Writing the Comedy Blockbuster. Keith Giglio
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Diner offers a nostalgic look at the 1950s and features an amazing cast of male stars. National Lampoon’s Animal House is the ultimate boy’s club as we witness life inside the worst fraternity ever to be shown on screen. Years later, Old School will feature three men who yearn for their “Animal House” days, so they start a fraternity.
Swingers was the breakout movie for Jon Favreau, Vince Vaughn, and Doug Liman. It’s about a group of guys hanging in Los Angeles chasing honeys.
YOU ALSO GOTTA SEE: The Hangover, Boys Night Out, Stripes
GIRL’S CLUB
In recent years the girls have been knocking on the door — loudly. And audiences are letting them. Girls love to have fun, too. Where the Boys Are is a classic comedy about four girls heading down to Florida for spring break. The Sex in The City franchise is the ultimate girl’s club. What does a movie need to be a girl’s club movie? It needs to be a movie from the female point of view, like Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion or Boys On the Side. Bridesmaids just took the prize!
YOU ALSO GOTTA SEE: The Banger Sisters, Outrageous Fortune, The Sweetest Thing.
MOCKUMENTARY
Ah, the Beatles. Those amazing boys from Liverpool were not just musicians — they were actors, comedic actors inspired by the Marx Brothers. Under director Richard Lester’s tutelage, the Beatles played themselves in their debut movie, A Hard Day’s Night. The plot of the movie follows four days in the life of the Beatles. And thus, the mockumentary was born. But it really grew up five years later when Woody Allen wrote and directed a fictional documentary about a small-time criminal entitled Take the Money and Run. A mockumentary treats its subject matter as if it is real; it often has a voice over, and gives the audience members an overview of the lives or events of their generation. And, of course, the subject of the mockumentary is absurd.
YOU ALSO GOTTA SEE: This is Spinal Tap, Borat, Best in Show, CB4
STONER COMEDIES
Reefer Madness is not a stoner comedy, though it plays like one. Made in the 1950s, this B film shows the terrible effects of marijuana. Stoner comedies show the comical effects of marijuana. They came of age in the 1970s. It was time for that free love, hippie generation to make it on the screen. The Stoner Comedy godfathers were the comedians Cheech Martin and Tommy Chong. In 1978, they rolled across America in their car made of pot in Up in Smoke. Drugs have always been prevalent in comedies — but stoner comedies tend to be about the pursuit of drugs or guys and gals on drugs in the pursuit of something else — say a White Castle Hamburger in Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle. For a while, Hollywood became very conservative and stoner comedies were no longer being made. It was more acceptable to make movies about very stupid people (Dumb & Dumber) than very stoned people.
YOU ALSO GOTTA SEE: Pineapple Express, Up In Smoke, Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle
FANTASY/MAGIC
Magic can be funny. From the time Fredric March had to tangle with a witch in I Married A Witch, magic and fantasy have been major components of film comedy.
A studio exec will always ask: What are the rules? What is the device that causes the magic? A recurring theme of this subgenre is “Be careful what you wish for.”
YOU ALSO GOTTA SEE: Big, Groundhog Day.
GOD COMEDIES
Anything to do with God and heaven and angels falls into the category of God Comedies. From the original Heaven Can Wait, entitled Here Comes Mr. Jordan, to Clarence in It’s A Wonderful Life to Nora Ephron’s Michael, angels are often sent to Earth to interact with characters in need of spirituality. And if that isn’t enough, sometimes God interacts.
In the 1970s, George Burns got to play God in the hit movie Oh, God! in which he comes to Earth and asks poor John Denver to deliver his message. Years later, Jim Carrey got very angry at God and thought he could do a better job, so God (Morgan Freeman) gave him a shot in the movie Bruce Almighty.
YOU ALSO GOTTA SEE: It’s A Wonderful Life, We’re No Angels
CRIME
Stick ’em up! Reach for the skies! Is that a gun in your pocket or are you just happy to see me? America has been laughing at crime since movies began. Crime movies might be about losers or the desperate trying to pull off a crime (Bottle Rocket, Small Town Crooks) or criminals dealing with an unseen complication in their criminal plans (The Lady Killers). 48 Hours was a buddy crime movie about a cop and a criminal teamed up for 48 hours. It is a “must see” movie for witnessing the arrival of Eddie Murphy as the new sheriff in town.
A Fish Called Wanda is a crime caper. Complications ensue when Jamie Lee Curtis falls in love with barrister Archibald Leach (John Cleese.) Side note: Archibald Leach is Cary Grant’s real name.
YOU ALSO GOTTA SEE: Lavender Hill Mob, Bad Boys, Beverly Hills Cop, Take the Money and Run
MOB COMEDY
Americans love to laugh at the Mafia’s expense… at least in the safety of their own home or in a darkened theater. We are either focusing on the fish out of water who gets involved with the mob (Analyze This), or the mob that gets involved in the very ordinary world (Get Shorty, Bullets over Broadway). Though Some Like It Hot featured a major mob plot device and antagonist (played by George Raft, who allegedly had a real criminal background), most mob comedies appeared post-The Godfather.
YOU ALSO GOTTA SEE: The Whole Nine Yards, Married to the Mob, Prizzi’s Honor
WAR
War is hell. And it is never played just for laughs. But war is also absurd. And movie comedies have shown us how absurd it can be. From Catch-22 to Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, war comedies show us either how insane war is or how people cope with war.
YOU ALSO GOTTA SEE: M.A.S.H, Good Morning, Vietnam
BIOGRAPHY A.K.A BIO-COMS
In recent years, screenwriters Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski have owned the bio-com. It might be because they invented it. From Ed Wood to Man on the Moon, Alexander and Karasewski have found real-life characters who border on the absurd.
YOU ALSO GOTTA SEE: Man On The Moon, Private Parts, Ed Wood
CULTURE COMS
The success of Spike Lee’s She’s Gotta Have It opened the door for African-American-centric comedies. Ranging from the broad (Booty Call) and Tyler Perry’s movies to movies like The Wood or Just Wright, these comedies are defined by their very specific cultural points of view. In the same way, Moonstruck is a comedy about the Italian-American culture and way of life and Tortilla Soup is a comedy about Latino culture, these films provide a comedic window onto their specific worlds.
YOU ALSO GOTTA SEE: Lottery Ticket, My Big Fat Greek Wedding
ALT-COMS — COMEDIES ABOUT ALT LIFESTYLES
Hollywood is always late to the party. Despite the fact that Hollywood is an industry that is very open to different lifestyles, independent filmmakers broke the mold on comedies about alternative lifestyle choices. Ang Lee would go on to direct the mainstream, Oscar-winning Brokeback Mountain, but he started with the independent and critically received comedy The Wedding Banquet. In the 1990s, after years of independent movies, Alt-Coms went mainstream with alternative lifestyles at the center of the story with In & Out, in which Kevin Kline plays a high school drama teacher about to be married who is outed on national TV; and The Birdcage, a remake of the Veber French classic, La Cage aux Folles.
YOU ALSO GOTTA SEE: Kissing Jessica Stein, Billy Hollywood’s Screen Test, Kiss Me, Guido
HORROR
Ever since Bob Hope battled ghosts in Ghostbreakers,