WHERE'S THE DRAMA?

THEME

Every sitcom that is successful has a compelling theme that runs through every episode. It needn't be overtly large or grandious like the "futility of existence";  in fact, it's much better if it is particular and connected to a specific character. In the Vicar of Dibley, for example, the theme is "a single person can make a difference". The theme of the Cosby show is "family life is great". The theme of Married..with Children (working title: Not the Cosbys) is "family life is hell". Whatever your sitcom's theme, it's important that your show is consistent and that the audience is clear about what they're going to be tuning in to, and what the ongoing and seemingly unresolvable problems and challenges are for the main characters.

Consider any number of really successful shows in television history. It’s always the characters you remember, right? Audiences loyally follow and become engrossed in the lives of characters that they love. It's even better if the characters form a kind of family if not an actual family. Think of Sergeant Bilko's platoon, or even Terry and Arthur in Minder. When it comes to comedy - like anything dramatic - it's the characters, stupid. Prickly, nasty characters like Steptoe (Steptoe & Son) or George Costanza's character in Seinfeld become loveable BECAUSE of their weaknesses and faults.

As for laughs, a show needs to be funny, certainly. But there are any number of shows, especially some in their later years, which seem a lot funnier than they really are. They succeed because the audience has already fallen in love with the characters and is prepared to do some of the (imaginary) work necessary in bringing them to life.                                                           

STORY

A sitcom is a story that generates laughter.

If you have a strong enough story it will produce laughs.

Characters in a sitcom communicate through funniness, which is the outcome of their personal habits, incongruities and weaknesses. Think Basil Fawlty.  

Sitcoms are not about jokes; they are about characters in odd, unexpected and incongruous situations, striving for something that is beyond them that rarely if ever winds up with them having more than they started with. Usually they end up with less. Certainly they are none the wiser.

Often, producers ask that you don't submit the pilot of a series because the pilots submitted usually take the entire half-hour to introduce the characters and establish the premise for the rest of the season and forget to tell a story.

Don't think pilot without thinking story.  And don't think story without thinking Character -> Problem -> Goal -> Plan. 

Read the pilots of Frasier and Friends to see how simply and economically they set things up.

Friends has to introduce six main characters and only Phoebe gets a little left-out. One always thinks the audience needs more information than they actually do.

Less exposition, more story.  

Stakes

Make the story something we care about. 

A character trying to win a poker game with 10 cents at stake isn't very interesting (or funny) - so raise the stakes. 

If they stood to lose their house or a loved one that would make us care more.  I prefer comedy stories that would also work as drama stories. 

Some writers feel they have to base their stories on real life and experience but comedy isn't real life.

 A real incident can inspire you, as the story of a hotel guest being found dead inspired John Cleese and Connie Booth to write The Kipper and the Corpse episode of Fawlty Towers, but you have to be true to your show and not true to life. All because a story really happened it doesn't make it funny.

Structure

There are many theories on structure. Good storytelling usually  breaks story structure into the basic steps of human action:

·      Problem/Need: the difficult situation affecting the hero

·      Desire: what the hero wants in the story

·      Opponent: The character competing for the same goal

·      Plan: How the hero will overcome the opponent and succeed

·      Battle: the final conflict that decides who gets the goal

·      Self revelation: an understanding the hero gains about themself

·      New equilibrium: the world back to normal with the hero at a higher or lower level

·      Goal/Want

·      Obstacle/Forces of antagonism

·         Solution

There could then be a consequence of that solution which creates another obstacle and so on for five or six times.  The aim is to ensure that the structure of your story has increasing conflict and an accelerated pace. 

The three act structure is the basis of all sitcoms, even those with a commercial break, and put simply is:

·      Act I - get your protagonist into a tree

·      Act II - throw things at her/him

·      Act III - get her/him down

I would suggest that you don't attempt to write your episode until you have your story and structure worked out.  It saves a lot of time and hassle.  As my grandmother used to say, "Proper preparation prevents piss-poor performance".

Dialogue

Writing dialogue is the most fun part of the job and it is tempting to rush the foundation work to get there but that is ultimately self-defeating.

Rewriting dialogue is a lot easier than rewriting your story or characters.

The most important thing to bear in mind is that everyone talks in a unique way.

Sometimes a character's unique voice flows naturally as you write their dialogue; at other times it might mean going back and re-writing.

As well as a unique voice each character also talks to different people in different ways.

The way a character talks to their boss is going to be different to the way they talk to their lover or mother.

Add emotions into the mix and your character will sound different again depending on how they react when they are happy or depressed or scared.

Everything a character says should be moving the story forward.

Characters just sitting around cracking jokes is dull. Less comic banter, more story.

Some lines can be interpreted in many ways and if this is the case then it's OK to put in a note before the speech saying, for instance, "sarcastically" or "sadly" or to underline a word that needs emphasising.

However only do so when a line's interpretation isn't obvious otherwise it's insulting to the actors.

To check that your dialogue works you'll need to perform it. If you have problems saying it so would an actor.  

A sitcom script is about 22 minutes long (commercials take up the other 8 minutes).

While many sitcoms are trying to break away from the standard boring format, most sitcoms are structured in the exact same way: each week, a familiar group of people (like a family, or co-workers) are faced with a humorous situation that is resolved in a humorous way.

Every good story can be summarized in one sentence: Drew gets fired, Frasier loses a contest, Al Bundy gets a raise.

Character-driven comedy

Situation comedy should really be called 'character comedy': the laughs come from the reaction of your characters to that situation.

It's not about one-liners and gags strung together. Neil Simon, one of the funniest writers ever, claims to have never written a joke.

Good writing, whether it is for comedy or drama is reliant on strong characters. Use characters that you know you can sustain and who are believable and  interesting. Then make sure that those characters have an identity of their own. Characters MUST have needs and goals that we perceive are important to them. Comedy, like drama, relies on the frustration of desire.

A common misconception is that character comedy equals subtlety. But even in broadly comic shows with lots of gags there needs to be clearly delineated characters who harbor desires that are credible (for that character) and which we can identify with. 

Another common misconception is that it's the actors who create characters and simply adding "to be played by X" next to a name is all a writer has to do.

It can be helpful to write a rôle with an actor in mind but creating characters is the writer's job.

A script with under developed characters wouldn't even get as far as X’s agent.

Some writers feel they have to base their characters on real life and experience but comedy isn't real life.

A real person can inspire you, as a Torquay hotel manager inspired John Cleese and Connie Booth to create Basil Fawlty, but you have to be true to your show and not true to life.

Just because a character really exists it doesn't make them funny.

Do a full character breakdown. Make a grid with all the names of the characters at the top and a list of physical, sociological and psychological attributes (taken from Linda Segar's book Creating Unforgettable Characters).  Fill in the grid to see if the characters contrast sufficiently to show up each other's traits and attitudes clearly. 

There has to be conflict between the characters.  They must be motivated by seemingly mutually exclusive goals and needs.

Try to keep the number of characters in your script to a sensible number.

Most sitcoms succeed because they focus on no more than four central characters with a small supporting cast.

 Characters should be active

Not necessarily "active" meaning that they should continually be moving, but that the characters should not be passive and reactive.

The fun of watching a show is seeing a character get in trouble, and how they choose to get out of it.

In other words, make the situations arise out of stuff the characters do instead of stuff that happens to them.

So now we're at the tricky part . . .

coming up with an idea. You need an interesting, funny story that the character in the show would do, but hasn't already been written.

It has to be simple enough for sitcom fodder, but complex enough to give you two story climaxes.

How do you come up with a story?

Generally, the best stories are character-driven. Yes, there's a funny situation, but the situation should be especially uncomfortable for the main character.

One writing instructor explains it as follows: "If it's a situation you wouldn't want to be in, it's worth writing."

One way to generate stories is to make a list of the characters and their flaws.  (See list of comedic situations)

Then, choose a few flaws and find a story that highlights them comedically. For example, Niles and Frasier are both competitive. A story that highlights their competitive natures could be that they somehow get involved in a marathon and have to race each other. Come up with an A story for the lead character. And B and C (and even D stories, if the show usually has them) for the supporting characters.

Checklist

Important questions to ask your script/story: 

a)  Are the characters strong, interesting and original?

b)  Are the relationships between characters clear and amusing?

c)  Does it have a good unpredictable story?

d)  Is the dialogue realistic?

e)  Is it funny?

f)  Are you convinced that it's the very best you can do?

If the answer is no to any of those then you must do some...

Rewriting

"Everything can be improved"  
- C. W. Barron

Don't be afraid of rewriting.

That  favourite scene or joke might have to be cut for the script to be better. 

Even if your script is accepted for production you may have to rewrite it several times.

As the adage goes: writing is rewriting.

Don't settle on your script being as good as the worst sitcoms on air but keep re-writing it until it is as good as the best sitcoms that are on air.

First draft scripts are easily spotted and automatically rejected as it shows that the writer couldn't be bothered to try and improve it.

"The first draft of everything is shit"
- Ernest Hemingway  

The film critic James Agee described the essence of Laurel and Hardy’s comedy as the scene in which the two are moving a piano across a narrow suspension bridge in the Alps, and halfway across they meet a gorilla.

This may be more than the essence of Laurel and Hardy. It may be the essence of all American Comedy. It’s nuts, it’s illogical, it’s impossible, and it’s hilarious. It’s also abundant with endless comic variations, opened to unexpected solutions, and primarily grounded in danger.

                 Why Screwball?

(Screw-ball [skrue’bol] Noun, Slang, meaning unbalanced, erratic, irrational, unconventional), became a popular slang word in the 1930s. It was applied to films where everything was a juxtaposition: educated and uneducated, rich and poor, intelligent and stupid, honest and dishonest, and most of all male and female. When two people fell in love, they did not simply surrender to their feelings, they battled it out. They lied to one another, often assuming indifferent personas toward each other. They often employed hideous tricks on each other, until finally after running out of inventions, fall into each others arms. It was fossilized comedy, physical and often painful, but mixed with the highest level of wit and sophistication, depending wholly on elegant and inventive writing.     

   Some characteristics of Screwball Comedy     

Reverse class snobbery, to be poor is somehow to be more noble. What’s more, to be rich is to be castigated, passions befitting theater patrons, during the Great Depression. A very skillful blend of sophistication and slapstick. Although screwball characters move in an elegant world, where even a simple bathroom appears to be the center of their universe, they may still whack one another over the head, but while The Three Stooges use sledgehammers, screwball characters use silver chafing dishes, and the like—weapons of the upper class.

A well written script, laced with barbed dialog. An overlapping style of delivery, with lines tossed off in rapid fire. An emphases on elegant clothes, cars, and furniture. The use of exotic locals, even the dump site in “My Man Godfrey”, (see below). The hero or the heroine living by his or her wits alone, though this is often balanced by a reliable gainfully employed love interest.

Last and probably most important, supporting casts of first-rate character actors playing eccentric types as well as a stable of familiar faces in leading roles (Cary Grant, William Powell, Carole Lombard, Claudette Colbert, Katharine Hepburn)

My Man Godfrey

One of the most unusual screwball comedies was “My Man Godfrey (1936)", a Universal production directed by Gregory La Cava. It begins at a garbage dump along New York’s East River. People in evening clothes, taking part in a scavenger hunt for a charity event, step out of a roadster to look for a “forgotten man”, a 1930s term for the unemployed and homeless. A derelict, after pushing one woman into an ash heap, agrees to go along with her sister. His dignity and sardonic humor impress her, and she hires him as butler for the family’s Fifth Avenue mansion. The wealthy family turn out to be spoiled, selfish, and inane—“empty-headed nitwits,” as the derelict-turned-butler calls them.

He, it turns Out, is also from a rich family; he landed in the dump through despondency over a broken love affair, Through his butler work he pulls his life together and in the end opens a posh nightclub, the Dump, on the dump site to provide employment, food, and shelter to “forget men” The film’s predominant point, however, is not that the poor are redeemable, but that the wealthy are.

Screwball comedy crested in the late 1930s. And with the increasing hostilities brewing in Europe, the glib, and at times genteel barbs between two highly disillusioned participants seemed docile, and trivial. Certainly Romantic comedy had it’s place during the war years. Films such as, “Mr. Lucky (1943)”, used the urbane characters of the Screwball genre, augmenting them with a win the war at all costs purpose. By wars end the less sophisticated, but more utilitarian comedy of Preston Sturges had come into fashion.

The Result

The invasion of television, and the dismantling of the Hollywood studio system put an end to the classic Romantic comedy. There was, however a brief revival in the postwar years with such forgettable films as the sophomoric, “The Mating of Millie (1948)” another insufferable pearl, “Please Believe Me (1950)”, and the equally obnoxious, “Confidentially Connie (1953)”.

What is typical American comedy? There are many things that Hollywood makes comedy about. Actually any subject is fair game. But there seems to be a single subject that persists—the battle of the sexes as presented in the Hollywood Romantic comedy. Only in America can you find the male-female relationship depicted as a vicious though delightful clash in which the man and women resist their feelings for one another by battling each other with a particularly desperate passion. And only in America can the story of destructive sexual passion be cultivated as a freewheeling slapstick event laced with acid wit. A subject that in most cultures would be recounted as stark tragedy, in the hands of Billy Wilder, Charles Brackett, Howard Hawks, or Frank Capra, is perfect material for comedy and romance.

Reprinted from Modern Times at http://moderntimes.com/

From the screenwriter’s perspective, genre is the acknowledgement of the pre-eminence of both tribal affiliation and the presence in one’s audience of a tribal consciousness.

In terms of dramatic, screen storytelling, tribe is identifiable by what it does.

Genre, in turn, is an expression of those defining social processes through which particular tribal entities manifest their being, both inside and outside the script.

Genre is the tribal storyteller's manner of portraying or dramatising the guiding themes and symbols inherent in both the storyteller’s tribe and audience. The underlying values, emotions and ideas by which the storyteller and his/her audience identify themselves are major considerations (or influences) in the choice of genre.

Consider the words: "Once upon a time ..." They will have a very different meaning for an audience whose cultural initiation has included fairy tales. An initiated audience will expect an anecdote or narrative, probably of a fanciful nature, involving unexpected events and characters, some of whom may be larger than life.

Genre invokes tribe and tribe evokes genre.

Dramatic scripts, if approached tribally, from the perspective of character-based experiences, evolve into structures that are purposeful; and, like the actions of the characters that inhabit them, are goal oriented. Genre implies purpose.

A screen story exists for a purpose; it possesses its own objective, some times quite different from the objectives of the characters, insofar as it conveys an emotional meaning that the storyteller wants to leave with his or her audience.

The character, structure and movement of the emotional energy of a film, when grounded in a dramatic grammar and guided by tribal sensitivities, produce a singular coherence, which we refer to as genre.

Every genre produces its own, special kind of energy that derives from the actions of ALL of the story’s characters. Such actions appear real, legitimate and seamless so long as they maintain coherence amongst all of the story’s constituent parts, most of which – if the film is successful – will go unnoticed by the audience.

Only when it breaks down, when the style is inexplicably altered or changes in some way, do we become aware of the species of the emotional energy we have been experiencing, and if that happens we are invariably thrown out of the story.

Genre is the dress code of character and plot – not a physical dress code, but an emotional one, for it tells the audience that has been invited to the feast what kind of emotional investment is required and what sort of party they can expect.

So long as the story remains the story in which the emotional investment has been made one reads the emotional codes of the characters with alacrity and, hopefully, some degree of empathy. But break the code and you will find that it is difficult if not impossible to transcend or constructively transform the confusion thus produced.

A screen story makes a pact with its characters, and these include not only the characters IN the script, but also the characters outside of it, namely the AUDIENCE and the TRIBE. Taken together this configuration determines the screenwriter’s relationship to the subject matter.

The most successful film storytellers frequently tell stories about themselves, or the people to whom they are tribally connected. It is difficult to imagine how a filmmaker could create the kind of emotional energy required to make an emotional impact on an audience without working from his or her origins. Indeed it is these origins that have brought him or her into the ambit of the audiences to whom the stories might be addressed. In this way, genre waits on audience, or at least the storyteller’s realisation of audience, imaginatively, in the process of finding the story.

The means by which one communicates a story – in this case, film or video – is another factor in the encoding process that is genre. Choices concerning the way in which the story is shot, lit, designed, edited or organised, are all elements in the creation of genre, and are themselves grounded in the writer’s, director’s producer’s et al, relationships with the characters, the audience and the tribe.

Purpose, or genre, is determined by a nexus of identities involving characters in the script (and their given circumstances) and characters outside the script - namely the storyteller/s, the audience and the tribe (and their tribal circumstances).

The sympathetic and coherent alignment of all the circumstances of ALL the characters in the story-finding enterprise produce the CHARACTER of the story itself, which is its genre.  

LOOKING AT FILM NOIR

Film noir, or "black cinema", reached its apex in the decade after the Second World War. Typified by low key lighting, dark interiors, night exteriors (shot night-for-night), wet streets, a brooding mood, a hard-boiled and independent hero with an ambivalence towards or dislike of authority, cynical dialogue, villains who prefer greed and lust, and a smouldering suggestion of illicit sexuality, personified by a sexually agressive femme fatale, whose deceit threatens to undo the best hopes and fortunes of the male lead, it graphically captured the spirit of the times, though it antecedents are traceable back to the mass electrification of the cities - around 1910 - and the rise of German Expressionism, a painting movement that came to the fore duing the 30s Depression.

Its emergence as a dramatic form was disarmingly articulated in the gritty pulp fiction that followed World War II, especially in the work of writers like Hammett, Chandler and Horace McCoy among others, and the vision of several leading German and Austrian film directors who emigrated to America after Hitler came to power.

The insecurities and confusion of the post-war period wedded to a series of profound technological developments in both lighting and film stocks, were major contributing factors to the popularity of the genre.

Essentially, there are two types of dramatic plots that characterise the form.

In the first type, a detective, or representative of the law, descends into an unstable unpredictable corrupt universe as he searches for the truth. In the second, a decent "Everyman" gets drawn into a corrupt environment which poisons him until he, too, ends up corrupt (e.g.: Quinlan in Touch of Evil).

The visual style of a classic Noir film, emphasises a dark and hostile universe. The hero's moral confusion is usually externalized in the use of low-key lighting and extreme, nightmarish shadows. Harsh lighting contrasts, jagged shapes, weird camera angles, all contribute to the unease and sense of threat. Often there are scenes at night in which pools of darkness are broken up by pockets of light. Dark streets, alleys, tunnels, subways, elevators, and train cars (which function as motifs of entrapment) create alien and often claustrophobic environments, depersonalised by flashing neon signs and dense fog. Clouds of cigarette smoke swirling in dimly lit cocktail lounges mix with symbols of fragility, such as window panes, sheer clothing, glasses and mirrors.

Noir characters are invariably "imprisoned" behind ornate lattices, grillwork, drifting fog and smoke.

There is also a sense of temporariness - as if the entire world is in flux, moving towards an uncertain future - hence, the use of transient settings : grubby rented rooms, bus terminals, piers, railroad yards, and the like.

The tone is usually paranoid and fatalistic. The focus, on human depravity, violence, lust, greed and betrayal.

Some Examples of Film Noir

Detectives searching for the truth in an alien, corrupt universe
• John Huston's The Maltese Falcon, 1941
• Edward Dmytryk's Murder, My Sweet, 1944
• Otto Preminger's Laura, 1944
• Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil, 1958


A decent man is slowly poisoned by a corrupt environment films include:
• Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity, 1944
• Fritz Lang’s Scarlet Street, 1945
• Edgar G. Ulmer's Detour, 1945
• Jacques Tourneur's Out Of The Past, 1947
• Orson Welles’ The Lady From Shanghai, 1948


For a more graphic exploration of the form,
visit the website, Ten Shades of Noir, which
you can access at

http://www.imagesjournal.com/issue02/infocus.htm 

“Film noir” is a term that gets tossed around a lot by movie fans and critics, both professional and amateur. So it’s somewhat surprising that, six and a half decades after the genre began, there is still not a universally accepted definition of what makes a noir. Is it the characters (morally confused protagonists, dangerous women, and compelling, larger-than-life villains), the subject matter (crime and its consequences) or the cinematic style (black-and-white film, high-contrast lighting and dramatic camera work)? Although many film noirs share certain characteristics, not all movies considered film noir contain each and every element of the genre. Roughly speaking, classic noir refers to films that were made, mostly by Hollywood, in the 1940s and 1950s that all share a certain tone, style and attitude (post-war cynicism). Perhaps the best way to learn about noir is to broadly sample the best movies of the genre. Below is a list of eight movies that I think represent the best and most influential film noirs of the classic period. (Feel free to argue with my choices in the comments.) If you haven’t watched much, or any, film noir, this list is a good place to start. I think you’ll be surprised at how well most of these movies have stood up over the years; they still feel modern, fast-paced, suspenseful and extremely entertaining.

1. Touch of Evil (1958; dir. Orson Welles; Orson Welles, Charlton Heston, Janet Leigh) This movie is widely considered the last of the great American film noirs. After Touch of Evil, movies incorporated noir-ish elements (Blade Runner), or movies that tried to modernize or revise the genre (Resevoir Dogs, Chinatown). Charlton Heston isn’t generally recognized as a film noir hero, but he plays a surprisingly effective Mexican police detective playing a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse with Welles’ imposing and magnetic Hank Quinlan, a border town police captain. Welles was fired while the movie was in post-production, but the version you’re likely to see on DVD was reassembled according to instructions left by Welles. This movie has many memorable moments, including a scene between Janet Leigh and a Motel night clerk that serves as a cinematic prelude to Psycho. (Psycho is known as the prototypical slasher film due to the infamous shower scene, but anyone who has watched it recently will recognize that up until that point in the movie, Psycho is a film noir.) From the amazing three-minute tracking shot that opens the movie to the end, Touch of Evil is about everything you could wish for in film noir.

2. Double Indemnity (1944; dir. Billy Wilder; Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward G. Robinson). If you think of Fred MacMurray mostly because of his Disney movies or My Three Sons, it might come as a surprise that he’s in one of the all-time great film noirs. He plays the noir straight man wonderfully, and Stanwyck’s femme fatal, who convinces MacMurray’s character to engage in a bit of homicide/insurance fraud, is classic. Rounding out the cast, of course is Edward G. Robinson, who is the meanest, shrewdest insurance investigator in movie history. Billy Wilder was a giant, with more than one of his movies listed here. The movie also benefited from a Raymond Chandler screenplay based on a James M. Cain novel, a noir double dipping that wasn’t all that uncommon during the classic noir period.

3. Out of the Past (1947; dir. Jacques Tourneur; Robert Mitchem, Kirk Douglas, Jane Greer) This may be my all-time favorite film noir, and it’s also probably the least well-known movie on this list. This movie is noir in the truest sense: it’s dark all the way through to the end. This movie takes a conventional noir storyline - the mysterious man trying to live a quiet life whose shadowy past catches up to him - and executes it perfectly. The plot jumps around in time and location and the viewer gets to try to figure out who to root for, without any clear good guys to cheer on. Oh, and Robert Mitchem makes his trench coat and dangling cigarette look so cool.

4. Sunset Boulevard (1950; dir. Billy Wilder; William Holden, Gloria Swanson) Billy Wilder again. This movie is best known for Swanson’s over-the-top performance as an aging silent film starlet, and her famous “I’m ready for my close-up” line at the end of the film. But the movie is a lot more than that. Swanson is fantastic, but Holden isn’t too shabby either. Although this movie isn’t as classically noir-ish as some of the others listed here, many of the basic elements are here: the stand-up hero who gets sucked into a situation from which he can’t extricate himself, the femme fatale, the violent come-uppance. But the movie also has a sort of insider feel to it, since the backdrop is Hollywood and the movie industry.

5. The Third Man (1949; dir. Carol Reed; Joseph Cotton, Orson Welles) Technically, this is a “Brittish noir” starring American actors. The foreign locale and the strangely compelling zither-based score aren’t typical of noir. But this movie does have the same themes and conventions you are likely to find in a typical American noir set in Southern California. And here, you also get that fantastic scene with the Viennese Ferris wheel. Orson Welles is very effective, even though he doesn’t actually have a lot of screen time. Harry Lime is one of the greatest characters of all time, and Welles is usually credited with the movies’ most famous lines: “In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love – they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”

6. The Big Sleep (1946; dir. Howard Hawks; Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall) This movie is known for being one of the best, as well as one of the most confusing, film noirs. The writing credits feature no less than a screenplay by William Faulkner, based on Raymond Chandler’s novel. The confusion comes from two sources: Code censors who never would have permitted the novel’s racy subject matter to be addressed frankly, and movie studio execs, who insisted on reshoots because they wanted the Bogart and Bacall romance to play a bigger role. I saw this years ago and had a hard time following it, even though I had read the Chandler novel. Recently, I saw a re-edited “director’s cut” version that seemed much more straight-forward. Even the theatrical version, however, is a fantastic film, despite being confusing. And of course, Humphrey Bogard is Phillip Marlowe.

8. Strangers on a Train (1951; dir. Alfred Hitchcock; Farley Granger, Robert Walker) Hitchcock filmed several movies that might be considered film noir, though not many of them actaully fit within the genre. Strangers on a Train is closest, and (for my money) one of his best. Maybe that has something to do with the fact that Raymond Chandler wrote the screenplay, from the novel by Patricia Highsmith (who also wrote The Talented Mr. Ripley). Apparently Chandler and Hitchcock didn’t get along, and much of the screenplay was rewritten, but it still feels like something Chandler might have penned. The premise is classic: an idle conversation on a train leads a man to believe that they have agreed to swap murders, one agreeing to kill an unloved wife so that the other can marry his true love, expecting in return to have his domineering mother taken care of once and for all. And, as happens so often in film noir, once the hero gets tangled in unwanted complicity, it’s not an easy thing to get out from under. Robert Walker, who plays the psychopathic Bruno Anthony, is a brilliant noir villain. (Unfortunately, Walker passed away shortly after the movie was made, cutting short his career.) This movie also has one of Hitchcock’s most memorable scenes (for those who have seen it), an exciting climatic moment underneath a merry-go-round, which was reportedly filmed without the aid of stuntmen. Like many film noirs, this one is available in multiple versions on DVD, though I can’t recall off hand if it really makes much difference.

Comedies often suffer from one, great malady : they're usually not all that funny.

Here's a list of eight of my favorite, all-but-overlooked comedies. All of these at various times of my life have brought sidesplitting laughter and tears to my eyes,  You may have others that you think are funnier. If so, send me your favorites and I will add them to the recommended film list on this site.


WHAT ABOUT BOB?          Directed by Frank Oz
A 1991 comedy starring Bill Murray and Richard Dreyfuss. Murray plays Bob Wiley, a multiphobic psychiatric patient who follows his successful and (beyond) egotistical psychiatrist Dr. Leo Marvin (played by Dreyfuss) on vacation. When the unstable Bob befriends the other members of Marvin's family, it pushes the doctor over the edge. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_About_Bob%3F

THE GREAT IMPOSTER           Directed by Robert Mulligan (1961)
Funny/dramatic account of Ferdinand Waldo Demara Jr. who stole or created fictional identities and worked in a variety of occupations, most quite successfully. He worked as a prison warden, impersonated a monk and was also a doctor aboard a Royal Canadian Navy warship where he was required to perform an appendectomy. His impersonations are more to allow himself to live different lives as opposed to making any kind of personal gain although he did get in trouble with the law as a result of his exploits. If you haven't seen this movie, catch it for at least one reason: About an hour into it Tony Curtis is passing as a surgeon on a Canadian warboat with Edmond O'Brien as its captain. O'Brien comes down with an impacted molar, and Curtis has to remove it. What happens after that is totally unforgettable. They should make special awards just for scenes this funny. Check it out below -

 http://www.videodetective.com/titledetails.aspx?PublishedID=3578

MURDER HE SAYS           Directed by George Marshall
1945 film in which Trotter pollster, Pete Marshall, is trying to find a missing coworker. In a rural town he stumbles onto the roughian Fleagle family. Bert and Mert would just as soon "splatter" snoopers with their rifles. However, Ma Johnson focuses the family energies on finding cousin Bonnie Fleagle's $70,000 bank job stash, somewhere around the large old rickety house. Claire Matthews, the daughter of a man implicated in Bonnie's bank job, also comes in search of the money to try and clear her father's name. Marshall and Matthews team up to try and decode Grandma Fleagle's strange deathbed clue but with Mr. Johnson attempting to poison people and Bonnie Fleagle showing up herself after a prison escape, it's anybody's guess as to who will find the money first.              http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title.jsp?stid=84159

THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY            Directed by Bobby and Peter Farrelly
A combination of romantic comedy and gross-out film.


 

THIS IS SPINAL TAP           Directed by Rob Reiner
A tongue-in-cheek, deadpan rockumentary from the 80s, features Rob Reiner, Christopher Guest and the totally underrated Michael McKean. With music that's surprisingly good and an extraordinarily sophisticated sense of irony, This is Spinal Tap will either leave you laughing hysterically or totally confused, as original audiences, who thought the movie a straight documentary, were.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Is_Spinal_Tap

GALAXY QUEST       Directed by Dean Parisot
Featuring the all-too-familiar elements of your average Science Fiction and Fantasy Convention replete with geeky girls, techno-obsessive teenage boys, and ridiculing dudes, Galaxy Quest provides a pretend glimpse into the real lives of science fiction television actors as it takes them from earth to an alien world, where they must battle a fearsome alien warrior, an invulnerable rock creature, and inexplicably loud and scary crushing things. And the aliens are really nice.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galaxy_Quest

A CHRISTMAS STORY       Directed by Bob Clark
All he wants for Christmas is a Red Ryder BB gun-- is that too much to ask? It is when everyone tells him he'll shoot his eye out.
http://www.fast-rewind.com/christmasstory.htm

BEING THERE        Directed by Hal Ashby
A simple-minded gardener named Chance has spent all his life in the Washington D.C. house of an old man. When the man dies, Chance is put out on the street with no knowledge of the world except what he has learned from television. After a run in with a limousine, he ends up a guest of a woman (Eve) and her husband Ben, an influential but sickly businessman. Now called Chauncey Gardner, Chance becomes friend and confidante to Ben, and an unlikely political insider. Funniest closing credit sequence (out-takes) ever made.

http://www.imdb.com/tt0078841/

Tragedy presents a dramatic examination of human morals. It asserts that a person’s morality may make it impossible for him to keep living. It is concerned with situations in which a character’s “higher nature” forces him/her to take action, even when such action must end in that characters demise or death. The action must be taken otherwise the character becomes less than what he/she could or should be.

Comedy, on the other hand, presents a message of hope – it tells us that no matter how bad things might get we can make it through another day. Comedy’s basic message is that the human race will survive; it is about SURVIVAL, and how survival is possible, and under what conditions.  

Is Oscar Biased Against Certain Film Genres?

The expansion of Oscar's Best Picture category to ten nominees is supposed to expand recognition for genres generally ignored by the Academy when it comes to major nominations: action, comedy, sci-fi, horror and comedy. Although audiences flock to such films, fans often accuse Oscar voters of being elitist for perpetually showering nominations on heavy dramas or "message" movies. There have been exceptions over the years, but by-and-large films like The Dark Knight rarely get nominated for major awards. That was not always the case. In the 1970s, blockbusters like Airport and The Towering Inferno scored Best Picture nominations. Industry insiders speculate that the expansion of the Best Picture categories will not see an increase in nominations for popular films in the aforementioned genres. Instead, the slots might be taken by smaller, art house movies. For Variety's analysis click on this LINK-- http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118012401.html?categoryid=13&cs=1

Mash up: how mixing and matching genres can pay 

You know where you are with Viking films. Or do you? What if, instead of battling each other, they have to slug it out with an alien? Charles Gant looks at a new film with just that set-up and at other examples of movies that weld formats together. http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/mar/22/outlander-mash-up-movies

Lawyers and Film

Do lawyer films constitute a film genre and if so, how is it to be described? David Chandler, in "Introduction to Genre Theory" poses some questions about genre. http://myweb.wvnet.edu/~jelkins/film04/genre.html

Crime and Gangster Films

Films focused on the sinister actions of criminals or gangsters, particularly bankrobbers, underworld figures, or ruthless hoodlums who operate outside the law, stealing and violently murdering their way through life. In the 1940s, a new type of crime thriller emerged, more dark and cynical - see the section on film-noir for further examples of crime films. Criminal and gangster films are often categorized as post-war film noir or detective-mystery films - because of underlying similarities between these cinematic forms.   http://www.filmsite.org/crimefilms.html

Chick Flicks

ChickChick flicks are typically perky, upbeat, modern, and post-feminist in tone, although some movies do have sad and dramatic elements as well. The setting for a chickchickchick flick can vary. Movies such as Never Been Kissed transport viewers back to the torment of high school, while Notting Hill takes place in a book store.

The female characters in a chick flick are usually strong women who overcome adversity to reach their goals. The key to a successful chick flick is a message of female empowerment, although a snappy soundtrack and closets full of designer clothes will also help boost ratings.

OMG HORROR

Trailers, reviews, feature. If you're a glutton for horror flicks, this site will whet your appetite.   http://omghorror.blogfaction.com/