Bohemian Cinema By Jonathan Pacheco

The Personal Touch

Tags: Scripts, Filmmaking, Personal, Apatow, Comedy, Punch-Drunk Love

There aren’t a lot of personal comedies being made anymore. And I didn’t really notice that. I love those movies. But I guess that era of movies like Manhattan and Annie Hall and things like that has past. Because I’ve been trying to think of what are the personal comedies of the last 10-15 years? And there’s not too many of them. I loved Welcome To The Dollhouse. That was a movie that had a lot of impact on me and was very influential I think on Freaks and Geeks on some of the work we did there. And Punch-Drunk Love is one of my favorite movies of all time. I don’t know the circumstances of it, but it feels very personal when I see it. So I think suddenly the honesty of a movie like this has a little more impact because most comedies are premise driven and not personally driven.

Judd Apatow, director of Knocked Up and The 40 Year Old Virgin, had this to say about comedies today. I read this quote a while back but didn’t remember the exact details, such as what films he mentions (the funny thing is, when I thought of this quote, I thought about two specific films: Annie Hall and Manhattan). When you think about it, Apatow himself doesn’t always make these “personal comedies” that he talks about. Sure, all his films have a personal touch and drive that welcomely sets them apart from other modern comedies, but think about how you would describe these films to someone. The 40 Year Old Virgin: the title says it all, and it’s definitely pushed by the premise. Even Knocked Up is described by the situation: a wrong-for-each-other couple accidentally gets pregnant.

Yet, how do you describe Annie Hall to someone in one sentence? It’s about a guy…and a girl…and they break up…. The guy has a problem dealing with her personal growth. But that’s not really a premise, is it? It’s more of a character description. Manhattan: a guy can’t decide who he loves, and ultimately, he loves his city more than his women. Is that premise-driven? Not really.

Israel and I discussed the “personal comedy,” and realized that a lot of the great ones are essentially a collection of scenes, most of them self-contained (in a sense); there’s not too much of a story driving Annie Hall along, just a bunch of scenes from a relationship. Yet at the end of the film, it all fits and it’s all insightful. He and I would like to write a “personal comedy.” We’re not trying to limit ourselves in any way, we’re just trying to challenge ourselves. We want to focus not on the premise and how it sets us apart, but on the characters and whether or not we can make them interesting enough to be capable of taking the movie where it needs to go.

We also discussed how, because most movies are simply about a character with some sort of problem (whether it’s external or internal), a lot of movies seem to be created as extensions of the writer’s or the director’s dislike for those problems. That’s a no-brainer, right? The writer’s going to write about stuff he knows and problems he encounters. So just as Apatow said, Punch-Drunk Love is probably a very personal film for P.T. Anderson. Either he’s dealt with the abuse and fear that Barry Egan (Adam Sandler) has dealt with, or perhaps he pities others—or is he bothered by them?

Judging from the way Barry is portrayed, I would think P.T. Anderson isn’t writing this because he sees it in others and is bothered by it.

I had an idea for a character that stemmed from the realization that people spend so much time talking and thinking about the past—what was and what could have been—and so little time pondering and discussing the future. I catch myself doing this and I try not to, but it’s a flaw I notice more in others. I feel bad for them a little, but more often I am annoyed and bothered. So now I wonder if that’s the right approach for a script; if I’m writing about a problem that bothers me when I see it in others, will I be condescending to my main character?

Israel told me that Leaves Will Falter is about people not knowing who they are, and the same could be said for Typewriters as well. He wrote the script because this problem is something that bothers him, but then he told me that he fears that he sees some of Jeff (the main character) in himself. Israel is obviously not looking down on his characters, but rather, he relates to them because this is something that scares him about himself.

For a long time I found myself looking at Jeff in a condescending manner, and my storytelling suffered. All the other characters I related to somehow and I felt like I knew them, yet my main character was a stranger and an idiot. It took me a while, but I’m finally understanding who this character is and why he behaves the way he does. And you know what I discovered? He’s not such a stranger anymore and he’s not an idiot at all. I never quite understood how a writer could say that they “got to know” the characters when they are the ones making up the actions, yet this is exactly what happened with Jeff and I. I always knew what Jeff was doing but I never knew why.

One day, I sat myself down, and, as silly as it sounds, I started drawing a mind map. I wrote characteristics about Jeff—physical, emotional, and psychological—and I felt like all I was doing was rehashing what I already knew. Then a thought came into my mind: what if Jeff was not the idiot I had perceived him to be? What if I mistook ignorance for stupidity? In Leaves, Jeff has lived in a metaphorical cocoon for most of his life; his world is different than the outside world. What if Jeff’s actions and immaturity throughout the story were due to a lack of awareness—a lack of awareness that exists because he’s lived by a different set of rules for so long?

So if Jeff’s problem is unawareness, then why does he get punished in the script (and he does get punished)? Why does everything turn on him? Is it fair to punish an innocent character the way we do in this story? And then I wondered, what if there’s a point where Jeff finally becomes aware, but still chooses to live by his own selfish rules, the rules that don’t match with the outside world’s rules? That’s where Jeff goes wrong, and that’s where things start going wrong for Jeff. He is no longer an innocent.

I know this doesn’t make sense to you now, but hopefully in a few months, it will. The point is, it’s starting to get personal with me. I still have a hard time describing Leaves to people; it’s so difficult to summarize concisely. Scriptwriting teachers would probably tell me that it’s a sign of a bad story and unfocused writing, but I like to look at it more positively. It tells me that the film isn’t plot-driven, but hopefully character-driven. It’s not a “personal comedy” and it’s certainly no Annie Hall, but for what I’m aiming for, I think it might be heading in the right direction.