John August

QandA

Stay away from this girl

Genres, Rant

Wait, how did I not know the [Manic Pixie Dream Girl](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ManicPixieDreamGirl) existed as a trope? Nathan Rabin gets credit for first [calling her out](http://origin.avclub.com/articles/the-bataan-death-march-of-whimsy-case-file-1-eliza,15577/):

> [Elizabethtown’s Kirsten] Dunst embodies a character type I like to call The Manic Pixie Dream Girl (see Natalie Portman in Garden State for another prime example).

> The Manic Pixie Dream Girl exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures. The Manic Pixie Dream Girl is an all-or-nothing-proposition. Audiences either want to marry her instantly (despite The Manic Pixie Dream Girl being, you know, a fictional character) or they want to commit grievous bodily harm against them and their immediate family.

The OnionA.V. Club lists [sixteen examples](http://www.avclub.com/articles/wild-things-16-films-featuring-manic-pixie-dream-g,2407/) and further clarifies just what’s wrong with this archetype:

> Like the Magical Negro, the Manic Pixie Dream Girl archetype is largely defined by secondary status and lack of an inner life. She’s on hand to lift a gloomy male protagonist out of the doldrums, not to pursue her own happiness. In the late ’60s and early ’70s, MPDGs often took the comely form of spacey hippie chicks burdened with getting grim establishment types to kick back and smell the flowers.

She’s simply awful. She’s the [navigable air duct](http://johnaugust.com/2006/air-vents-are-for-air) of female antagonists, something that exists only for cinematic convenience. Let’s stop using her.

Like villains, love interests need to have a plausible reason for why they’re there and what they want. Always ask yourself, “What would this character be doing if the hero never showed up?”

If you can’t answer — or if the answer is boring — you need to go back to the drawing board.

There’s nothing wrong with kooky females, by the way. Anna Faris has made a career of them. But in films like The House Bunny, it’s always clear what she’s after — and it’s never about getting a nice guy to loosen up.

Aline Brosh McKenna and the BlackBerry 3

Genres

NY Times has a nice piece on Aline Brosh McKenna, screenwriter of [“the BlackBerry 3”](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/28/magazine/if-cinderella-had-a-blackberry.html?_r=1&ref=susandominus&pagewanted=all):

> McKenna’s solution to romantic-comedy fatigue is not to ironize the genre or make fun of its characters’ (and therefore its audience’s) quests for fulfillment, but to give them what they want: a great guy and a great job, a happy family and professional success. In “I Don’t Know How She Does It,” Pierce Brosnan may seem like a straightforward object of desire; in fact, as McKenna sees it, his character is especially seductive in that he alone recognizes the heroine’s talent. “He embodies the work recognition she hasn’t gotten until then,” McKenna said.

Because movie stars and directors are more visible, we rarely look at a screenwriter’s credits as being part of an overall package. It’s nice to see an article paying attention to more than just the movie headed to theaters next month.

McKenna’s produced films are thematically unified in much the way Kevin Smith’s or Woody Allen’s are — with the same type of protagonist answering the same category of question. Regardless of the director, her movies feel like her movies.

In failure, screenwriters are pigeon-holed. In success, they’re branded.

Writing and decision fatigue

Big Fish, Broadway, Psych 101

This past weekend consisted of three long days of meetings and work sessions for the Big Fish musical; Sunday went fourteen hours. I had a hunch that late in the day wasn’t the best time to introduce a new song, and now [science has my back](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/21/magazine/do-you-suffer-from-decision-fatigue.html?_r=3&pagewanted=all):

> No matter how rational and high-minded you try to be, you can’t make decision after decision without paying a biological price. It’s different from ordinary physical fatigue — you’re not consciously aware of being tired — but you’re low on mental energy. The more choices you make throughout the day, the harder each one becomes for your brain, and eventually it looks for shortcuts, usually in either of two very different ways. One shortcut is to become reckless: to act impulsively instead of expending the energy to first think through the consequences. (Sure, tweet that photo! What could go wrong?) The other shortcut is the ultimate energy saver: do nothing. Instead of agonizing over decisions, avoid any choice. Ducking a decision often creates bigger problems in the long run, but for the moment, it eases the mental strain.

Writing involves a dozen choices every sentence, a thousand every scene.

Discussing material with producers and a director means understanding and deciding between myriad possible options — and the more people in the conversation, the more choices to consider.

And casting? Exhausting. It feels like it should be one of the easiest parts of production — you’re not *doing* anything, just sitting there and listening — but it wears you out. I’ve been through casting on five projects, and each time I’m amazed how tough it is. You’re trying to compare the actor you just saw versus the actor you saw yesterday versus the actor who won’t audition.

The article explains that sugar (glucose) is one of the quickest ways to restock your willpower supply. That’s why writers get fat.

(link via [@mjeppsen](http://twitter.com/mjeppsen))

What a flop feels like

Psych 101

Conan The Barbarian co-writer Sean Hood answers a dismal question: [What’s it like to have your film flop at the box office?](http://www.quora.com/Whats-it-like-to-have-your-film-flop-at-the-box-office)

> The Friday night of the release is like the Tuesday night of an election. “Exit polls” are taken of people leaving the theater, and estimated box office numbers start leaking out in the afternoon, like early ballot returns. You are glued to your computer, clicking wildly over websites, chatting nonstop with peers, and calling anyone and everyone to find out what they’ve heard. Have any numbers come back yet? That’s when your stomach starts to drop.

> By about 9 PM its clear when your “candidate” has lost by a startlingly wide margin, more than you or even the most pessimistic political observers could have predicted. With a movie its much the same: trade magazines like Variety and Hollywood Reporter call the weekend winners and losers based on projections. That’s when the reality of the loss sinks in, and you don’t sleep the rest of the night.

Read the whole thing. It’s a great write-up of the experience.

As screenwriters, we have little control over anything beyond the words on the page. Once cameras start rolling, the director, the producers and studio executives are making the big decisions. We contribute where we can — screenwriters can be great in the editing room — but we’re largely spectators.

In the last few days before release, even those big decision-makers are spectators. It truly is a launch: you’re watching the movie follow its trajectory, powerless to alter its course by more than a few degrees.

The quality of the finished film is obviously a major factor in how it performs. But it’s never the biggest factor.

What movies are you opening against? Which movies are holding surprisingly well? Did your fourth-billed star recently marry a younger man and show up at the premiere with both him and her ex-husband, sucking up all available publicity? (For example.)

Ultimately, you may have to fall back on Hollywood’s tautological version of the Serenity Prayer: It is what it is. There’s not always a helpful lesson to learn — at least not a lesson you as the screenwriter can act upon.