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A GUY THING by Tom McCurrie
Though sold as a romantic comedy, A GUY THING is really an offbeat character study in the vein of SOMETHING WILD. That's peachy with me -- Demme's film is one of my personal faves, especially for its edge. Now I don't mean the type that hacks off limbs. I mean the kind that pushes the envelope, that creates a sense of danger. This type of edge makes your script more memorable. Alas, A GUY THING has as much edge as a bowling ball.
(Warning: Spoilers Ahead!)
Written by Greg Glienna, Pete Schwaba, Matt Tarses and Bill Wrubel, A GUY THING is about a yuppie groom-to-be (Jason Lee) who mistakenly sleeps with his fiancee's cousin (Julia Stiles). Like Melanie Griffith in SOMETHING WILD, wacky Stiles soon unlocks Lee's inner rebel, making him a much groovier, and happier, fellow.
But there the similarities end. One of the most shocking lapses in A GUY THING is that it has no conflict after the first act. I mean, once Stiles tells Lee she's not going to snitch on him, there's no threat, and thus no obstacle for Lee's protagonist to overcome. Stiles doesn't blackmail him into doing something that will put his life, career or impending nuptials in danger, so the pic quickly loses its edge. What we get for the rest of the movie is a series of feeble gags and lame complications to keep this corpse of a story going.
SOMETHING WILD doesn't make this mistake. If anything, it gets even edgier as it goes along. That's because SW introduces Ray Liotta's villain at the mid-point. This terrifying force of nature snatches wild-child Melanie Griffith away from buttoned-down Jeff Daniels, forcing Daniels to rescue her. Thus Liotta not only provides a strong obstacle for Daniels to overcome, his presence provides the impetus for the protagonist's quest, a quest which keeps us glued till the end of the flick.
(A GUY THING has a psycho villain, too, in the form of Stiles' ex-boyfriend. But this dude is so ridiculously over-the-top he's more laughable than threatening.)
GUY's characters also lack edge. Jason Lee is so blandly opaque it's hard to tell what he wants, so his "rebellion" comes out of nowhere. And when it does, it's incredibly limp. What's his brave strike against conformity? He drives his car over the speed limit! Viva la Revolution!
Of course, Stiles is hardly a rebel herself. What, I'm supposed to think she's a wild-child just because she keeps losing her McJobs? That's more a sign of klutziness than anything else.
In SOMETHING WILD on the other hand, Melanie Griffith is a true rebel -- a woman who wears a sense of danger like a second skin. The picture isn't afraid to dramatize it, either, having her literally kidnap Jeff Daniels and handcuff him to the bed for some hot and heavy sex. (That's more than we get from the prudish A GUY THING. Though Lee and Stiles wake up on the same Serta, it's made clear they didn't do the nasty. Yeah, right!)
The "liberated yuppie" arc is much more apparent in Demme's film as well, with Daniels going from straitlaced guy to someone willing to risk everything (including his life) to save Griffith from mean ol' Ray Liotta.
There's a lot of competition out there to be noticed. So don't be afraid to give your story some edge! After all, the studios may homogenize scripts, but that doesn't mean they want to buy 'em that way.
Responses, comments and general two-cents worth can be E-mailed to gillis662000@yahoo.com.
A graduate of USC's School of Cinema-Television, Tom McCurrie has worked as a development executive and a story analyst. He is currently a screenwriter living in Los Angeles.
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