Writing the Photoplay

by J. Berg Esenwein; Arthur Leeds

The domestic comedies produced by Metro, featuring Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Drew, of which we have already spoken, are so well known, and these artists are so universally popular, that a word or two from Mr. Drew on the subject of screen comedy should be interesting and instructive:

"Comedy is and always will be an amusing story humorously told," says Mr. Drew. "If it is a good story, well told, then it is a comedy, but if it has no story or cannot be told humorously, then no amount of bolstering will ever make it into a comedy. You may add a lot of knockabout and perhaps get an acceptable farce, or you can write in sensation and get travesty, but you cannot by these means change the unfit into comedy, and the broad use of 'comedy' to apply to anything intended to be diverting is a misuse of an ancient and honorable word.... To my way of thinking comedy is first of all a good story. It is a story and not merely an incident or a collection of incidents. There must be a plot to obtain and hold the interest. This plot does not necessarily require profound depths, but there must be a distinct and clearly defined objective upon which the interest may be centred, and the interest must arise from mental processes and not from mere mechanical appeal.... Humorous action does not mean gross horseplay. The action itself may not always be marked to be amusing. To take a crude illustration, suppose that a character in the story is about to thrash his ancient enemy. He feels so certain of victory that he bribes the policeman on the beat not to interfere. Now he goes to the field of battle and unexpectedly gets the worst of it. He is the first to call for the police, and the scene flashes between the suborned officer placidly smiling at the sounds of the affray and never dreaming that it is his patron who is calling for aid. There is nothing humorous in the spectacle of a policeman on a street corner. In a comedy of incident he would have to suffer indignity to get a laugh. In the comedy with a plot, the plot makes the action humorous. We are not, in reality, laughing at the policeman. He is merely the symbol of the idea. We are laughing at the predicament into which our hero has thrust himself. It is this thought, and not the sight of the policeman, at which we laugh. The policeman merely stands for the thought, yet it is humorous action within my meaning of the term in that the policeman represents the thought.

"In our own comedies Mrs. Drew and I seek to appeal to the mind as well as to the eye, but to appeal to the mind through the eye. We value the advantage of brightly-written sub-titles, but believe that these should supplement and not replace the comedy in the action. The clever leader may either prepare for the comedy-situation or may follow and intensify it, but it is always an accessory and not the chief aim. It is absurd to talk of the leader as an intrusion to be avoided. It should be avoided only when it really is an intrusion. The cleverness of an author displays itself in the expertness with which he handles leaders rather than in his skill in avoiding them."[31]

6. General Advice

It is most important that, having started to write a farce, for instance, you keep it a farce throughout. One fault of many amateur scripts is that they show a tendency to be a little of everything. A strong emotional drama may—even should—have its "comedy relief," but it is a very unwise thing to introduce a note of tragedy into a farce or even into a straight comedy composition.

At this point it will not be out of place to say a few words in connection with this matter of "comedy relief," of which we have just spoken, as used in writing dramatic stories. The over-use of comedy relief, so called, is mostly due to misguided directors who have seen the success attending its introduction by prominent directors who really understood how and when to use it. A departmental writer in the Motion Picture News, speaking of the small army of directors "who worked with Griffith," says:

"Probably the most obvious of all the blunders made by the men who seek to emulate the wonderful work of Griffith is their introduction of comedy, chiefly through the medium of domestic animals, when they are forced to stop the action of their story to do so. Griffith's comedy is always spontaneous, incidental—it seems to have been inspired at the moment and runs in as part of the main action. The comedy of the men 'who worked with Griffith,' while perhaps inspired at the moment, rises not from the situations of the story but from the contemplative mind of the director himself. This is the general rule, at any rate. There are exceptions, of course, and notable ones, too, but that all-powerful motif of 'comedy relief' often gets the better of the director's judgment and results in a product that is so unbalanced that much of the illusion is destroyed. In fact, comedy relief is a difficult element to gain. It should always be purely incidental, unforced, arising from some major situation, and so creating the desired contrast. When it is obviously sought after and introduced without regard for its suitability it is not comedy relief but comedy-out-of-place."

Since this, like the over-use of the close-up, is something for which directors are largely responsible, it is the photoplaywright's duty to help by being very careful about how he himself writes in comedy intended to "light up" tense, serious, dramatic action.

No matter what class of humorous photoplay you may be writing, you must keep in mind what we enlarged upon in [Chapter XVI]: Nothing is funny that offends against good taste, or that, in any way, causes pain to any number of the spectators. Comedy, to be worthy of appreciation, must always be good-natured. National types as caricatured by many comedians with the aid of eccentric costumes and weird make-ups are usually as far from being real national types as one could well imagine. Humor must have more than mere extravagance or caricature for its basis. Even in farce and in musical comedy, as well as in vaudeville, the once familiar green-whiskered Irishman, the Frenchman who is all shrugging shoulders and absurd gestures, the negro who walks as if he were trying to take two steps backward for every one forward, and whose most noticeable facial feature is an enormous mouth, and the "Busy Izzy" type of Jew, who when not getting robbed himself, or being otherwise abused, is doing his best to defraud others, are gradually going out of fashion. And in the photoplay, which is now seen by all classes of people and is for all the people, racial characteristics must be treated in at least a fairly accurate manner, and always good-naturedly. Six or seven years ago, more than half the comedies produced were based upon a chase, or else depended largely upon slap-stick humor to raise a laugh. Not a few of them had as their chief comedy-incident an act of downright cruelty to some animal, or even to some human being. Today, when manufacturers are vying with each other to produce better, cleaner, and more universally enjoyable pictures, the script that violates Censorship rules or studio ethics by including any of the foregoing undesirable subjects stands but little show of reaching the production stage, if, indeed—which is extremely unlikely—it is accepted at all.