
Good Ideas don't fall off Turnip Trucks
by rick friedberg
Book Excerpt, 5 pages
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Creativity Screenwriting ABCs Storytelling Tips/Advice
GOOD IDEAS DON’T JUST FALL OFF A TURNIP TRUCK
by Rick Friedberg
Whether you’re writing a screenplay, thinking of a movie idea, or conceiving a pitch, good, unique ideas are not easy to come by. Some of the great movies in history (The Godfather, The Bourne Identity, Election, The Hours, Midnight Cowboy, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and The Lord of the Rings, to name just a few of hundreds), were all great novels first.
Still others were based upon real-life stories, like The Dallas Buyer’s Club, 12 Years a Slave, The Butler, Captain Phillips, The Wolf of Wall Street and the unbelievable survival story Unbroken.
As a comedy writer/director, I find there are the most unusual moments in movies— especially comedies—that, because they break the boundaries of credulity, political correctness, and outlandish behavior, strike me as great ideas, such as Dudley Moore’s one-legged messenger job interview with Peter Cook in The Hound of the Baskervilles, Eddie Murphy’s tirade when acting as a paraplegic in Trading Places, Peter Sellers’s “Heil Hitler” twich in Dr. Strangelove, Meg Ryan’s fake orgasm in When Harry Met Sally, Cameron Diaz’s semen hair gel in There’s Something About Mary, the end credits sequence in The Hangover, the nude wrestling match in Borat, and Lloyd Bridges’s line, “I knew I picked the wrong day to stop sniffing glue,” in Airplane!.
Even more unique: the wood chipper scene in the Coen brothers’ masterpiece, Fargo, the Knights of the Round Table riding broomstick horses while their “wards” bang coconuts together for hoof sounds in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and the lobbyist’s discussion of whose gun, alcohol, or tobacco lobbying group kills more people in Jason Reitman’s Thank You for Smoking.
There are thousands of truly unique ideas in dramas, action films, and other movies. I mention comedy bits because that is my pigeonhole, and, to reiterate, these ideas did not fall off of a turnip truck.
* * * *
I attended a class called Murder They Wrote, which was taught by L.A.–based crime novelists Faye and Jonathan Kellerman, Sue Grafton, Gerald Petievich, Robert Crais, and a few others. Each novelist discussed their writing methods and how they came up with their ideas.
The final—and in my opinion, the best—class speaker was a relatively new writer, Marcel Montecino. Before he was a writer, Marcel was a studio keyboard player from New
Orleans who had an idea for a story. The book, called The Cross Killer, is about an older Jewish cop and his partner, a young Hollywood actor wannabee, and upon publication it became a best-selling novel. It got Marcel noticed and allowed him an advance to write an incredible novel—a music biz/love story called Big Time—about a New Orleans keyboard player who works part time taking bets for the Mafia. It was later optioned by Tom Cruise.
Since he was a teenager, Marcel had only wanted to be a songwriter/musician. He wrote songs for twenty-five years and never sold one of them. He, unlike all the other authors in the class, had no idea how he wrote what he wrote. But when The Cross Killer came into his head, he had to write it.
I would never imply that, if an idea doesn’t hit you over the head, you have to crawl back to bed and bemoan your fate. Conjuring up your own “vision”—be it a song, a book, a movie, a script, a video, or a comic routine—takes things like reading, Internet surfing, viewing movies and YouTube videos, watching television, visiting art exhibits, and attending concerts and comedy clubs. Someone read, saw or found incredible ideas that recently led to awesome movies like Gravity, Boyhood, American Hustle and the masterpiece, The Grand Budapest Hotel.
****
On a personal note, I met Dick Chudnow, currently CEO of the nationally-franchised comedy improv show, ComedySportz, on the racquetball court and we became friends. Dick, with his college roommate, Jim Abrahams and classmates David and Jerry Zucker, founded the Kentucky Fried Theatre in Madison, Wisconsin, across from a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant. Then they all moved to L.A. and restarted the show—which was hilarious.
Dick’s wife, Bobby, wanted to join the group. She was smart and funny, but she was almost too smart for her own good. When she and Dick posed the request for her to join the group, the answer from the other three was “no.” Standing up for her, Dick quit, selling his share to the other three. It was just after that that we connected. As all writers and directors do, we decided to write together – primarily thinking, a movie script. Dick said, “Let’s include Nick.” Nick Castle won an academy award with John Carpenter for a short at USC, and the two of them co-wrote Escape from New York.
Dick got hold of Nick, and the three of us began brainstorming ideas for a film. Nick, a TV addict, asked me, “You ever watch that religious freak, Ernest Ainsley?” Ainsley was a popular televangelist. I snapped my fingers and said, “That’s it—a religious TV station! K-G-O-D.”
We knocked out a twenty-page treatment—spoofs on TV shows, game shows, commercials, and sketches that all sold religion. I had worked with a guy who was a born-again Christian who loved the concept and told me, “I know the group of theater owners who started the Rocky Horror Picture Show midnight showings by paying kids to dress in costumes, like they’d seen in the movie, and to come and see it.”
He and I flew to Kansas City and met with the guys responsible for the Rocky Horror phenomenon, who told us, “You guys need a one-sheet poster and a theatrical trailer. With those, we can get bankable commitments from exhibitors.”
I phoned a wealthy friend in Texas, for whom I made a documentary on a football coach. A lapsed Baptist, he hated hypocrisy and was disgusted by the sale of religion. He read the treatment and said, “Pardner, this is hilarious. How much is it gonna cost me?” “Thirty grand,” I told him. He didn’t hesitate, “I’ll send you a check.”
With favors from friends, we shot a 35mm theatrical trailer and had a one-sheet poster designed. A guy I worked with took the trailer, poster, and script to American International Pictures, a successful small distributor run by the studio creative head who had to pass on producing Airplane! because it had three directors. AIP agreed to finance and distribute our film.
One of my favorite scenes in the script and the movie (titled Pray TV) featured a televangelist, rousing the crowd at an abandoned drive-in movie theater – the last in L.A., -- which was soon, thereafter, torn down.
Charlie Haid played the Ernest Ainsley-type showman Evangelist, called Buck Sunday. Dressed in a white tuxedo, with a bright red shirt and white bow tie, sporting a wig of blonde curls, he was accompanied on piano by Cajun blues singer Dr. John.
The scene starts with an establishing shot of the marquee at the dilapidated drive-in move theatre that reads:
BUCK SUNDAY – The Mobile Church of God.
Following a line of cars entering the drive-in’s parking lot, the camera reveals a huge crowd going wild as Buck glides to center stage, takes a mic off the stand, and begins to preach:
BUCK
You know, people ask me, they ask me,
Buck,they ask, Is God dead? And I
answer and I say, “Noooo, God is
not dead. He’s in intensive care.
He’s sick. He’s sick and tired of
people making flimsy excuses for
not emptying their wallets for Him.
And he wants YOU to do it today,
because tomorrow you may be dead
and not able to go to the bank.
CROWD AD LIBS: Tell’em, Buck.
BUCK
So you ask me, Buck, you ask,
How can I get to God’s Heaven?
And I answer and I say, It’s not
EASY to get to God’s heaven.
And they ask me, Can I get to
God’s heaven by doing good deeds?
CROWD (yells): YES LORD!!!
BUCK
The ONLY way to get to God’s heaven
is by doing the hardest thing there
is to do. The hardest thing there is
to do is to give every single penny
you have to God. That’s what’s hard.
That’s what hurts, and that’s what
Gawwwd wants you to do.
Thunderous CHEERS. Crowd yells: HALLELUYAH!!
BUCK
Now I want to introduce to you, and to the Man upstairs, Dr. John and the Holey Moley Singers.
Incredible APPLAUSE as a white grand piano is rolled on stage followed by a chorus in choir robes. DR. JOHN strikes a CHORD. BUCK fades off stage as DR. JOHN plays and sings “Gimme Your Money,” a kick-ass gospel tune.
(Nick, Dick, and I wrote, with comic lyrics, about what would happen if people didn’t give all their cash to God)
Once there was a man, Didn’t give us any money. Left his checkbook at home. Couldn’t get to the bank on time on Saturday.
So one day he walked ‘cross the street. Foot of God came down and he tripped and stumbled and fell in front of a truck and died in the emergency room.
So what can you do if you don’t wanna end up like this guy?
Didn’t give any money and ended up dead.
What do you do-ooh-ooh.
What do you do-ooh-ooh.
BACK-UP SINGERS: What do you do-ooh-ooh.
Give me your watch. Give me your ring.
Give me your car, your truck, the mortgage on your home.
Let’s have some bucks. We’ll take a check.
We’ll take a money order or a credit card.
Give me your stocks. Give me your bonds.
Remember its going to the Man up above.
BUCK runs back on stage with a wireless hand mic: “And remember, it’s all tax deductible.” Then he glides back off stage as DR. JOHN continues:
So dig real deep. It’s not enough.
Just give it all and wash away your sins. Gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme all that you got. For Him.
BUCK, once again, rushes on with his hand mic: “We take Master
Card, Visa, and American Express.”
As DR. JOHN’s song continues, USHERS carrying velvet-covered garbage cans (tied between poles like you sometimes see pallbearers using to carry a casket) glide down the aisles as people in cars toss money, jewelry, and electronic goods into the cans.
The roller blading CARHOPS deliver wine and wafers. Their silver trays become laden with cash, credit cards, checks, and money orders.
****
I imagine that, watching the Sunday morning televangelists, other writers thought how larger-than-life, and, perhaps, ripe for comedy these snake oil salesmen were. Luck, timing and a mutual sense of humor and absurdity about the sale of religion just happened to hit Nick Castle, Dick Chudnow and I at the perfect moment. We didn't have to wait for a turnip truck to drop the idea for this screenplay into our hands.
If you want to make it as a screenwriter, song writer, comic, or moviemaker, you have to keep trying, searching, researching, writing notes to yourself, and jamming with your friends until that “aha!” idea, like ours, occurs.
And it will.
Read, enjoy, laugh and learn by reading Hollywood War Stories: How to Survive in the Trenches – just out on Amazon, B & N and Kindle:
http://www.amazon.com/Hollywood-War-Stories-Survive-Trenches/dp/1500991619
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Rick Friedberg is an award-winning writer/director of movies (Spy Hard), episodic TV (CSI-Miami), reality TV (The Real Housewives of Orange County), documentaries (Rodeo Cowboy), music videos (“Hot for Teacher”), and national and international TV commercials (shown during the Super Bowl, World Series, NBA playoffs and 2000 Olympics). Rick lives in Los Angeles with his first and only wife and has three grown children. He is currently seeking financing for a heist comedy screenplay in the vein of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. He has been using Final Draft since it's first version. |

rick friedberg
Screenwriter • Script Consultant • Director
Rick Friedberg is an award-winning writer/director of movies (Spy Hard), episodic TV (CSI-Miami), reality TV (The Real Housewives of Orange County), documentaries (Rodeo Cowboy), music videos ("Hot for Teacher"), and national and international TV commercials (shown during the Super Bowl, World Series, and NBA playoffs).
Coming from Cheyenne, Wyoming, with no family, friends or contacts in the entertainment business, author Rick Friedberg became an award-winning writer/director of movies, television, TV commercials, music videos, documentaries and digital media. His experiences, told with candor and humor, encompass the do's and don't of dealing with the frustrations, rejection and politics that can and must be overcome to forge a career in show business.