if two teenagers found it? They might jump right to a UFO. So again, how characters rationalize something they don’t understand tells us who they are.

YETTA: Well, we’ve got to get the poor thing out.

MORRIS: I’ll call the Auto Club.

He doesn’t want to do it himself.

YETTA: We can’t wait forty-five minutes. Give me a hand. We’ve got to get it out ourselves.

She’s clearly the person who drives their relationship. At this point we have to cover some business. We need them to open the rocket, which will take some time and preparation. How can we do that in an entertaining fashion?

MORRIS: What? Us? Are you crazy? That thing is hot. What if I order a pizza? They’ll be here in thirty minutes or less. Let the pizza boy open the rocket. I'll tip him.

YETTA: I should have married Saul Gazin.

A good tip: Go off topic. There are ways of getting him to do something without being on the nose – “You’re so lazy. You never do anything.” Etc. She’s pushing his buttons again. Guilt.

MORRIS: Oh, again with the "Saul Gazin". Mr. Perfect. He’d get the baby out. He probably has oven mitts right there in his glove compartment just for an emergency like this.

This must be a card she uses all the time. He tries to show that he’s immune to it with a sarcastic remark. Actors talk about each line having an “objective.” Whether conscious or unconscious, that’s something good for all screenwriters to keep in mind. His objective: “Oh stop throwing Saul Gazin in my face. I’m tired of it!”

YETTA: My mother and the entire congregation was right about you.

She won’t let it drop. We saw her do that before with BAYWATCH. She’s essentially saying, “I don’t care that you’re tired of it. I’m going to keep harping.” And why does she keep doing it? Because she’s a horrible person? No.  She's the one who wants to save the baby.  It’s because she knows it works.

She takes off her sweater, wraps it around her hand for protection and begins pulling at the latch. Out of guilt he wraps his jacket around his hand and joins in.

MORRIS: Move away. I’ll do this.

Sure enough. She has guilted him into it.

YETTA: Thank you. You're such a prince.

Subtext: You should have offered in the first place, asshole. 

He yanks and pulls and strains.

We’ve got to cover this activity. It’s unrealistic to think the hatch would just pop right open.

MORRIS: If my back goes out, good luck getting the Nazis to pay for my medical bills.

Call-backs – always a good comedy staple.

YETTA: Maybe if you exercised more than once every fifteen years.

She returns his volley.

MORRIS: Do YOU want to do this?

He calls her on it.

YETTA: No. Fine. Keep going.

She backs down. It’s nice to see him get a victory once in a while.

MORRIS: Stop nagging. I’ve never broken into a rocket before.

Telling the audience why it’s taking so much time. And again, all these messages are best delivered through jokes.

YETTA: Sorry… but you really do have no muscle tone.

A trait now well established – she can’t let things go.

Finally, the latch opens.

MORRIS: There!

YETTA: Oh thank God!

She sweeps the baby up into her arms.

YETTA: He is so cute.

MORRIS: He? Then that rules out China.

Another call-back. Still searching for an explanation to this. And it seems amusing that that's what he's thinking about.  A baby is pulled from a spacecraft and he's still mulling over how it got there?

YETTA: Why would anyone do this to a precious little baby?

MORRIS: You’re looking for answers? In this crazy world? Why can't they solve the Middle East? How could a thing like the Exxon Valdez oil spill happen? How did Rick Dees get a national television show? I think the real question here is what are we going to do with him? Does Protective Services have a UFO division?

Google helped here in finding specific events.  Now comes a tough turn we have to make:

YETTA: Morris, why don’t we keep him?

MORRIS: What?!

Bear in mind that characters have to react to news they weren’t expecting. It may seem like just extra lines to have characters say “What?” or “Pardon me?” but the actors need them and you need them to make your scene flow.

YETTA: We always wanted a baby.

MORRIS: Yetta, that’s insane. We also want a time share in Hawaii.

I could have ended the line with “that’s insane” but it’s an opportunity for a joke.  When you go back through your script, look for these.  I bet you find four or five... or twenty.  

YETTA: We talked about adopting. Y’know, after learning that your sperm count was low.

Again, she pushes his button, this time hitting below the belt, as it were.  

MORRIS: You gotta bring that up, don’tcha? I bet Saul Gazin could repopulate the world!

He pushes back.

YETTA: I’m just saying.

MORRIS: Look, you can pull the cable out of the wall. I’m not keeping this child.

The BAYWATCH ploy is not going to work. She’s got to come up with something else.

YETTA: Don’t you see what this is? It’s a sign from God, Morris. It’s like when Bithiah found baby Moses floating on the Nile and raised him. Change boat to guided missile and it’s the same thing. Morris, this child – I just get the sense he’s… special in some way. And there’s a reason we found him. These things are not by accident. If that had landed five minutes earlier maybe Martha and Jonathan Kent would have found him and fifteen years from now he’d be selling dope.

She appeals to his sense of fate and heritage. And the Kent joke is saying, “We’d be better parents” – appealing to his ego and sense of humanity.

MORRIS: (softening) Well… I always did want a son to take over the Woolworth store. But what if his real parents do come after him? What if we see a milk carton and there is the baby or a picture of the rocket?

He’s not just going to turn on a dime. It’s too big a decision. So bring him around slowly. Let him soften. Why might he always want a son? How about to take over his business? So what business should he be in? Generally, Jews who live in non-Jewish cities own stores. I thought Woolworth’s seemed right. It was a little quirky and for irony (that no one would get), I looked up businesses that went out of business in the ‘90s. Woolworth’s was one of them. So Morris is projecting this future that won’t be there.

But he still has reservations. What if the baby's real parents show up is a question I believe they’d ask. But tag it with a joke.

YETTA: Then we’ll call Protective Services.

She has a good answer.

MORRIS: This is so nuts.

He still can’t bring himself to say yes. It’s too big a commitment.

YETTA: Morris, I won’t ask you for another thing for months. Not even a new garbage disposal that if you have a nose you know we need desperately.

She bargains now… but still has to press him on the garbage disposal. You know this is a promise she can’t keep.

He considers, then finally:

MORRIS: Alright. We’ll take him.

YETTA: Seriously?

Another one of those “character needs to react” lines.

MORRIS: Yes, because my life isn't stressful enough.

He doesn’t want to show that he’s a softy. Plus, he wants brownie points for this.

YETTA: Oh, darling. I’m so happy.

Genuine emotion.

MORRIS: What do we name him? And if the answer is "Saul" then the deal's off.

You know she got into his head by bringing up “Saul” so he can protest all he likes that it means nothing but we see that it does.

YETTA: How about Zvee? After my grandfather.

MORRIS: A perfect name for a kid growing up in Kansas. Zvee Sugarman.

Funniest, oddest name I could think of at the time.  And Sugarman for Superman.

YETTA: I love you.

MORRIS: Yeah yeah. Let’s go eat.

That’s what Jews do. They make life-changing decisions then they go eat.