Part II: Use Irony in Film for Screenwriters – Creating Hooks
Are you one of those writers who wants to live in a broom closet, popping speed, chain-smoking and tapping away on a vintage typewriter, writing your brilliant script free-form on one uncut roll of paper like some Jack Kerouac manqué?
You’re writing to entertain audiences.
Boil it down to one sentence.
If this core irony doesn’t strike with other people, it’s useless—in fact its uselessness tends to be in direct proportion to how brilliant you think it is, unless you really hate yourself enough to write for the “movinpitchers.”
Put simply, if the idea doesn’t strike a chord in other people, there’s something wrong with the idea. Luckily, with enough concerted effort, that can be fixed.
So go out there and ask. See whether people get the idea, whether it makes sense to them. Generally I advise asking until you’ve had at least three friends unfriend you on Facebook (or five unfollows, if your friends know how easily butthurt you really are).
This won’t make a lot of sense until you find something that actually works. Because when you find that thing that works, it will really work. The change is exponential.
People begin to say “tell me more.”
People will get excited about certain things. Really excited. These are great ideas, and some things that you might have thought were brilliant simply don’t get people interested at all. Better to figure that out now, before you’ve written the Whole Fucking Script.
(You haven’t written the Whole Fucking Script yet, right?)
In short, this is why it’s useful to ask people as you go along rather than to be precious about your “brilliant ideas.” In the film industry’s creative space there’s plenty of room for pigheadedness, arrogance, and bravado, but there is ZERO space for preciousness.
Go ahead. Slap yourself a couple of times. It’s OK.
Now, release your breathing. As I count back you can release your breathing and find yourself back in the room.
On Talking to Civilians
Occasionally you’ll get the best suggestions from people who aren’t even “film people.” You’re talking to a friend, or your friend’s girlfriend, and she says, “Gee, have you thought about it like this?”
If they make a suggestion that works for them, try it on for size. Maybe it works for other people as well. One never knows where the brilliant tag will come from, and if you engage civilians, they are often happy to have contributed!
Don’t be shy about it. Open up about the irony in film here.
I mean, geez, we can only hope someone gives us a brilliant workaround for that concept that just doesn’t quite fit. Nothing better than letting someone do the work for you and you taking credit, right?
Did I offend your delicate sensibilities again? Are you stealing from your friend’s girlfriend? Should she be writing this movie instead of you?
Sit down and be quiet. This person gave you an off-hand comment. It’s up to you to actually do the work and fix your shit. Believe me, she wouldn’t have the first clue how to apply actual craft and write something even remotely shootable.
If you think about it, this is the same whiny-ass justification for eternal suckage as “what if someone steals my brilliant idea?”
That, my friends, is a concern only of amateurs.
There may be a brilliant idea—there are plenty of them floating around. I’m sure your brother-in-law “thought of Uber, like, 15 years ago.”
Relax–it takes a great deal of craft in place to write an even remotely serviceable screenplay.
Honestly, if this person really can steal your idea and do it better than you could, just let her fucking do it. That’s how the world turns, according to Mark Zuckerberg.
Remember, as the old saying goes, “Talent copies, but genius steals outright.”
So… just test it and see what happens.
Examples from Television
If anything, the ironic core is more important in television than it is in film. Almost all successful shows are built around an intriguingly ironic concept.
Furthermore, if you somehow manage to destroy the inherent tension that this irony in film creates, you destroy the show.
There’s got to be some question, some gap that needs to be there.
It doesn’t have to be humorous. For example, in Twin Peaks, as soon as Laura Palmer’s murder is solved, there’s no more point to the show.
Perhaps that’s a bit harsh. Twin Peaks is the greatest television show ever made and there’s a lot of amazing stuff that happens in after we learn who killed Laura.
Still, that doesn’t change the basic ironic concept: Who killed her? We’re invested in the town, and clearly one of the townsfolk is responsible. The core irony is that one of the people we are invested in must be responsible for the rape and murder of a teenage girl.
Wait—have you not seen Twin Peaks? Put this down right now and don’t come back until you’ve watched it at least until the point where it begins to infest your dreams.
Anyway, the appeal of the show when it first came out in 1991—what made it a “watercooler show” was that it was then based on discovering the killer. The problem is that halfway through the series you figure out who the killer is. That’s why the second half seems so loose—as if there’s no overarching unity to it.
A similar case is The X-Files. Of course it wasn’t really murder there, and despite the aliens, the question we all really had was whether Mulder and Scully were going to sleep together: the believer and the skeptic. Because as soon as they do, the show’s toast.
I mean who actually gave a rutting pigfuck about The X-Files after Mulder and Scully finally got jiggy?
Of course that doesn’t necessarily mean in a technical sense, since the X-Files went on for a couple more seasons after they shagged, but in the hearts and minds of the audience it was all over. We bridged the gap and that was that.
In short, the irony was thrown away with the Happy Kleenexes.
In short, we’ve really got nothing to think about there in terms of the whole “Will they? Won’t they?” argument.
Ross and Rachel on Friends gave us the same crap. Obviously the shows are going to go downhill once that tension—that ironic situation—is gone.
Seinfeld: Destroyer of Ironies
Seinfeld. Such a revolutionary show.
The concept of Seinfeld itself has no core irony; the show is literally “about nothing.” That is, unless you want to get all meta and shit and talk about how ironic it is to have a show about nothing.
Shut up, hipster.
Sitcoms are built on having this ironic concept, but Seinfeld—as a show about nothing—gave itself the freedom to create an independent ironic concept every week. That’s the brilliance of the show.
Most shows find a killer concept and milk it for as long as the public can stomach it—or more precisely, until a couple of years after the show jumps the shark and viewers abandon it (because, of course, it sucks after all the irony got farted away).
Seinfeld on the other hand had Larry David, the Irony Machine, on its team. Under his tutelage a revolving door of amazing writers figured out how to wrap incredible concepts around these four unforgettable characters.
Every week we would see at least one amazing concept—usually a better concept than even the core concept of the show that played immediately before (if you’re wondering, I’m talking about Mad About You). Most of these concepts could propel an entire sitcom on their own.
Modern Television
What you’ll see if you watch more modern television. Let’s talk the post-90s boom: The Sopranos, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, etc.
These shows have clearly learned lessons from Twin Peaks and The X-Files. These two poor shows were basically run for as long as possible before (for different reasons) the irony was gutted and the public gave up.
There wasn’t really such a thing as a “set ending” at this point in time. Only colossal powerhouses such as M*A*S*H could actually plan their endings, while more modest shows were just run until the Suits Upstairs realized that no more cash could be wrung from them.
Now the Suits know well enough to leave these things in the creators’ hands. Knowing this, they get a fucking ending that works. Moreover, the audience likes stories that end properly. Gee! Who knew?
The creator of the show—a writer, of course—says to herself, “All right, now, I don’t want the show to exist past its sell-by date. I don’t want the irony to be lost. There is a shark, and Fonzie shall not jump over said shark on waterskis.” They build an end date into the show.
We’re aware that The Sopranos will end after the sixth season. We know that Mad Men is going to end after the seventh season (OK, that two-part seventh season was a bit of a cheat). We know that Breaking Bad is going to end after five seasons.
We see the same thing on a smaller scale with shows such as the first season of True Detective. The arc only exists through one season, so we don’t have to worry about the characters doing stupid, “non-character-like” things because the ironic gap has been closed.
Or you can take the True Detective approach and save all the horrible writing and useless character development for the later seasons.
How will you use irony in film to appeal to your audience–or backers?