So Blizzard’s having this contest and I wrote something for it. Given that this is a piece of fiction written within an established universe it is, in essence, a work of fan fiction. Now there’s a lot of fan fiction, from the drabbles that put Harry Potter in bed with Draco Malfoy to the novels published in the universes of Warhammer or Star Wars. There are some things, in my experience, that separate good works of this type from the bad ones.
It all comes down to doing the research.
If you want to avoid derailing a character’s development, ensure your work fits into the tapestry of the universe and match the tone of previous works while providing your unique voice, you have to know the facts about your piece back to front. If the universe began as movies, watch them; as novels, read them; as games, play them. Know the characters, settings, themes and moods. A lot of established fictional universes have on-line resources, from basic fan-sites to extensive wikis – make use of these resources.
There’s established lore out there, and if you ignore it, by either not researching it or choosing to omit it, bad things can happen. It might not make the work entirely unsuccessful, but you might have to weather criticism such as “This character would never act that way,” “The timeline of these events is all screwed up,” or “[insert author name here] doesn’t know how to write women properly.”
Walking into a place filled with lore looking to tell a new story can be a lot like walking into a minefield. If you don’t watch your step, your journey will end very abruptly and messily.
Crazy nights and weekends are the stuff modern legends are made of. They do things like deprive you of money, give you interesting hickeys, or keep you from posting a regular blog feature on time. Most of the time, though, you at least have the benefit of remembering how you got into a situation where you need to delay a car payment or explain to your significant other the lipstick on your collar. Or shorts. The three gentlemen at the center of The Hangover, however, don’t have that luxury. The more they discover about the best night of their lives that they can’t remember, the more the audience discovers how surprisingly and raucously funny this movie is.
Normally I’d put the poster here, but I like this shot a lot more and it’s basically the same thing.
The set-up goes something like this: Doug is about to get married. His best man, a schoolteacher named Phil, is taking him to Las Vegas for his bachelor party. Along for the ride are mutual friend & dentist Stu, who is taking the opportunity to escape his shrew of a girlfriend for at least a few hours, and Doug’s brother-in-law-to-be, Alan, a character that can be most charitably described as “quirky.” Upon arriving in Vegas and changing for the night out, Phil takes the group to the roof, toasts with Jagermeister and says that no matter what happens, as far as anybody outside of the four of them are concerned, it didn’t happen. The next morning, Phil, Stu and Alan wake to find their hotel suite a wreck, a chicken wandering in the sitting room, a tiger in the bathroom and a baby in the closet. None of them can remember a thing. Stu’s lost a tooth, Alan’s lost his pants, and worst of all, Phil has lost Doug.
MovieBob has gone on record to say that good comedy is pretty much “review-proof.” You can’t talk at length about the movie’s nuances or artifice without giving away some of the humor and thus diluting the overall experience. Now, granted, Bob was talking about Hot Tub Time Machine which I saw the same night as The Hangover. In my opinion, Hot Tub is good (better than Grandma’s Boy to be sure) but The Hangover is exemplary. Why? Because while I was watching it, when I recovered from the latest fit of laughter, I found myself thinking, “Wow! Somebody actually bothered to write this damn thing!”
The chicken has all of the answers. Shame it can’t talk.
Now, not all comedy required a coherent or even realistic narrative through-line. What The Hangover does just as well as its jokes is show us what can be done when a comedy has a coherent, realistic narrative through-line. As the story unfolds, the film reveals itself not just as a good adult male bonding comedy but also something of a mystery story. And while this is a comedy, it’s not a shallow, easy-to-solve mystery that the Scooby-Doo gang could’ve knocked out. The characters need to piece together what happened over the course of that wild Vegas night, or the bride patiently preparing for the biggest day of her life won’t have a groom to marry. The film’s aware of the ticking clock and makes us aware of it, too, but not in such a way that it becomes too serious or overshadows the laugh. It’s a well-written, well-balanced and very funny script.
Now, it’s not a script that’s terribly original, outside of the ‘we don’t remember what the hell happened last night’ hook. And the characters are pretty stock – Phil’s the cool guy, Stu’s the henpecked guy, and Alan’s just plain weird. Yeah, they’re going to learn lessons about their lives in the midst of their caper, nothing new there. But what works is the fact that these characters, standard fare they may be, are presented with pretty straight-faced aplomb by the leads. Bradley Cooper in particular as Phil carries a lot of the movie, often being the voice of reason just moments after being the smirking handsome enabler of his less-fortunate friends. It’s the kind of thing you’d typically see Bill Murray or Vince Vaughn doing, but Cooper does it very well. Jeffrey Tambor and Heather Graham really shine as well in their supporting roles. The father-in-law character being understanding surprised me, and while the hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold did not, Heather’s still a great actress.
Alan looks a bit like a Jewish gangster in this shot, if you ask me.
I’m running out of things I can discuss without spoiling some very funny jokes, so here’s the last major point I’ll make: one thing that makes The Hangover work so well is a lack of contrivance. With a couple of exceptions, everything that happens in the movie does happen for a reason that makes sense. The presence of the tiger in the bathroom, the car that arrives when the guys hand in their valet ticket, the contents of the Mercedes’ trunk – none of it is resolved in a snap-of-the-fingers kind of way. There’s never a wink at the audience that lesser screenwriters would use to smooth over rough spots in the script.
This isn’t to say that The Hangover is free of flaws. There is a level of predictability to some of the situations, but the ones you don’t see coming will surprise you. The three leads are characters you’ve seen before, sure. But there are other characters and a well-hyped cameo that are surprises in and of themselves. A good joke that’s told well with the right timing is every bit as funny as it is when you first hear it. The Hangover does those jokes very well, and I was surprised at how much I liked it.
If you haven’t seen it already, do so. If you have, it might be worth watching again, especially with some friends who might not have had the privilege. When you do get the DVD from Netflix, though, can someone please tell me why the only difference between a theatrical release and an “unrated version” is a drastically increased amount of hairy man-ass?
Josh Loomis can’t always make it to the local megaplex, and thus must turn to alternative forms of cinematic entertainment. There might not be overpriced soda pop & over-buttered popcorn, and it’s unclear if this week’s film came in the mail or was delivered via the dark & mysterious tubes of the Internet. Only one thing is certain… IT CAME FROM NETFLIX.
If you’re reading this, the location I’m at in New Jersey does not have Internet access, and I’ll be unable to upload my IT CAME FROM NETFLIX! review of The Hangover.
If that’s the case, accept my sincere apologies, look for the review tomorrow, and here’s a picture of a kitten.
My friend – maybe it’d be best to call him a “pen pal”? – Chuck Wendig had this to say in regards to the task that must follow the completion of a first draft:
Writing is rewriting. A writer’s arsenal of talents are brought to bear on the first draft, but his skills (the things he has learned) go to bat during the second.
The first draft requires a sledgehammer, the subsequent drafts require scalpels, each smaller and sharper than the last.
This is a very good point that he made, one that I hadn’t considered. When one sits down to bang out the first draft, to cross the yawning chasm of unwritten words between the first syllable of chapter one and the last predicate of the last sentence, it’s usually not done with advice from The Elements of Style clearly in mind. It’s done to get it done.
Once it’s done, it could almost be said that the real work begins. Drafting the work in the first run is less about finesse and precision and more about words just flowing from the writer’s imagination onto the page. Revision is almost a different animal entirely, yet we don’t get marketable work out of what we create without it. We have to use an increasingly fine set of tools to whittle the amorphous shape of the draft into a polished, well-shaped chronicle poised to leave the shelves of a bookseller with at least a leisurely stroll.
The first pass is done with a bit of abandon. Extraneous words are yanked out. Sentences are broken up. Dialog, scenery, even entire sequences of events are rearranged. This is the ‘chainsaw’ revision.
Following this is the ‘scissors’ stage. Dangling bits are trimmed back. The work begins to take more shape. It becomes more fashionable, but not quite exactly what we’re looking for.
Finally you reach the point of employing the ‘scalpel’. A word here, a suffix there, just little touches that make a good effort something truly special. Provided it finds its way to the right agent.
That’s how I see it, anyway, now that I’ve been set straight. Am I missing any stages? What’ve your experiences been moving from one to the next?
Russ Pitts’ triumphant return as an Escapist columnist prompted me to finally lay down some thoughts on villainy. A little roleplaying in World of Warcraft on my characters reminded me how much fun it can be to write for or portray a villain. My brother-in-law, when running Dungeons & Dragons is described as “an evil DM,” always bringing out the malevolence in his NPCs so that the player characters in his campaigns are always motivated to dispense a little adventurous justice. My father’s an attorney. I’m surrounded by villainy.
There are all sorts of villains, however, and every one of them sees themselves more or less in a positive light, if not convinced that they are the hero. Let’s stay with the D&D theme for a few archetypal examples.
Some villains actually try to uphold the law. Sure, the laws might be corrupt or warped in some way, but it’s still a structure for peace and order. Police states can be peaceful, after all.
There are also villains who have a personal code of honor they will not violate under any circumstances. “No women, no kids,” for example. Sometimes they verge a bit into anti-hero territory, but for the most part, these villains don’t pursue villainy for its own sake – they pursue the law, or justice, as they see it.
Take Darth Vader. For the most part, when he is Darth Vader, he’s hunting down terrorists and insurgents, trying to stop a full-on rebellion against the established government. His methods are somewhat draconian and he isn’t one to compromise or even show remorse, but he’s pursing a noble end in the eyes of the Empire’s creators.
Some people are motivated selfishly. They want what they want, and that’s it. Some are compromised in the pursuit of their desires by their morals or ethics, or the restrictions of society’s laws. Others… not so much. They’re seen as villains, but in their own minds, they’re just getting what they want.
Not quite as unpredictable as the upcoming alignment, but not as restricted as their lawful cousins, neutral evil characters are wild cards. They’re often as charismatic as they are ruthless, as fun to be around as they are chillingly dominant. They strive to be masters of their domain, and really could care less about things that aren’t the things that they want.
Look no further than Eric Northman of HBO’s True Blood for a fantastic example of both a Neutral Evil character who’s also a Magnificent Bastard. Even when he’s acting his most vampiric, speaking in cold, dispassionate tones about human beings like they’re slabs of meat, there’s something of a twinkle in his eye, the occasional twitch of his mouth that reaches for a smirk. We do see other sides of him, especially when it comes to his Maker, but for the most part he’s about as evil as Neutral Evil can get.
You have villains who pursue the law or their own code of honor for the sake of those laws or that code. You have villains who just want what they feel is coming to them, even if they have to lie, cheat, or murder to get it. And then you have these guys.
Chaotic Evil villains aren’t necessarily crazy. They might, however, string you up by your nostril hairs and slap you around with meter-long pieces of rebar if you call them crazy. No, Chaotic Evil villains are motivated by a desire to destroy everything they see so something new can be built up in its place. Or perhaps they’ve had a vision of Hell coming to Earth to shake the complacent religious types out of their stupor and give them something worth fighting for if their faith is, indeed, true. They have a goal in mind, but the path to that goal isn’t exactly mapped out. If it were, the map would be covered in squiggles of blood and crayon. They may believe what they’re doing will ultimately benefit the world, in some way shape or form, but for the most part? They just do things.
Which brings me to the late Heath Ledger’s Joker. Cesar Romero, Jack Nicholson and Mark Hamill have all taken turns playing Batman’s favorite monstrous clown, but Heath & Dark Knight director Christopher Nolan took the insanity to a whole new level. By removing some of the more ridiculous trappings of the character and focusing on his anarchistic mindset, the Joker came across as a true agent of chaos. He wanted to show people what he felt was their true nature. His goal was to bring down the carefully-crafted artifices of civility and organization some used to hide their deepest desires. He lived out loud, which is something any artist should want to do, but did it in a very violent and very infectious way. It affected everybody around him, as he probably knew it would. He just didn’t know how. Nor did he know for certain what he’d do next – just that something needed doing.
Name some of your favorite bad guys. Where do you think they fall? How do you think they see themselves? And how might their villainy be perceived as heroism by some? Food for thought.
