Rerun: The Good Guy

The following is a repost from from last April, after I saw The Good Guy at Tribeca. I thought that since it's finally released, this post might be more relevant. I'm seeing the film again on Wednesday; it should be interesting to see what my thoughts are after the second viewing.

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This afternoon, I had the privilege of attending a screening at Tribeca of The Good Guy (starring Scott Porter, Alexis Bledel, and Bryan Greenberg). I hope not to give too much away, because it is a worthwhile film and I hope it gets distributed. But I can't stop thinking about the film, especially the script, and thought I'd share my ruminations.

The basic premise is a love triangle centered on Wall Street. It's a romantic comedy -- though not quite in the same league as Kate Hudson/Meg Ryan movies. More a comedy whose anchor was partly romance.

The characters were really the most interesting aspect of the movie. The writer/director Julio DePietro broke all sorts of basic rules with his protagonist. First, there were essentially three protagonists who occupied mostly equal amounts of screen time (though one was slightly more focal than the others). They each had valuable stories that didn't really overshadow one another. Yet, it wasn't an ensemble piece. Each protagonist was also the antagonist at different moments, which kept the audience guessing. And, what I found most intriguing about the film, was that the characters were all people we've seen in real life -- cliches almost -- but not people we've ever seen on screen. They were real people who we'd recognize but not movie characters.

It was actually disconcerting to watch this film with all the script reading I'm doing. The rules for what works in scripts can sometimes be so rigid. This is usually a good thing -- most first time writers don't understand the rules well enough to break them, so the result is a clumsy script. I'm so used to evaluating scripts -- and movies -- with my mental checklist of the dos and don'ts of screenwriting that for a while I couldn't decide if The Good Guy worked or not. But, after marinating on the film and talking briefly with DiPietro, I realize it did.

There are a few reasons the movie worked, even with its rule-breaking characters. First, the comedy was great. The audience laughed out loud multiple times. Even during gut-wrenching scenes, there was room for laughter. Second, the movie hinted at what it was doing. It basically acknowledged that the characters in the film were going to be a little different, and how. The script actually foreshadowed itself in a way. Acknowledging that rules were about to be broken softened the blow. It was obvious that DiPietro understood screenwriting and the basic storytelling rules of the medium, but that he had a statement to make by breaking them. Three, the techinical stuff -- editing, music, direction, acting -- were superb.

So what's the moral? It's okay to break screenwriting rules every so often -- just make sure you know what the rules are, you understand you're breaking them, and you strengthen another aspect (like comedy) of your script so a finicky reader is too excited to pass. Don't be afraid of unconventional characters.

Oh, and check out The Good Guy, either at Tribeca or when it hopefully gets a distribution deal.