The first draft of a script is always rough. Usually I just want to get through the first draft and get it on the page so I can then go back and see what works, see what I need to work on, and proceed with at least a bit of a foundation. With that in mind, here's the second scene of "The Lost Angels". In this scene, we introduce the other member of The Lost Angels (Kenny) as well as some side characters. So without further ado, here'sthe second scene of The Lost Angels.
While trying to write this first scene, I realized that I jumped ahead and skipped a step. I haven't looked back on some of my favorite crime dramas and looked at their structure, cliches, etc. I'll probably spend next week doing that but I think I can still push ahead with the first act. First acts are usually pretty basic; they intro the characters, case, foreshadow possible roadblocks/conflicts, etc. Good whodunnits often intro every suspect in the first act but this isn't really a whodunnit (and I doubt I could spoof those better than "Murder By Death" or "Clue"). I'll write down a more detailed breakdown later but for now here's the opening scene of The Lost Angels.
I originally had a version of this scene in my screenplay "Every 15 Minutes in Hollywood", a script I like but is basically impossible to make. I'm thinking about rejiggering it without the Hollywood element in it. Unfortunately, most of the best jokes stem from the Hollywood angle so by rejiggering I mean competely rewriting it.
As for the first scene, it introduces one of our main characters and sets up that this film is going to be fairly absurdist. Jim Teddy's real introduction will happen later in the first act (in the new version of the first webisode I posted earlier).
Or rather, the script for the original first webisode. I mentioned earlier that my first scene was a dated spoof of C.S.I. but I still like it so I think I'm going to keep it in this spoof. It will be in the first act and changed a bit but I think it's a good way to introduce the idiotic character known as Jim Teddy.
Unlike what most modern "spoof" movies today would have you to believe, being dated isn't necessarily a bad thing. For instance, Austin Powers spoofed movies from the 60's. One could even say it spoofed a spoofish movie (The James Coburn vehicles "Our Man Flint" and "In Like Flint". Airplane was made in 1980 and spoofed Zero Hour! a movie made in 1957. Unfortunately, C.S.I. is in that nether world where making fun of it is a bit played out. Then again, the way I'm going, by the time I finish this C.S.I. will be retro.
Hopefully starting next Monday I can really start working on the spoof script and start hammering out some pages but for now, here's the former first five of the web series I was too lazy to ever shoot "The Lost Angels"
OK, my film initially started as a web series spoofing cop shows. There were two major problems however. The first is that I'm a lazy bastard and probably would never get around to ever doing anything with the script I wrote. The second issue, which I often used as an excuse to cover up my inactivity on the project, was that the opening scene features a somewhat dated and already done-to-death spoof of David Caruso and his sunglasses in the first webisode. I just didn't think I'd be able to get people interested in the series if my first webisode was already kind of played out.
Because of that, the screenplay (or is it a webplay?) gathered dust. Then I saw the preview for a new film starring Ricky Gervais and Greg Kinnear. The film is called "Ghost Town" and it features the tried and true storyline of a guy seeing dead people and having to do something to help get the dead people to where they need to be.
The storyline has been done a million times before and this film doesn't really seem to add anything new. Then I started to think, how could you make it fresh? I came up with a line for a film trailer that I liked...
"What if you could see dead people...
And they were a bunch of assholes."
I then imagined a film in which a guy can see dead people and they fuck with him all the time, kind of like a reverse Christmas Carol with a bunch of Scrooge-like ghosts making fun of Bob Cratchit and his cripple of a son. I couldn't see myself fashioning an entire film out of that so I decided to add it to The Lost Angels and building the short (30 or so pages) in to a feature length script (90 or so pages).
So that's what I'm going to attempt to do. My script is about cop who can see dead people (and wants to get rid of them) and his renegade partner (who has just found out he has a little kid ala The Game Plan, Three Men and a Baby, etc.). I haven't come up with the exact logline but this film is pretty free form right now so we'll deal with that later.
Anyway, that's the plan (or the closest thing that I have to an actual plan). Let's see how it goes. Hopefully this will last longer than my superhero page which bit the dust after a month of laziness.
I've really grown tired of the Seltzer/Friedberg duos films (Epic Movie, Date Movie, Meet the Spartans, etc.) and since they have a new one coming out I thought what better time to try my hand at it. After all, it can't be THAT hard to write a spoof movie, especially when those guys don't even write spoof movies.
Craig Mazin (writer of Scary Movie 3 and 4 and Superhero Movie) wrote a nice article on his blog The Artful Writer about how the recent spate of "spoof" movies, including his own films, aren't truly spoofs. He believes they should be named "comic film re-enactment" since so many of the jokes are simply plugging in jokes from other comedic films. More specifically, Mazin writes:
...much of what they do is reference a film without actually parodying the film. For example, in Date Movie, Allison Hannigan’s character has a nightmare in which she discovers she’s about to marry Napoleon Dynamite. The Friedberg & Seltzer version of Napoleon Dynamite says the exact same things that the actual Napoleon Dynamite character said, and nothing more. Similarly, at the end of Epic Movie, a Borat look-alike shows up to say, “Is nice!”, but that’s it.
I agree with that and am going to try to make my spoof movie more of a textbook "spoof" however I am going to take the path that Friedberg/Seltzer and Mazin himself have beaten down and spoof a whole slew of films as opposed to focusing on one movie or one genre.
Now, I haven't really broken down how these movies go but, honestly, there really isn't a set direction to take. Half of these films don't even bother telling an actual story, focusing more on a "plot" that allows their characters to move around as much as possible so they get into the most hijinks.
So here we go. Should be fun. Hopefully it'll also be funny.
