My Many Muses- Scenes To Learn From

 Hey there! This blog post took a little bit of time to write because it involved finding an inspiration for this project- not necessarily something to base my film off of, but general vibes that I'd like to somewhat capture in my film. In order to properly find these muses, I took the day off to watch a bunch of TV shows and movies that I enjoy and see if there are any aspects that I may find inspiring within them. Bear with me- this might be a rather scatterbrained blog post, since I'm going "purely off of vibes," with no concrete order to what I'm watching.

ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT

This was a no-brainer for inspiration. As my all-time favorite TV show, I find myself frequently revisiting Arrested Development, for its masterclass in wit, irony, and stellar writing. For the purposes of this film, I went in wanting to learn more about comedic writing, since I'm rather inexperienced when it comes to that genre. Arrested Development has been critically praised throughout the years for its incredibly witty jokes, mastery of writing stupid but likeable characters, and being the absolute king of the call-back joke.

However, I found myself focusing on the characters more than I was the comedy. Maybe this is for the better- after all, comedy isn't a requirement of a successful satire. Arrested Development has a large ensemble cast that portrays the large and dysfunctional Bluth family- a satire of the modern day wealthy family, and how incompetent they are when their wealth is snatched from them. The concept of a satirical piece about a stupid family dealing with the sudden loss of something that they considered essential to their lives... now that's starting to sound a little familiar...

Michael Bluth, Arrested
Development's "Straight Man"

While it's not an exact 1-to-1 match to my ideas for my own film, it gave a nice framework for writing caricatures of a hopelessly stupid family. Additionally, it made me further reflect on the possibility of including a "straight man" character for the rest of the family to play off of. Michael Bluth (played by Jason Bateman) is one of my favorite comedic characters of all time, not because he's particularly funny on his own (even though he is), but rather because of the fact that his reactions, responses, and other interactions with the clearly much dumber family members are so fun to watch, as a relatively normal man has to deal with this hopeless family unit. I'll have to give it some more thought....

DEATH AT A FUNERAL

Yes... I am in fact watching a movie just because it has "funeral" in the name. This is only a half-joke, in reality. Death At A Funeral (DAAF, for short), turned out to be a similar source of inspiration when writing comedic family units, approaching the comedy as more of an unluckiness that the family members have rather than incompetence, like AR.

But admittedly, yes, the main reason I watched DAAF was because it had a funeral... as corny as it sounds... Personally, I've never had the misfortune of needing to attend a funeral, and for the purposes of research, the idea of watching funeral videos on YouTube or from a distance in my local graveyard seemed a bit too morbid for my tastes. Watching DAAF was  good way to understand the general structure of a funeral, the sorts of interactions that may occur between strangers and family, and it was also a perfect example on how to approach the concept of a funeral with a comedic lens, without hijacking the setting by being overtly goofy.

DONT LOOK UP

For my last source of inspiration, I chose to go with a more recent satire film, Don't Look Up, which is a satire piece centering around humanity's indifference to climate change, and how different aspects of society (Government, celebrities, news) all refuse to confront the reality of their situation.

The main reason I chose to revisit this film after my initial viewing last year was to study the satirical representations of groups of people. Being honest, I wasn't a huge fan of the film when I first watched it last year- I didn't find it particularly funny, and I thought the message could've been delivered a little more subtly. But after revisiting it with a new lens to appreciate it by, I have to commend it for being an excellent piece of satire. Sure, I still didn't find it very funny, but after my research on the satire genre from a few blogs ago, I realize that a successful satire isn't required to be successfully funny, so this isn't a huge issue.

Once again, I must begrudgingly recognize that the two main characters are excellent examples of the "straight man" trope for the more wacky satirical caricature characters to play off of, and deliver a great dynamic where they try to explain or help people who don't want to be helped, delivering a great message about how the American populace would rather ignore a pressing issue than tackle it head on. I can happily say that I'll be taking pointers from this film when writing my satirical depictions of technology addiction in the family.

Can't wait to take what I learned from this viewing marathon into account when writing my script!