Your Romantic Comedy: a final exam

American teacher and script consultant Billy Mernit sets the questions.

You’ve finished your romantic comedy screenplay. Your boy has met, lost and gotten girl (or boy, if you’ve written Brokeback, Actually), hopefully without a climax that features either of the protagonists rushing to an airport to say, “I love you!” You’ve determined that your movie is indeed a romantic comedy (i.e. the central question it poses is: Will these two people become a couple?) and it’s both genuinely sexy and funny. You’re ready to go out with it - meaning, you’re ready to address such questions as: who do you know who knows someone who knows someone who knows Julia Roberts? Fine and good, but I say, hang on – first, before you foist your cinematic bundle of joy upon the moviemaking world, ask your screenplay these three vital questions.

1) Why should we care?

Given the genre’s inherent predictability, most novice rom-com screenwriters tend to focus on all the obstacles that get in the way of making this inevitable clinch happen, thinking that the more outrageous the problems are, the more surprise and suspense will be created. That’s certainly one necessary part of the construct.  But what’s often overlooked is the real challenge in writing a successful romantic comedy: creating two uniquely memorable and compelling characters who, despite all the rocks you throw at them when they’re up a tree, must end up together. Your audience has to believe that these two saps are – unarguably - meant for each other.

The key to making an audience care about your romantic comedy lies in delivering not one, but two compelling protagonists to drive the motor of the story. And while all great characters have a clear goal, are believable, are empathic and complex, rom-com protagonists are a special case. They tend to be emotionally incomplete people who get ‘completed’ by their prospective mate. To up the interest and involvement in your story, one (if not both) of your protagonists should have an inner conflict that the story’s romantic relationship confronts and ultimately resolves.

I call it a chemical equation. When Alvy Singer, a man who doesn’t want to belong to any club that would have him as a member, meets Annie Hall, a woman who’s too insecure to seek admission into any club (let alone know what club to look for), it’s easy to understand why these two find a common ground. Their duelling self-esteem issues ultimately end, ironically, in Annie outgrowing the very guy who helps her to find confidence and a focused identity. But we get what was at the core of their attraction; they’re an essentially believable match, and we’re saddened that they couldn’t make it work.  

Moonstruck’s match-up makes equal sense: Loretta, a woman lacking passion in her life, combusts with Mr. Passion, and finally gets an outlet for her own outsized emotions—while Ronnie, who’s been living an over-the-top opera, finally gets a bit more grounded (and gets over his fixation on the past).  

Witty banter and zany high jinks don’t make chemistry happen in a romantic comedy.  Creating leads with believable, interlocking needs does. That’s what has to be on the page first, if you want to attract stars who can get a movie made, and if you want an audience to give a flying hoot about how it all works out.  

So whether your couple is made up of opposites, or two sides of the same coin, make sure your script delivers intriguing, 3-D characters who have empathetic inner issues—who believably belong together. That’s what’ll sell your rom-com spec, and make your audience laugh and cry.

2) How movie is it?

Movie producers aren’t interested in scripts that won’t really fill and hold the big screen, so make sure you’ve made your romantic comedy a movie, as opposed to a stillie. Great movies move - and romantic comedy duds talk themselves to death. I know that many of us lovers of the form are drawn to it precisely because it’s often about wonderfully pithy, sharp, delicious repartee. But too much talk can be the difference between a pass (because what you’ve written is more like a play or a TV show) and a green light - because your romantic comedy can really pull people into a multiplex.  

How active is your script? How visually exciting? While you may not have the mudslides, wild chases and fireworks Romancing The Stone delivered, you may have a set, a setting, world, or a physical comedy opportunity that will open up and enliven your movie. Even the verbally-witty Four Weddings And A Funeral featured a Scottish reel in colorful kilts. Has your screenplay made use of all the cinematic storytelling techniques a good movie-movie uses?

Effective screenwriting enables a reader to ‘see the movie,’ as in Robert Towne’s famous quote:  “When I write a screenplay I describe a movie that's already been shot.”  I'm talking about using the medium conceptually -- writing scenes that are conceived cinematically, that use the possibilities inherent in the medium, to tell a story.  

Case in point. I just did notes on a studio project where the female protagonist had a series of blind dates in a number of foreign locales. As the current writer had it, there was a brief montage of date after date, speeding up into "a dizzying succession of images."  Well, okay, for starters. But what am I really seeing on screen? And what do I get out such a generic montage, beyond a very general ‘all this dating made her dizzy?’ I was surprised by such lazy screenwriting, given such a rich opportunity for visual fun.

Why not play with the possibilities, thinking ‘movie?’ The point of the sequence is that these dates have no real effect on Jane, who's just going through the motions. So I suggested setting up a scene with Jane across a table from a Date at an outdoor cafe, locking down that frame, and by use of either cuts or dissolves and possible blue screen backgrounds, changing the locales behind them, while the man opposite Jane morphs each time into another nationality or type... and Jane stays the same in her little black dress. By thus doing ‘6 countries in 12 seconds’ you'd be letting the audience in on the joke, and you could cover a lot of ground (and reduce production costs) while still fulfilling the "exotic locale" eye candy expectations, especially if you have Jane sit down at the table in Zurich, and 6 countries later, get up from it in Jerusalem.

There are any number of witty cinematic ways to get Jane from one place to another. Quick cuts: She calls for the check in French - in German - in Greek. Maybe top the bit with Jane, fatigued and not fluent, making the universal sign for "check!" Or do a montage of national dishes being set before her, from a British crumpet to flaming Albanian cheese...  Only minor set dressing required, and more fun for the audience.

Cinematic storytelling is also about bigger filmic ideas, like the famous cut in The Graduate that has Ben Braddock dive onto the raft in his dad's pool... and land atop Mrs. Robinson in their hotel bed. Only in a movie can you have that kind of visceral manipulation of time and space to vividly express a metaphor.

Does your romantic comedy use the medium? Asking yourself, “How ‘movie’ is each scene?” is a smart idea, because the goal of any screenplay is to get the reader to see the movie. And making your rom-com more movie-like is a key element in ultimately getting it seen.

3) What is it about?

Every working screenwriter I know has had an experience something like this, in pitching a story to an exec: You set it up perfectly, hook them at the top, you swiftly power through to the midpoint, with plenty of vivid visual movie moments along the way, you pay off all your set-ups beautifully, then slide home for the big climax - you've made the best case conceivable for your star-attractive, mainstream audience-friendly, same-but-different winner of a movie. And the exec, rapt throughout, looks genuinely excited as you catch your breath. "Fabulous!" he says. Pause. "But what is it about?"

This reaction may seem to make a good argument for gun control. But over the years, I've come to really respect the question. What the guy is really asking, rude or reductive as it may sound, is "what's the reason we should invest in this story?", meaning, invest in emotionally as well as invest financially. What’s universal about the story?  What will the audience relate to?  What about it is going to speak to us, as personally as it spoke to you?  

As a writer, when faced with this question, I’m tempted to react like one of those Old Hollywood hacks stuck in a studio lot back room with an Underwood at his fingertips and a stogie in his mouth: "Whaddya mean, what's it about? It's about a girl and a gun!"  But I've learned the hard way that this question really does need an answer, and in terms of the romantic comedy, I've come to think it's vital. A rom-com that doesn't know what it's about isn't likely to get made, or if it does, isn't likely to endure.

It's a common misconception that rom-coms, oft thought of as light, frothy fare, are just about ‘high jinks ensue.’  Truth is, all the great ones really do have a strong thematic thread, from Tootsie (which is about a self-absorbed guy who through posing as a woman becomes a more selfless man) to When Harry Met Sally (which is about the key to romantic relationships being a learned appreciation of the differences between men and women).  

Even an over-the-top farce like There's Something About Mary, which seems to be about using semen as hair gel and setting dogs on fire, nonetheless presents a clear and coherent theme: its protagonist learns that true love means putting someone else's happiness before your own.

The great and enduring romantic comedies ask, "What does these two people becoming a couple mean?"  We don't necessarily think about theme when we react to movies, but their presence (or lack) can make a huge difference.  

I reckon that one of the problems with Elizabethtown is that "what it's about" seems simultaneously too much and too little, and that what keeps Shopgirl seeming good but small is that its love-means-being-vulnerable theme is a bit self-evident and obvious.  

The success of Sex And The City had a lot to do with the fact that every episode asked a thematic question.  While some were more strained than others, it was always clear that Carrie was looking for the meaning in what was happening around her.

From the ones I read at the studio and wrestle with in consults, I'd say too many aspiring funny love stories forget to really examine their raison d’etre. If you don't know why you've written this script - if you didn't really need to find out something important about love and humans in the writing of it - the absence of that investment will be felt.  And Mr. Exec will end up wondering why people will want to see it.

So please, ask these questions of your screenplay, before launching it from your desk into moviemaking world.  Consider it a final exam.  I hope yours passes it with flying colours – because a rom-com delivering characters I care about, that’s really a movie, and is about something that speaks to me, is one I’ll gladly pay good money to see.  

Bill Mernit’s book Writing the Romantic Comedy is published by Harper/Collins.  He serves as both a private script consultant, and a story analyst at Universal Studios, while teaching ‘Writing The Romantic Comedy’ and half a dozen other courses at the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program, where he was awarded 2001’s Outstanding Screenwriting Instructor of the Year.   

www.billymernit.com

This article first appeared in the Guild's magazine, UK Writer (Spring 2006).