John August

Search Results for: characters

That’ll teach her

Genres

Tad Friend examines female characters in comedies and finds an [unsettling pattern](http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/04/11/110411fa_fact_friend):

> Funny women in movies must not only be gorgeous; they must fall down and then sob, knowing it’s all their fault.

Nerve has a super-cut to demonstrate:

Friend’s article — a lengthy piece on Anna Faris — looks at a lot of the issues surrounding female roles in comedy. It’s easy to point fingers at screenwriters (“Write better parts!”) or studios (“Make better movies!”), but the real obstacle is of course the audience, voting with dollars.

The more money female-driven comedies make, the more female-driven comedies will get made. In the short term, the success of Bridesmaids should make studios less gun-shy about spending money to produce and market these movies.

But will they be any good? I worry we’ll learn the wrong lessons and just make more comedies about women in wedding dresses.

Fucking pilots, cont’d

Follow Up, Rant

Following up the [previous post](http://johnaugust.com/2011/fucking-pilots), several TV writers I’ve spoken with agree with commenter Nick:

> Network execs in 2011 cannot afford to scorn cable TV programming. Maybe ten years ago they could, but now they all want their own cable show. They want the same level of prestige and edginess, but they want to somehow make it within the confines of the usual network restrictions on language and sexuality.

> The easiest thing to do, then, would be to take an outstanding cable pilot script and strip the offending elements from it, leaving (in the network exec’s mind) a perfect product: edgy, yet safe; prestigious, yet nipple-free.

> A writer who hands in a network script laced with nudity and profanity and the like is playing right into the fantasy. It’s got the same TV-MA stuff you’d see on cable, so presumably the quality of the rest of the script must be right up there.

> On the other hand, if the same writer handed in the same script but without the naughty bits, it would look like just another network script. And the exec doesn’t want to make a network show; he wants to make a cable show. On a network.

What bugs me about this isn’t the swearing — I love all variety of curses, the filthier the better. What annoys me is the dishonesty. The bait-and-switch.

Imagine I wrote an ABC pilot that featured a scene in which Angelina Jolie plays poker with Jennifer Aniston, with Brad Pitt’s heart as the wager.

Maybe it’s a great scene. Family Guy could do it as animation. But for a live-action show, it’s completely fucking moot, because Jolie/Aniston/Pitt are never going to agree to play themselves in this pilot. I’ve wasted everyone’s time putting this scene in the script.

It’s the same with characters saying “fuck” and “shit.” It’s not going to happen on broadcast television, so including it is just jerking everyone around.

Fucking pilots

Rant, Television, Words on the page

I’m reading more network pilot scripts this year than in years past, so I can’t say whether this is a new trend or just something I was unaware of:

**What’s with all the swearing?**

These are network pilots, not HBO or even basic cable. You can’t say shit or fuck in any combination. But characters in several pilots say both of these words a lot — at least in the drafts I read.

What gives? Why write words you can’t say?

I know some shows have a house style where the scene description is loaded up with a lot of profanity to give it texture:

Wallace turns to see --

THE BIGGEST FUCKING MONSTER ever. Seriously, this thing eats Girl Scouts and shits Trefoils.

That’s fine. It’s amusing for the staff and crew, and makes for a better read.

But I don’t understand the instinct to use never-okay swearing in dialogue. You’re going to have to replace it later, and you’ve made your job more difficult by setting up a dialogue structure that seems to demand a certain word. It’s going to sound wrong to everyone who has read the dirty version.

On D.C., I chastised a writing team for doing this. Now I see bona fide showrunners doing it. And I’m stumped.

Never can say goodbye

Video, Words on the page

Movie characters hang up the phone earlier than actual people would.

I’m not sure this is wrong, per se. Movie dialogue in general is a heightened, optimized version of how real people talk. In many of these examples, adding a last goodbye would feel odd.

As the last few examples show, “thanks” has become an acceptable closer word in English. And “love you/love you too” often serves as a final couplet.

Still, I’ll be hyper-aware of phone calls both real and written for at least the rest of the week.