How Important is Originality?

Over the last few days I read two scripts (for different companies) that both suffered from the same problem. They were written in popular subgenres, and while they each offered a mildly original aspect within their premises, nearly everything else about these scripts was entirely standard fare.

The first was a road comedy, where a few friends take a dying friend on a cross-country quest for a specific adventure, as a "last hurrah." (Please understand that for confidentiality reasons, I can only speak about these scripts in broad terms.) It featured nearly every standard plot point for such a film. There was the scene in which the van breaks down due to a flat tire, leading to other mishaps. There was, of course, the requisite run-in with the law. A group of villains battled our gang at a few points throughout the film. Towards the end, the dying friend takes a turn for the worse, and the doctor tells the gang that he can't continue, but of course the character insists on finishing what they started. Any of this sound familiar? Think of such films as Detroit Rock City, Harold and Kumar go to White Castle, or if you've seen it, an excellent indie film called Ocean Tribe, as just a few examples.

The second script was a "switched body" film, in the tradition of Freaky Friday, Vice Versa, or Soul Man. Again, this film offered one tiny element that was very slightly unique, and again nearly every other element of the film was completely standard and predictable. In this case, it was a switch between a jock bully and a nerd who was his former best friend when they were kids. The nerd (who facilitated the switch for revenge) of course turns into an a$$h*le when he inhabits the jock's body. Similarly predictably, the jock-in-nerd's-body learns that the nerds aren't that bad, and he was wrong to judge them. We also have the predictable elements when the jock (as nerd) tries (and fails) to convince others of his identity by revealing secrets only he could know, and the nerd's best friend who figures out the truth because the jock-as-nerd doesn't know things that he should know, if he were really the nerd. Again, completely typical stuff for this genre, right?

But here's the thing. While I did rate both a PASS (meaning thumbs down) for obvious reasons, the truth is that either one of these scripts, with some tweaking probably could be turned into a commercially viable film. The road film, while generally unoriginal, did have the one original element of setting it in a world that has a large target market (much larger than the KISS fans who might have been interested in Detroit Rock City). Thus, with just a bit more tweaking, the film could be strong enough to get a large portion of those fans into the theaters, and even more importantly could get them to buy a copy on DVD, a true primary market nowadays. Similarly, though less so, the switched body film might be able to prove successful, because so many such films turn a profit, even without a lot of originality in them. 13 Going on 30 was really nothing more than Big from a girl's perspective. This bit of originality, and the strength of Jennifer Garner in the lead role, was enough to make this film a success.

In fact, I've often noted how, within certain genres, a little originality goes a long way. In particular, I think of children's films and sports films (and especially children's sports films). With films aimed at children, your target audience doesn't have the collective memory of all those films that have come before. So an old idea with a contemporary feel to it makes for a completely fresh-feeling movie. Why do you think Disney keeps remaking movies, like Freaky Friday or the Herbie movies? Because it knows it can! Similarly with sports films, there just simply isn't a lot of room for originality in the genre. There are probably about 5 main sports stories ever shown on film (and maybe I'll enumerate them at a later date), with a few notable exceptions. Was Major League much different from Slap Shot? Weren't both The Mighty Ducks and Little Giants just The Bad News Bears in different sports? And yet, most of those films have been commercial successes.

For an upcoming article I was writing in scr(i)pt magazine about writing for the Family market, I posed this exact question to David N. Weiss, who along with his writing partner J. David Stem, worked on Shrek 2 and Are We There Yet? as well as many other wildly popular family and children's films. His response (which I'm paraphrasing here) was that any writer should be striving to put out the best script he can possibly write, and therefore of course originality is important, even in films of these genres. He did, however, point out a key aspect of the business. The industry does need to put out a certain number of films every year, and yes, many of those films are aimed to reach specific niches and markets. So of course there will be some degree of repeated concepts that remain commercially successful.

So where does that leave us? Well, you may have noticed that despite the potential that the two scripts I read had to be successes, they still ended up as PASSes. I did mention in my comments that these two scripts might have the potential to be made into commercially viable films, but I also said they were probably not worth the effort. If you are a developing writer, trying to sell your first spec, you've simply got to make it the best darned script you can possibly come up with. Sure there's a slim chance that you might be able to sell a script that only has a few original elements, if those elements and the writing quality is really promising. But its an even bigger long shot than selling any spec script is. Save it until you have a more established career, and then maybe you can make a quick buck off one of these niche-fillers. But until then, find something new to say, and preferably a new way to say it a well.