How to Write Bridesmaids

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How to Write Bridesmaids

by L.A. Zvirbulis

1 – The Inspiration. If you don’t already have funny friends, move to a major city and take a class on something called “improvisation”.

2 – The Genre. Comedy. With women. But nowadays we just say “Comedy” and not “Female Comedy” or “Chick Flick”. Funny is funny. People are people.

3 – The Complications. What’s the worst that could happen? You mess up all the fun plans before your best friend’s wedding because you kind of suck at life and you’re letting your depression affect your friendships. Your cake business failed and you are sleeping with a jerk, albeit a handsome one. All of your friends are doing so well that you are the only one who can’t afford a first class flight. You have to move in with your mother and worst of all, your best friend might have a new best friend.

4 – The Fun Stuff. Being a Bridesmaid is fun, right? Planning parties, shopping for dresses, and adventurous lunches! Food poisoning while trying on expensive dresses! Getting Kristen Wiig drunk on an airplane! Of course there’s the wedding to look forward to at the end of the movie. Audiences like looking forward to a big event, and it will be awesome if we can get Wilson Phillips to sing a hit song at the reception.

5 – The Cop. A guy with authority who can pull you over for not fixing your tail light. A guy who will let you do cop stuff with him, then sexy stuff, and then baking stuff. Give him a cool non-American accent and let him be super into you. Good guys exist.

6 – The Melissa. We need a voice of reason. Someone who has their shit together and doesn’t abandon Annie at her worst. Also someone who is capable at handling a bunch of golden retrievers. Melissa McCarthy, although already a successful television actor, makes a breakout in this movie. Let her choose her styling – apparently she doesn’t want her character to wear makeup. And cast her husband in it as her romantic interest because they are adorable together.

7 – The Jokes. Comedians, attack! While the script is hilarious, we have the best comedic talent in the business in this movie. Let them soar! Women are funny, damn it! Women can shit themselves in the middle of the street and make it tasteful! Women can tell jokes! (Although a woman did not direct this movie, Paul Feig knows how to let women shine.)

8 – The Title. Bridesmaids, because you know, they’re all bridesmaids. I guess we could go with “My Best Friend’s Wedding” but that has been taken and “Sorry I Ruined Your Bachelorette Party” is too long. Keep it simple.

9 – The Ending. “Fight for your shitty life!” yells Melissa McCarthy and then amazingly Annie gets her shit together. It’s inspiring. I kind of want someone to yell at me like that. Annie opens a bakery, makes amends to those she hurt, and saves the wedding by finding the bride the morning of. Oh, and she gets the hot cop and makes new friends while dancing along to “Hold On” next to Wilson Phillips.

10 – The Heart. Bridesmaids is a movie about friends made by actual friends. There’s a reason the main character is named Annie. She’s one of the writers. You can tell that these two besties who met in an improv class really love each other and love making a great movie.

*L.A. Zvirbulis did not write Bridesmaids. Annie Mumolo and Kristen Wiig did.

How to Write A League of Their Own

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How to Write A League of Their Own

by L.A. Zvirbulis

1 – The Inspiration. Have your friend ask you and your buddy to write a script after she watches a documentary about the real women who played in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League.** Also your friend is Penny Marshall, the first woman to direct a movie that generates over $100 million domestic box office (Big), a former tv comedy star (Laverne & Shirley), who has a brother that’s also a comedy star turned huge director (Garry Marshall). All signs this will be a good film, so you both say yes.

2 – The Genre. Nostalgic dramatic comedy that can be considered the best baseball movie ever. And while you might not agree about the best baseball movie, I think we can all agree that watching a sports movie is a better way to spend two hours than watching actual sports. If you’re playing a sport, that’s different. Nothing against sports, it’s just that movies are usually funnier and more dramatic, especially after men stopped wearing those tight short shorts in sports.

3 – The Complications. What’s the worst that could happen? Women learn to love getting paid to play professional baseball and then get threatened to return to the kitchen once the war is over. Wait, the war ending is the worst thing that could happen? Oh also sexism is bad. Let’s add some sibling rivalry because the war ending can’t be the worst. Also please mention that African American women weren’t allowed to play at the time, but show that it’s a shame.

4 – The Fun Stuff. Sisters in sports. Of course you expect there to be rivalry, but you have to play against your own blood in the World Series? That’s tough. Your sister is Geena Davis? Ouch. You play for the opposite team now because you got transferred? This is what sports is all about. It’s not about what team you play for, it’s about winning the game. Or maybe letting your sister win the game. Is it really about winning? Who wins here? Just the audience?

5 – The Device. It is baseball. Specifically, it is the baseball that Dottie drops. The question is, does she do it on purpose? Would you drop the ball to let your little sister win because you love your sister more than you like playing baseball and you can just go home to have baby-making sex with your war hero husband? I would. But the answer is open to interpretation.

6 – The Coach. Let’s make Jimmy Dugan a tribute to Rick from Casablanca – a bitter alcoholic in the 1940s whose glory days are behind him and who loves a talented woman married to another man. We will delete their love scene in the final edit of the film, though.

7 – The Jokes. There is no crying in baseball but that doesn’t mean we can’t laugh during A League of Their Own. Remember that the director is a comedy star with a comedy brother and a bunch of comedy friends she can put in the movie. We can also get away with the line “Avoid the Clap” because kids don’t know about nicknames for STDs. I guess that means that Jimmy Dugan had gonorrhea at one point in his life. Ew.

8 – The Title. Take the title from that documentary Penny made you watch. It’s a good title.

9 – The Ending. Spoiler – Dottie drops the ball, letting her little sister Kit have all the glory during the first ever World Series of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. Dottie leaves the game forever, but she goes back for the opening of AAGPL induction to the Baseball Hall of Fame and plays ball to a song that Madonna wrote just for the movie’s ending credits. Oh yeah, Madonna is in this movie. And after Megan Cavanuagh wins over the role as Marla Hooch, we need to find another role for Rosie O’Donnell because she’s funny and really good at baseball. Let’s turn one character into two characters, giving Madonna a best friend.

10 – The Heart. “When are you going to realize how special it was? How much it all meant?” It’s not about winning or losing, it is about being part of something bigger than yourself. The film A League of Their Own is released 50 years after the premiere of the real league. It’s beautiful. Go watch it. Or go write your own baseball movie. Actually, go outside and play catch with a family member.

*L.A. Zvirbulis did not write A League of Their Own. Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel did per the request of the director Penny Marshall, based on a story by Kim Wilson and Kelly Candaele.

**You can watch original documentary for free on Amazon Prime. It is called A League of Their Own – The Documentary. From 1990. Check it out.

How to Write Aliens

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How to Write Aliens

by L.A. Zvirbulis

1 – The Inspiration. Watch a movie called Alien while you’re stoned. Decide to write a sequel on your own because you’ve just stopped smoking marijuana and are super focused now.

2 – The Genre. Horror but with more Action. Action-Horror. Do what the first movie did but with more characters and more aliens. Same but more, as no one in Hollywood advises. Write it at the same time you write another Action-Horror movie called “The Terminator”. People love female-led action movies in the mid-1980s. No one will notice that you kind of write the same movie over and over again. And no one will ever notice that all of the movies you write and direct start with either the letters A or T and feature the color blue.

3 – The Complications. What’s the worst that could happen? You are forced by an evil corporation to join a bunch of military grunts on a mission to find this alien you saw once so they don’t sue you for blowing up their expensive ship Nostromo from the last movie. Also you lost your biological daughter in the deleted scenes.

4 – The Fun Stuff. You know how the first movie was about men scared of having children? Let’s make Ripley adopt this awesomely tough eight year old girl named Newt, who happens to be the only survivor on the territory set up by the evil corporation. This will cause people to take their own young daughters to the movies and then inspire them to write about movies later in life. Thank you, Mom.

5 – The Device. The alien has to be scary but also be the same alien from the first film. So let’s just put more aliens in the sequel. But this time, we also get to meet the Mother alien – the one that lays all the eggs of the face huggers. A mother versus a mother? Awesome. Let’s also add flame throwers and a cool alien-tracking watch.

6 – The Ripley. Ripley is even more badass than she was in the first movie. This time, she’s a mother. This time, she knows what her villain is – it’s not the actual aliens, it’s the profit-driven evil corporation represented by that guy from 90s sitcoms. This time, Ripley’s not the only one that survives.

7 – The Jokes. Make Bill Paxton say funny things like “Game over, Man,” “We’re on the express elevator to Hell, going down,” and “Yeah, but it’s a dry heat.” He’s a grunt. Grunts make jokes. Put Bill Paxton in a lot of your movies.

8 – The Title. This is the sequel to Alien, with Sigourney Weaver reprising her original role as Ripley. So what is more than one Alien? It’s plural. Aliens. When you pitch this, use a dollar $ign as the $ in Alien$. This will also give $igourney Weaver’$ agent bargaining control to get her a big paycheck, and po$$iblly in$pire pop $star$ decade$ later.

9 – The Ending. Blow the alien out of the damned airlock, just like the first movie. Same but more, am I right? “Save the Cat” by having it not join the mission in the first place. Smart cat. Let’s make the synthetic more human in this one, and he/it helps save the kid but only after getting ripped ruthlessly in half, also paying tribute to the talking head synthetic in the original. This is also where you put the line “Get away from her, you bitch!” You can put this scene without that line in your movie Avatar.

10 – The Heart. Alien is a movie about men being scared of getting pregnant. Aliens is a movie about a mother protecting a child. Both the hero and the villain are mothers protecting what is most valuable to them. Argue what you will about James Cameron, but that strange “human” knows how to make a beautiful feminist sequel to a movie he didn’t originally write.

*L.A. Zvirbulis did not write Aliens. James Cameron did from a story by a story by James Cameron, David Giler, and Walter Hill based on characters created by Dan O’Bannon and Ronald Shusett.