WRITING THE COMEDY BLOCKBUSTER: THE INAPPROPRIATE GOAL
Keith Giglio. Studio City: Michael Wiese, 2012, 213 pp.
work, Giglio launches into “A Criminally Brief History of Film Comedy.” Going decade by de-cade, from slapstick silent films to the latest wave of female-driven comedies, Giglio identi-fies important conventions, lists representative films that the reader should screen, names key writers and directors, and sometimes provides a brief historical context for the era. Then he segues to a section titled “The Subgenres of Comedy,” which lists what most consider to be the traditional comedic genres of film fiction, from farce to musical comedy. The descriptions in this chapter are an odd mix of fully detailed and barely there, but somehow that works—they are all informative and entertaining, and the author’s obvious love of film is infectious and motivating. In the next chapter, Giglio offers his recipe for comedy blockbusters, naming three primary ingredients: inappropriate goal, inappropriate behavior, and inappropriate dialogue. Focusing on the first element, which rated subtitle status on the book’s cover, the author states, “The inappropriate goal is the most important event/action in your story. Everything will emerge from the goal—the logline, characters, plot devices, and resolution” (29). He explains the concept and provides examples that show how a main character’s poor decisions can spawn comedic predicaments powerful enough to drive a story. Then, in the same chapter, he segues to the subject of creating loglines. This might seem a strange shift but is actually wise, given that both tasks—creating a story engine and defin-ing a story’s essence (with elevator-pitch brev-ity)—should be linked. And as Giglio knows, the best time to decide these things is early in the writing process, not after a meandering first draft has been completed. If I have a complaint about this section, it is that although inappropriate goals and behavior
One might argue that the last thing the world needs is another book on writing, yet screen-writers keep reading because you never know where that next wisp of insight and inspiration might be found. Writer-producer Keith Giglio has just published a book that makes the ef-fort worthwhile, a guide that offers a fresh ap-proach to writing film comedy, titled Writing the Comedy Blockbuster: The Inappropriate Goal. The book opens with a foreword meant to encourage and inspire, while also hinting at the tremendous hurdles that all screenwriters face. A hypothetical scenario illustrates how a “high concept/low budget” comedy script might quickly result in a big sale, and a personal an-ecdote recounts how the author’s career was just as quickly threatened when at one point his work was labeled “too soft.” The message is clear: in a business where it is incredibly dif-ficult for writers to succeed, “it’s less difficult to sell an original comedy” (xviii). Or, Giglio writes, in the playful tone used throughout the book, “Tina Fey kicks Bruce Willis’s box office ass” (xix). The book is then divided into three parts, starting with a brief “How to Use This Book” chapter that suggests how people might work along with the text depending on their needs (e.g., while starting a screenplay, selling a screenplay, or using the book as a course text). This introduction is very short and the how-to instructions sparse; the chapter accomplishes little and perhaps should have been omitted. The next chapter begins with a cautionary tale about inadvertently creating derivative work, a sin the author committed when starting out, and Giglio declares that a comedy writer always “needs to be reading funny, thinking funny, writing funny, and watching funny” (2). Making the point that a writer must know his field’s genres if he hopes to create original
Copyright 2012 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. Complimentary copy--not for distribution
are amply explained and illustrated, little at-tempt is made to follow through on explaining how one writes inappropriate dialogue—an important subject due further exploration. In part 2 of the book, the author switches gears to focus on character development. He begins by illustrating how “[c]omedy is inher-ently the fool’s journey” (47), giving examples of how characters drive stories by pursuing inappropriate goals; some act the fool “on the inside” by making bad decisions, and others act the fool “on the outside” by also behaving in odd or silly ways. Giglio goes on to explore character arcs and the distinction between a character’s goals and his or her psychological “need.” Having established that inappropri-ate choices can make a story funny, the author segues to a section on building characters by going through a list of physical, psychological, and social-status traits and then offers a list of familiar character archetypes that populate modern comedies. The last chapter in part 2 talks about story structure, quickly touching on the conventional three-act model and more thoroughly explain-ing ways to develop funny scenes. The author also briefly introduces his concept for adapting the decades-old “sequence approach” writing method as a means to map out funny stories. This last topic then becomes the primary focus of part 3 of the book. Many film writers have used the sequence approach to plot out stories. This system, simply described, employs perhaps forty index cards to construct eight dramatic sequences of five cards each, which translates into roughly fourteen film-script pages per sequence. (One can use actual index cards pinned to a board or virtual cards gener-ated by screenwriting software.) Made popular by such screenwriter-teachers as Frank Daniel and Paul Gulino (author of Screenwriting: The Sequence Approach), this method converts the traditional story development process into creation of a sequence of eight mini-movies, short segments that some writers find easier to manage than one full-length story. Giglio’s version of the sequence approach incorporates
his inappropriate-goal story engine and identi-fies opportunities to build comedy into the plot. After explaining how his method works, the author walks the reader through the eight comic sequences by devoting a chapter to each, explaining how to assign plot points and critical scenes to the different cards for each se-quence. Along the way, the author covers basic screenwriting conventions that the writer needs to address (e.g., major turning points, subplots, exposition) and shares personal insights on comedy writing. Part 3 ends with a chapter that hurriedly mentions a variety of craft and business top-ics—from scene length and script format to landing an agent or manager—but spends too little time on most topics to provide more than a heads-up that the subject needs attention. Such loose ends are probably the only real shortcoming of this book; often, a chapter introduces an interesting topic but does not explore it fully, with “inappropriate dialogue” being the most notable missed opportunity. Otherwise, the “criminally brief” genre review in part 1 of the book is unique and instructive, and the numerous craft and business insights sprinkled throughout that section—insider information that only a successful screenwriter could offer—have great value for any comedy writer. Part 2 of the book is less helpful be-cause it covers mostly familiar territory, focus-ing on character design, growth, and arche-types—not new material, but still necessary in a guide such as this. Part 3 tackles the most important and dif-ficult part of the comedy writing process: con-structing an organically funny story. Giglio’s version of the classic sequence approach offers writers a new—and for some, an easier—way to do this. Though this method would not work for everybody—no method does—all who want to write comedy should at least investigate it. For this reason more than any other, it is recom-mended that you add this book to your shelf.
EVAN SMITHNewhouse School, Syracuse University
Copyright 2012 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. Complimentary copy--not for distribution
