Save the Cat! (9 page)

It's all about making the "What is it?" work better.

In many cases, the key to figuring out whom this story is about and what type of person is leading the action is right there in your log-line. In the scripts I've sold, many times the initial concept gave me the roadmap and all I had to do was clarify. In
Poker Night
, a comedy Colby Carr and I sold to Disney, the pitch
is
the characters: "A henpecked husband finally gets the house to himself one weekend and loses it in a poker game to an unscrupulous gambler." It's
"Risk
y
Business
with a Dad." Need I say more? To service that concept all we had to do was play with the balance of the hero and the villain — and make it about Dad's journey from henpecked to empowered.

Another comedy we came up with and sold to Universal, called
Third Grade,
has an equally simple premise. This is a story about an adult man who has to go back to third grade. After being caught in a speed trap in front of his old school, the hero is ordered by the
judge to be sent back to third grade to learn some manners. Easy concept, right? But who is the best person to put in this situation? What person would offer the most comic conflict given that punishment? What hero would offer "the longest journey" and need to learn the biggest lesson?
Any takers?
Well, in the development process it became clear. The guy who needs that lesson most is someone who has yet to grow up. On the outside he is a successful businessman, a guy up for a promotion at his work — designing violent video games for kids (ironic, no?) — but who has yet to learn the basics of Human Being School.

This is a guy who
needs
to go back to third grade, but doesn't know it yet. And only this adventure will give him the comic lessons he so richly deserves. It's a sweet little movie idea, the poster is inherent in the premise; it's a guy in an Armani suit and a cell phone squeezed into a tiny desk surrounded by out-of-control eight-year olds and maybe a "Kick Me" sign taped to his back. Get it? Well, of course you do. But the gimmick of sending someone back to third grade wouldn't mean anything unless we figured out the perfect hero to take that journey.

AMPING UP THE LOGLINE

Many times, your great initial idea will only give you a hint of what has to be done to create the hero that sells your idea best. To make the idea work, very often you have to play with the characters in order to give your hero the most conflict, the longest journey, and the most primal goal to "amp up" the idea for maximum impact. To make this clear, let's look at our loglines cited in Chapter One and tinker around with other possible "whos" for these ideas.

In
4 Christmases,
all I know is that the two leads are a young couple. They both come from families of divorce and re-marriage — thus the problem of having to see all four of their families on

Christmas Day. My guess is that this is a couple that wants to be together forever, but is having problems at the get-go. They eschew their families and the problems they grew up with; they don't want to get divorced. But maybe it's not all peaches and cream: They're newlyweds! So this day will be a test for them. Do they want to go the way of their parents? Or do they want to go their own way, form a permanent bond, and never get divorced? Granted, I have not read the script. I have no idea what the writers chose to do, but that's the way
I'd
go.

And suddenly, given this very deep and primal urge, the urge to stay committed and be in love forever despite their families, this couple is worth rooting for. That's a movie I'd like to see because those are characters I want to see win. So swiftly, this "easy" premise has real meaning. We have not only identified the "right" characters for this story, but given them a built-in, Alpha-Omega journey to take in the course of this movie. Now the story IS the characters.
And
y
ou thought it was just a funn
y
poster!

In
Ride Along,
part of the pitch, part of the mental picture that makes the idea crackle for me, is the adjectives. A "risk-averse" teacher goes on a ride along with his brother-in-law, an "over-protective" cop, and the goal is primal: the love of the woman they both care about. Those adjectives tell me exactly where this story is going. It's a trial by fire for the teacher: Is he brave enough to overcome his fear and win the hand of his fiancee in the "real" world of manly cops? If he loves her, he will.

But now let's take that same ride-along idea and try some different characters in their places. What if we could do anything with this basic premise? What if the young man who is wooing the sister is not a teacher but an ex-Green Beret? Well, now it's a different movie. It warps the way it plays out in my mind. Now to make the comic conflict come to life, you make the cop the scaredy-cat. He's

Barney Fife and his future brother-in-law will be teaching
him
a thing or two between reminiscences of the Gulf War and a few demonstrations of his "thousand-yard stare." And odds are the ride along would be the ex-Green Beret's idea. Suddenly it's a
very
different movie, isn't it? But it's another way to go. It just shows how you can have a good idea — and absolutely wreck it with the wrong characters. To me, the original idea works best.

In the example of
The Retreat,
again the adjectives come into play to tell us the writers most likely did it right. The way they have it "cast" now, it's about a wet-behind-the-ears (read: young) company employee's first taste of corporate life at a weekend retreat — and someone's trying to kill him. Funny! But let's play around with the character to see other ways they could have gone with this same premise. What if the person going on the retreat is 65, has been at the company for 20 years, and is about to retire? Okay. So now it's about a company "downsizing" its employees for real before they can collect their retirement benefits. Same idea basically: a corporate retreat; a series of murder attempts; a paranoid who doesn't know why he's being targeted. But the journey's a lot different... and so is the moral. And so is the audience:
no one
will show up for that movie. At best it's an Indie starring Jack Lemmon, and Jack is, well, dead.

The point is that amping up a great logline with the hero who makes the idea work best is how the idea comes to life. And let's be clear, the trick is to create heroes who:

> Offer the
most conflict
in that situation

> Have the
longest wa
y
to go
emotionally and...

> Are the most
demographically pleasing!

On this last point, I have particular experience now that I am over 40. Nowadays, I must always catch myself when thinking of my movie heroes. In my mind
everyone
is 40- And the heroes (in my mind), the ones that I am personally drawn to anyway, are now all "existential heroes" — a little world-weary and yet bravely wise.
Yeah! Right!
And the audience that's going to show up for that movie is... well, A.W.O.L. to be honest. (But, if it gets made, the French will hail me as a genius.)

Whenever I find myself drifting into thinking about writing starring roles for Tim Allen, Steve Martin, or Chevy Chase, I catch myself and realize where I am: youth-obsessed Hollywood. Those guys are fine in ensemble, as part of a four-quadrant family pic, great, but as the lead? Never. Okay, rarely. My solution, once I do catch myself and give up on trying to change things, is to make that great character with the existential dilemma a teenager, and make that married couple who's having a crisis a
twenty-something
married couple. This is the crowd that shows up for movies. These are the heroes the audience likes to see onscreen at their local Cineplex.

Why fight City Hall?

The age of characters I think up is my particular blind spot; you have yours. But keep in mind what our job is here: mass market, high concept poster movies for everybody, all over the world. Do not think that just because you and all your friends prefer something, or are in on a certain trend or fad, or like a type of person, that everyone else will, too. I have actually been pitched a movie that the writer said was a great "Julio Iglesias vehicle" — I swear! — won't
everybody
show up for that premiere? (Mucho doubto.) This is why I stress getting out and pitching your movie ideas to real people in the real world to get their reaction.

This discussion of blind spots reminds me of a favorite story my father used to tell. He worked in Advertising early on and one time was trying to sell a client on buying TV time on Sundays. The
client, a wealthy man, balked at this idea and had a very studied reason: "No one stays home and watches TV on Sunday," he explained. "Everyone's out playing polo!"

A lesson in perspective for us all.

THE PRIMAL URGE

As stressed throughout this book, let me just say again:
Primal, primal, primal!

Once you've got the hero, the motivation for the hero to succeed must be a basic one. What does X want? Well, if it's a promotion at work, it better damn well be related to winning the hand of X's beloved or saving up enough money to get X's daughter an operation. And if it's a match-up with an enemy, it better well lead to a life-or-death showdown, not just a friendly spitball fight.

Why?

It s because primal urges get our attention. Survival, hunger, sex, protection of loved ones, fear of death grab us.

The best ideas and the best characters in the lead roles must have basic needs, wants, and desires.
Basic, basic!

Don't believe me?

Then let's look at our three loglines and take out the primal-ness in each to see how our desire to see each wanes:

What if in 4
Christmases,
the lead couple isn't married? What if they're just friends who grew up together and share Christmas

with each other's family every year? Same premise. But take out the sex and what have you got? No stakes. Nothing is on the line. It's still funny. It's still the same idea. But I have no primal rooting interest.
Pass!

In
Ride Along,
try taking out the sister/fiancee. What if the doofus teacher just signs up for a ride along with a cop — any cop. Well, in this gin-rummy hand of primal-ness I've still got: survival. This teacher still has to make it through the night and there will still be risks to his life. But having the cop's sister/teacher's fiancee as the goal makes the stakes resonate with primal-ness. Again, as in the examples in Chapter Two, it's almost a knight-errant tale, isn't it? But having the princess as the prize makes it work whether it's set in the modern day "hood or the Middle Ages.

One more. Just to grind it in.

The Retreat.
Let's take out the danger. What if there aren't any murders? What if it's all pranks played on the newbie executive. Well, where are the stakes? To make this idea work you must have the threat of death; otherwise it's a corporate training film, or worse, an existential metaphor.

And yes, this is all about your hero. Give him stakes. Real stakes.
Primal
stakes. Stakes that are basic, that we understand. Make the hero want something real and simple: survival, hunger, sex, protection of loved ones, fear of death.

And when it comes to who to cast in your screenplay, we respond best to stories of husbands and wives, fathers and daughters, mothers and sons, ex-boyfriends and girlfriends. Why? Because we all have these people in our lives! You say "father" and I see
my
father. You say "girlfriend" and I see
my
girlfriend. We all have em — and it gets our attention because of that. It's an immediate attention-getter because we have a primal reaction to those people,
to
those words even! So when in doubt, ground your characters in the most deep-seated imagery you can. Make it relevant to us. Make it something that every caveman (and his brother) will get.

Make it, say it with me now...
primal!

CASTING FOR THE ROLE OF YOUR HERO

One of the pitfalls of being a savvy movie writer is knowing who among the acting set is looking to do what part next. Adam wants to do a drama next — to get
his
Oscar nod. Ditto Jim. Ditto Steve. (After
Lost in Translation,
ditto everybody!) We have also seen everyone's most recent movie, may or may not know what's in production next, and
think
we know who'd be perfect for the movie we are writing.

Let me state here and now: We do
not
know!