Why The Seltzerberg Movies Fail

Spy Hard, Scary Movie (partially), Date Movie, Epic Movie, Disaster Movie, Meet The Spartans, Vampires Suck, and the upcoming The Starving Games and The Biggest Movie Ever Made 3D.  None of them are good.  The best among them is generally considered to be Scary Movie, which was composed of three screenplays mashed together.  Aaron Seltzer and Jason Friedberg have yet to create a movie that rates higher than "bearable if you're doing something else while it's on".  Why is that?  Well, obviously, because they suck, but let's look a little harder at why they suck.

The movies are allegedly parodies.  Let's start there.  The first problem is that most of the time it's pretty obvious Seltzer and Friedberg have not actually seen the movies they are attempting to parody and instead think that just having seen the trailers they are qualified to mock them.  As a result, their parody is shallow and witless and usually involves jokes of which everyone else has already thought, if there are any jokes at all and they are not just recreating a scene from the trailer with their own actors.  Occasionally, they just steal jokes from other comedies and think that counts as doing a parody of said comedy.  But I digress.  To do a parody, you have to actually be familiar with the subject at hand.  My policy on parodies is that they should be funny to anyone, but get funnier the more familiar you are with what's being parodied, something that simply cannot be true when the writers have not actually seen the movie or, quite often, not even looked up its summary on Wikipeda or IMDB.

Now, a quick side-rant before I continue.  Most subcultures have a sense of humor about themselves.  That is, the D&D players, the metalheads, the goths, the science fiction nerds--they are all aware that what they're doing is at least a little bit ridiculous.  They take it seriously, just not 100%, and the people who do take it completely seriously are the ones that no one likes.  Despite the stereotypes of these groups being composed of the rabidly antisocial and humorless, most of them are perfectly nice people who happen to share an affinity for a certain game or genre or style and the culture surrounding it.  Back to the subject at hand:

As Mel Brooks said, "You have to love the things you parody."  When a parody is made with love, it will itself be beloved.  Many great parodies, such as Galaxy Quest, Metalocalypse, Batman: The Brave and the Bold, and many episodes of Community are beloved by members of the culture they mock because of their affectionate touch.  In fact, in many cases, they even work as part of the genre itself (Dethklok's albums have sold quite well; Batman: The Brave and the Bold has some genuinely touching moments; Galaxy Quest won a Hugo Award.)

On the other hand, more direct or Juvenalian parodies such as Shrek (yes, it's a kids' movie, but hear me out) are made with a great amount of bile and hatred for their subject of parody (in Shrek's case, for squeaky-clean Disney values), but these can still work, if not quite as well.

The Seltzerberg movies, however, do not do any of that.  They are not motivated by feelings towards a particular film or genre, be it love or hate.  They are motivated by a desire to make money.  You'll recall in my Hot Chelle Rae rant I said "they don't want to make music, they just want to be musicians"; here, Seltzer and Friedberg do not want to make comedy, they just want to be comedians.   The result is a creatively sterile and utterly ineffectual non-parody of nothing in particular.

Of course, some parodies work even despite this.  Airplane! derives surprisingly few jokes from its genre of choice, aside from the overall story.  Instead, Airplane! makes use of a premise the writers found to be naturally ridiculous and instead of a parody, most of the jokes can be though of as using the premise as a vehicle for the Zucker-Abrahms-Zucker style of comedy, and it worked.  However, Seltzerberg fails at this because they do not write jokes.  They write references.  Airplane! uses plenty of references, but it always makes sure the reference doubles as a non-reference joke, even if it simply means ending the scene by having someone run into a control tower.  Seltzerberg movies reference pop culture trends and quote famous movies without thought of context or humor, thinking that just by pointing at something else they are being intelligent.

Now, why the Seltzerberg movies continue to exist is the subject for a rant for another time, but I always find (and hope that others who read this agree) that one of the best ways to learn how to do something better is by watching someone else fail and learning from their mistakes.  If nothing else, Seltzer and Friedberg have succeeded in providing a number of excellent non-examples of how to do a parody.

Sex and Profanity in Comedy

I don't have a problem with it, strictly speaking.  Jokes on the subject have the possibility to be hilarious.  There are comedians who use it very cleverly and effectively.

I do, however, had a problem with the fact that comedians have for some reason taken this fact and drawn the conclusion that "sex/profanity = funny, no exceptions".  Now, technically I have this problem with just about everything, as anyone in the voting section of Memebase can tell you that just because a joke contains some potentially funny element it is automatically funny.  Sex and profanity just happen to be the most prevalent.

Presented for your consideration, Pauly Shore:

The man is not funny.  Just simply... not funny.  There is no funny there.  If funny were to be measured by scientific instruments a recording of his shows would be a flat line at zero.  However, because he throws in a brigade F-bombs he gets a few laughs.  Hollow, soul-crushing pity laughs.  This is cheap, lazy comedy at its worst.  Comedy is defined by cleverness and lateral thinking, and this man has neither.  If someone wrote a computer algorithm to make jokes in the 1980s, using a computer of the era, it would come up with precisely this kind of recycled, flat-soda commentary unfounded in reality, but perhaps with an "insert name here" where he says "Hillary Clinton" where you could instead say, oh, Geraldine Ferraro.  He does not deserve to have a career as a comedian; if I ran a comedy I would not allow him to perform if he paid me.  Profanity is his crutch, and the fact that it can be used as such is why I am speaking out against it now.

On the other hand, George Carlin:

He doesn't use dirty language or strong ideas because he can't get laughs otherwise, he does it because it's the right thing to do for his set.  Because of the way he uses it, with obvious practice and forethought, he maximizes the effect of what would already be an poignant and hilarious piece of rhetoric.

The same problem has to do with sex, which again can be an delightful fountain of amazing jokes but can just as easily become a millstone around the neck of a viewer or listener.  Remember, about 60% of any William Shakespeare play is two male protagonists talking about each other's penes (which is the correct plural of "penis", by the way).  Think I'm kidding?  Go re-read Romeo and Juliet.  Still, he's hailed as a master of the craft of writing because they were subtle, thought-out, and creative.

Another problem: oftentimes a movie will insert some cussing or a boob shot in order to avoid getting a G or PG movie and being labelled by the public as "for kids".  I would like to remind you that just because something is not good for kids does not make it good for adults.  Comedy does not work by the process of elimination.

So I realize my point hasn't exactly been clear.  What it comes down to is this: I am neither explicitly for nor against dirty jokes.  However, make sure that they are good jokes and not just dirty.  Here's an exercise: if you can prove to me you can be consistently funny without foul subject material, I will be okay with you being as filthy as you want to be.

The Mary Sue

Aah, the Mary Sue.  Bane of fanfiction readers everywhere, this horrible abomination against writing has managed to wriggle its way into every medium, dragging down its quality and ruining forever everything it touches.

Except, no.

The Mary Sue, despite all the hate against it, is a character archetype and, like any character archetype, can be used poorly or used well.  Very well, in fact.

First, it seems like we should describe exactly what makes a Mary Sue (which I will be using to refer to both genders; in other contexts you may see male Sues called Marty Stus or Gary Stus or some other variant).  This is not easy to do, since everyone has their own definition, and since it's hard to pin down exactly.

The original Mary Sue comes from A Trekkie's Tale and was actually a parody of other ridiculous self-inserts the author had seen in earlier fanfictions.  Some of the defining traits is that she is overly perfect, enough that he or she overshadows all the other characters.  The character does not grow or develop significantly.  The rules of the universe seem to be built or bent just for them.  We'll say that these are "the" Mary Sue traits, and the others are peripheral to it.

Her powers and abilities are vaguely defined so she can conjure new ones as the plot demands.  These powers and abilities may or may not fit in with the context of the world, may or may not be explained, and will always be more important than anyone else's.  If she dies, it's either because she was "too good for this sinful earth" or else she's coming back.

Her physical appearance is always perfect, but she'll rarely know it.  She might have some deformity (wings are popular) which she thinks make her ugly until someone tells her otherwise.

Expect them to be able to do whatever they want and no one will ever call them out if (I repeat: if) they make a mistake.  She'll probably have had a hard life, but it will never weigh her down.  She will have sex precisely as often as she wants to.  In most cases it's an insert of the author; the author's views are always exactly right in the universe in which the story takes place, and no good character will ever question them.

Sounds pretty boring, right?  No wonder every Mary Sue is a detriment to anything in which she appears, right?  Again, no.  While this describes many unpleasant characters (Ebony Raven Dark'ness Dementia Tara Way, Bella Swan, Wesley Crusher, Jenna Silverblade, SCI Spy), it also describes a surprising number of beloved pop culture and literature icons.  Don't believe me?
-Mary Poppins
-James Bond
-Gandalf (from The Lord of The Rings, The Hobbit)
-Sora (from Kingdom Hearts)
-Vash the Stampede (from Trigun)
-Mary Jensen (from There's Something About Mary)

We already know James Bond will never be defeated, and he'll always pull off some daring feat in the third act that results in perfect victory after sleeping with an attractive female lead.  So why do we watch movie after movie while ripping Sonichu to shreds?

Well, to be fair, Sonichu's kind of beyond saving.  But let's ignore that for now.

I currently have a multi-part model that explains this.  The first is the setting and storyline.  If you're going to have a perfect character, then the challenges they must face must be scaled up appropriately.  They must be challenged despite their seeming perfection.  Vash, the superbly skilled gunman, must win without killing anyone, while coping with the pain he's inflicted in the past.  Mary Poppins' perfection is actually the main point of her character, and she's used as a tool to develop the others.  If the audience is more concerned about how our hero will win this time, they'll be a lot less concerned about how unrealistic it is that they've made it this far.

In How Not to Write a Novel, the authors tell prospective writers that the more improbably something is, the more important it must be to the story.  If the protagonist wins the lottery, they must win it early on and the story must center on it (was there a caper involved?  How will they spend the money?)  Likewise, the more impossible a character, the more the challenge must be ramped up.

One of the cornerstones of the Mary Sue bashing is saying that it's just wish fulfillment for the author.  This overlooks the fact that this can be a good thing--as long as it can be wish fulfillment for the reader as well.  Ultimately, James Bond is built on this.

However, the third point is far more important, and it all comes down to that cardinal rule of writing: show, don't tell.  SCI Spy isn't all that different from James Bond, to the point where it's fair to call him a straight rip-off.  What SCI Spy does wrong, however, is that it focuses far too much on telling us why the titular character is so great, while a James Bond book or movie gives us the pleasure of watching him outsmart the bad guys and charm the ladies.  Instead of having someone tell us Sora is cheerful and lovable, then making him act like a sullen jerk the entire game, we see him being cheerful and lovable.

This becomes particularly important when it comes to dialogue.  Mary Sues are often built up as witty, charming, and uproariously funny.  As Dorothy Parker said, "I have yet to have an author inform me that a character is charming, and then, by that character’s deeds and conversation, convince me of that fact."  Again referring to James Bond, we know he's witty because we see him being witty, and we enjoy it.  In fact, the problem is not the Mary Sue; no character or story works well when telling overshadows showing.

However, none of this means that your fanfiction is good.  Signing out.