The Double-Concept Story Idea
or, what my more successful scripts have in common
Like most screenwriters — or so I imagine — I tend to have more ideas than I have the time or energy to actually write. So, which ideas do I pick? (This is in terms of spec scripts I write on my own, hoping to sell later.)
Sometimes, it doesn’t feel like it’s up to me. I tend to write out of obsession, regardless of whether anyone thinks my idea is good or not. If I can’t stop thinking about some story idea — and if I tend to start viewing the world and movies and music through the lens of that specific idea — then I’m pretty resigned to writing a script about it, regardless of its perceived commercial viability.
A recent example: for whatever reason, I’ve been fixated on the idea of writing (and eventually directing) a movie having to do with the TV show Hee Haw. Specifically, having to do with the show’s cancellation — along with a dozen or so other rural-minded shows — in 1971. This sudden wave of cancellations of often-popular shows has come to be known as “the rural purge.”
Now, my brilliant wife thinks this is a silly idea. My oldest teenage son mutters curse words to himself whenever he catches me watching Hee Haw clips on youtube. No one in the industry is asking for a movie about a 50 year old hillbilly TV show that was considered too backwards and dumb to keep on the air even back when it was in its ratings prime. (Hee Haw was canceled in 1971, but switched over to syndication and defiantly stayed on the air for like 25 more years.)
And yet, and yet — I grew up on it, and regard it with bottomless affection, and I think something very interesting is lurking in there. But whatever that “there” is, if I ever want to actually make a movie in this arena, it can’t just straight up be about Hee Haw. Not if I want to have a budget over, say, ten dollars.
To have a chance at getting made, my movie will have to include some other story concept that at least potentially generates a little industry excitement. Something that can be in some kind of creative tension with Hee Haw, as a concept.
I’m not going to go into detail about what exactly I’ve been cooking, but I will say this: my idea includes Alan Pakula-esque paranoid thriller elements, my own fairly original theses about the culture wars of the early ‘70s, and a range of CIA conspiracies.
It also includes Hee Haw. Plus Arnold the Pig from Green Acres. Because I’m hip.
In my subheading to this post, I wrote: “what my more successful scripts have in common.”
I should define “successful.” For me, a successful script is one that gets made, gets me paid, or pushes my career forward some tangible degree. Or, any combo of the above. Anything beyond that is gravy.
In many ways, my most successful script is for a feature called The Olympian. It’s yet to be made. But The Olympian has done more for my career than probably all of my other scripts combined (or at least that was that case until Americana started getting screened for industry types earlier this year).
The Olympian has gotten me most of my meetings and led to most of my paying gigs. If I’m on someone’s map in the industry, it’s probably because of The Olympian. In fact, it’s the script that put me on the radar for my first movie’s eventual producer and studio.
So, an unproduced success. And as a script, it has something in common with pretty much any other script of mine that’s done pretty well: it’s a double-concept story.
What do I mean by double-concept story? Simply this: it’s doing two very specific holistic things at the same time.
The Olympian is a classic underdog sports story, based on the events of a real person’s life: Brad Alan Lewis’ struggles in 1984 as a blue collar rower to overcome the Ivy League rowing establishment in his attempt to win America’s first gold medal in the sport in 50 years.
If the movie gets made, that’s what the trailer and promotional materials will present. It’s a story squarely in the underdog sports movie tradition of Rocky, Breaking Away, and The Bad News Bears (my favorite movie of all-time, btw).
But The Olympian is also fully something else: it’s my spiritual autobiography.
First of all, there’s the class warfare element of Brad’s story. That’s what drove me to write the story in the first place.
But while I was in the middle of writing my first draft of The Olympian, my wife found herself facing a serious illness. And I found myself realizing that my own personal “fuck you, world” chip-on-shoulder mindset — which I was imbueing onto the character of Brad Lewis — was exactly what my wife wasn’t needing from me at this crisis point.
One of the foundations of my marriage is that both my wife and I are pretty high-achieving, work-hard, play-hard types. But this sudden health crisis changed all of that. My relentlessly competitive workaholic loner mindset helped me escape the trailer park, sure. But to continue with it now would be courting disaster.
I needed to change. But is someone like me — or like my scripted version of Brad — someone whose entire identity and semi-successful career has always been built on a fuck-the-world mindset — is someone like that even capable of changing? And if so, how?
I scrapped my draft of The Olympian. I started rewriting it with this question at the forefront of my mind. I incorporated a health crisis into the script. (Luckily, my wife’s health scare settled into something she’s been able to manage.) As I wrote, I grew desperate to find the dramatic answer to this very personal, very pressing thematic question.
I mean, I also continued with telling a traditional, throwback blue collar underdog sports story. But now, at the same time, I also began telling the story of a hyper-competitive loner who comes to realize he has to completely change his mindset or else risk losing everything he truly loves.
It’s my suspicion that — for those who responded strongly to The Olympian — it’s the pairing of these two story concepts that gave it specicifity, surprise, and emotional depth.
If I glance briefly over my other scripts that have done well, there are similar double-concept pairings.
For my TV show Damnation, the double-concept was this: the show is a secret history of the labor wars of the 1930s. But — it’s also fully an old school Western, pitting two estranged brothers with a violent, operatic past against each other.
The Western genre element gave the historical script a more propulsive nature. It guided my emotional beats. The secret history element gave me a whole bunch of weird, interesting specifics to incorporate into the plotting that were (hopefully) somewhat unique and unexpected for the genre.
Likewise, for my film Americana, I’m telling an ensemble small town crime story. But in the movie I’m also always reckoning with the tricky history of the Western genre. The necessities of plotting a crime story hopefully brings energy and stakes to the story and keeps me from getting too pedantic about the Western’s at times troubling history. At the same time, hopefully my attempts to drag the Western a little closer to the social realities of 2023 helps keep my plotting and story beats and characterizations from feeling small town crime generic.
For me at least, it seems like my better scripts can’t be doing just one thing on a conceptual, holistic level. They can’t try to do everything, either. I seem to write my best scripts when my story is doing two very specific conceptual things at the same time.
Usually one of those conceptual things has to do with genre or story type. A specific genre concept provides me with structure and energy and a handful of expectations for me to subvert or alter or fulfill.
And usually the other conceptual thing has to do with something hyper-personal to me. Some weird secret history I’m trying to explore, or some personal demon I’m trying to exorcise, or some odd thematic element I’m obsessing over.
A very singular personal story concept seems to provide me with original textures and otherwise unexpected specifics. It also guides my decision-making in terms of characterization and story turns and thematic emphasis.
Without a strong genre or story type concept at work, my writing tends to be formless and self-indulgent and un-dramatic. Without a singular personal concept at work, my writing can become formulaic and hacky and generic. It’s the creative tension between two strong, well-defined concepts that leads to my best work.
So, I don’t want to write a simple, self-indulgent tribute to Hee Haw. Just like I don’t want to write yet another conspiracy thriller that’s drenched in ‘70s paranoia.
What I want to write is a conspiracy thriller that’s drenched in ‘70s paranoia but that also dramatizes my childhood trailer park love of Hee Haw and Green Acres and my very personal suspicions about why Hollywood and other well-cultured institutions are so allergic to anything that has a whiff of the working poor about it.
The genre concept will hopefully make the movie dramatic and entertaining. And the personal concept will hopefully make the movie specific, personal, and full of interesting little suprises. And the Hee Haw Gospel Quartet will hopefully make the movie soundtrack the feel good hit of the summer.
Did you know Hee Haw was produced by the Parallax Corporation?
Hee Haw was a major staple of my youth. This is a brilliant idea.