In the script only couple come to mind. 1) The flip out at the bridal shower comes to mind. 2) Her Vegas on a budget trip could have been a big set piece, but I'm happy that was cut. So really what was shot had way more, hilarious moments to make it commercial. The humor in the original was more subtle. It almost got a little Farrelly Brother's raunchy comedy brush up.

Bridesmaids Set pieces Beginning 1.The initial coffee shop meet up moment Middle - Perfect physical comedy with rising action, a breather scene and the all is lost moment 2.The choosing the dress moment 3.The entire airplane scene 4.The eating the carrot outside the convenience store scene 5.The wedding shower moment when Kristin Wiig looses it. The End - This scene begins the journey towards the end; think it propels the next part of the obvious end. 6. The getting Rhodes attention driving back and forth moment Beginning of Integration

oops, sorry, delete the last three words... beginning of integration.

4 largest set pieces: 1) Party where all the bridesmaids meet. a) Intro to all the chars and running joke that others keep mistaking inappropriate men as Annie's boyfriend/husband. b) The incredible dueling toast-off between Helen and Annie 2) Bridal gown studio shopping sequence 3) Drunken Plane sequence 4) Faceoff at Bridal Shower sequence (Ends with Lillian kicking Annie out of the wedding.) I'd probably also want to add the sequence on the road when Annie is trying to win Nathan back and tries to get him to pull her over, but that's a more personal sequence so not sure if that qualifies as a "big" set piece. Here's kind of a cool link with some backstory stuff from Nancylicious. @Scott, I think you touched on this yesterday, but this was the key script to screen change for me: "Apatow and Feig requested the change in concept saying that main character Annie has to do something so wrong to justify Lillian’s increased doubt in her abilities and Helen’s increased bridesmaid responsibilities as the wedding date approaches." That Annie pushes Lillian so far that Lillian literally kicks her out of the wedding, well it gave the whole friendship story an emotional pivot point that I really really missed in this version of the script.

p.s. Looks like Nancylicious got a lot of her info from this Jeff Goldsmith interview with Annie Mumolo. For those who have the time to listen, a lot more interesting detail on their writing process there.

Good work on set pieces. When I'm out of the office tonight, I'll aggregate a full list from the script. Re set pieces specifically with re to comedy: They are gold because when you hit a great one, you can mine it for laughs for 5 minutes or more. The Farrelly brothers have made a living out of this in their movies: The Harry has to take a crap scene in "Dumb & Dumber"; the franks and beans scene in "There's Something About Mary". You come up with a conceit for the piece -- Annie is a nervous traveler, Helen gives her a pill and some booze, resulting in Annie going loopy in first class -- you script it, then on the set, you improvise the hell out of it, giving your director and editor lots of footage to play around with in post. You will notice each of the three set pieces I've noted here not only are funny, they also advance the plot. That is critical. A set piece may be hysterical, but if it only exists to be funny, and doesn't move the plot forward, you run a severe risk of slowing the narrative or losing a reader's connection to the plot. For people like Mumolo and Wiig, who have been trained on sketch-writing and improv, set pieces must feel completely natural. In fact, one way of assessing the structure of the "Bridesmaids" draft we read is that it suffers from thin transitions from set piece to set piece, bit to bit. The movie was much more cohesive. But again, the draft we read was intended to be something of a 'vomit draft,' so structure less important than finding the characters, their voices, the tone of the humor, the set pieces, the bits, etc.

DAF, that last point is an example of a good script development note. I call that big reversal of a Plotline point late in the story All Is Lost, when something really significant happens that sets the Protagonist way back from their goal. Annie's Want (conscious goal) is to be a great maid of honor to Lillian by giving her a great wedding. Being kicked out of the wedding by Helen puts her just about as far away from her goal as possible. You can see why Apatow and Feig came up with that note.

The movie version was interesting structurally in that it had a few things going on that were basically parallel to the main plot. - Annie's scenes with her British flatmates - her romance with the cop - scenes with her mother - her scenes working at the jewellery store These things certainly served as barometers of Annie's mood/progress at different points in the film. But they had virtually no plot link to the main wedding story. The cop in the movie helped Annie trace Lillian to her apartment but that is a pretty thin connection. I wonder what people make of this. I kind of accepted it because it's a character driven piece and every aspect of Annie's life is therefore arguably relevant. But I imagine some screenwriters might see it as kind of a cheat. It makes it too easy to create a perfect storm for a character, by just adding in extra plot points as needed -- now she's going to be fired, now her flatmates are going to kick her out. Plot points can simply be inserted when the writers need to intensify or change Annie's mood. Is this cheating?

It seems like the acts are split like this: 1) Annie can't get a date, finds out she is the maid of honor, and gives her first speech against her nemesis. 2) Annie has to plan the bridesmaid party, but slowly fails until she completely collapses and is kicked out of the entire wedding 3) Annie has to save the day and does, then learns to get along, finds the man of her dreams and attends the wedding. It has that Joseph Campbell style in that she faces her challenge, is kicked out, learns a little and grows up to rescue Lillian, then returns as a stronger person.

For set pieces, I'm not too sure about those but it seems like the scene with the carrots on the car was one, the drunken flight was another... in the script, the scenes where she has no money in Vegas is a pretty big set up... the freak out at the bridal shower in the film, the scene in the movie where they are driving back and forth in the car trying to get the cop's attention...

Rob, that is a great question. And I think your assessment of the movie -- that it is a "character driven piece" -- is accurate, even with a strong high concept at its core. It is so much about Annie's character, the wedding component, while certainly representing the Plotline, is only one of several aspects of her life, the others represented in various subplots: Annie and her roommates, Annie and Ted, Annie and Rhodes, Annie and her mother, Annie and her job. Are those cheats? That's a fair question. If you look at the story as being focused on the wedding and the bridesmaids, you could perhaps answer that yes, those subplots are. If, however, you look at the story as being primarily about Annie's metamorphosis-journey and the whole wedding / bridesmaids dynamic is one part of that journey, then you'd probably say no. I do know that one of the critiques I heard most often about the movie and one I felt at points was precisely the point about how the story seemed to wander somewhat, straying away from the wedding Plotline. If this script was developed at a studio without Wiig, Mumolo, Apatow, and Feig, strictly as a story, my guess is they would have cut the Annie-mother subplot and the Annie-roommates subplot. Neither has anything much to do with Annie's metamorphosis and less with the Plotline. The two subplots that do tie in are the dual Attractors (Ted vs. Rhodes) and her job. By the end, she has made choices that visually demonstrate embracing her Need and moving up from her shitty little life. But from a "character driven film" and purely entertainment perspective, the bits of business with the roommates and mother do work, and -- my guess -- with Apatow as a producer, he was able to push to keep that content in the movie. Note: Apatow movies tend to run long. Examples: The 40 Year Old Virgin (116 minutes) Knocked Up (129 minutes) Funny People (146 minutes) Most comedies nowadays clock in at around 100 minutes, many even less. I think this is because (in large part) Apatow likes characters, he likes to explore them, he isn't obsessed with staying on point all the time to the Plotline. Clearly it's worked for him. So circling back: Is it a cheat? Subplots that explore different dimensions of a Protagonist's persona and metamorphosis while servicing the Plotline are almost always never a cheat. Viewers may feel as if they are when that critical verb -- "service" -- feels diffuse in the context of the story.

Neil, that's a clean articulation of those three movements. I'll follow up on this point in a separate comment below.

Re "Bridesmaids" and three narrative movements: Whether you use Aristotle, Campbell, Hegel, Jung or the letters A-B-C your parents taught you when you were a toddler, it's pretty easy to see three broad stages of the script's plot: Act One: Annie's shitty life, receives the Herald's Call ("I want you to be my maid of honor"), and meets the Bridesmaids, most importantly her Nemesis Helen. Act Two: Annie tries in vain to do maid of honor thing, eventually relinquishes duties to Helen, blows up at the bridal shower, and is on the outs with Lillian. Act Three: The Bridesmaids reach out to Annie to find Lillian and save the wedding. That's the broad strokes of the Plotline. But as has been noted, much of what transpires in the script is only tangentially related to the events of the Plotline. Annie's interactions with Ted and Rhodes, and Annie's job situation are most directly related to what I call the Themeline, the emotional 'plot' of the story. And here you can track Annie's metamorphosis -- again even in the 'vomit draft' -- in four movements that we see in place in the movie as well: Disunity: (1) Annie wants to pull off being a maid of honor, but has zero experience, knowledge or understanding of what that means. (2) Annie wants to be in love with Ted, symbolic of the great looking / great guy illusion she is straddled with, yet Ted doesn't see her as a potential mate at all. (3) Annie is good at baking, horrible at her sales job at the jewelry store. She is living an illusion. Ted, jewels, her fantasies. None of those represent who she actually is and what she is actually about. As Jung would suggest, the universe plops this wedding gig at her feet to immerse her in the ultimate fantasy -- the perfect wedding -- to force her to realize there is no such thing as perfection, to confront, then embrace her own imperfections, and accept all those aspects of herself she tries so hard to hide. Remember the very first two paragraphs of scene description in the script: Annie is in nice lingerie, happily getting ready for the day. She puts a lot of effort into her appearance. Products everywhere, too many hair-flips, eye-cream, no hair out of place. She walks into the bedroom, where TED, a gorgeous man sleeps. She sneaks back into the bed, carefully positioning herself and moving the sheets to show her good parts. She is creating an illusion, even to the point of positioning herself to "show her good parts." That's where she starts, that degree of Disunity. Deconstruction: Again and again, the wedding planning and rituals rub her face in the fact that weddings aren't perfect and by extension marriages aren't either. Meanwhile there is the Annie-Rhodes subplot which bit by bit, breaks down her idealized notions of romance [we actually see those in a fantasy sequence in P. 42-44]. Rhodes is clearly no Christian Bale, but he likes her enough to get on her ass about her busted taillights. She doesn't know it in the first half of Act Two, but this is the 'stuff' of authentic love. Meanwhile everything going on in her life, especially the responsibilities of the wedding, are hacking away at her ability to do her job at the jewelry store. All of that is about Deconstruction. Reconstruction: Eventually Annie loses her job, loses the maid of honor gig, loses any possibility of being with Ted, even loses her relationship with Lillian when Annie blows up. But her blow up is the first time in the story where she has honestly and directly gotten in touch with her authentic self. Lillian says as much [P. 111]: "This is my wedding and you've made it all about you." Precisely because in the Protagonist's journey, that is what this story is all about: Not Lillian's journey so much as Annie's. And even with the negative tone of all that Annie experiences with everything being stripped away from her, this is actually the key to her Reconstruction because -- finally -- she is in touch with Who She Really Is. Unity: She gets the gig at the bakery, finally doing something she loves, even if it requires getting up at 4AM. She gets together with Rhodes as a lover, even if it means giving up her illusions of romance. This is a guy who knows about love as work, like sometimes you just have to get your damn taillights fixed. And she helps bring the wedding party and the wedding back together. All of that is in the script. And all of that, more or less, is in the movie. So in terms of the structure's broad strokes, it's all pretty much there in the 'vomit draft.'

"She is creating an illusion, even to the point of positioning herself to “show her good parts.” That’s where she starts, that degree of Disunity." I really like this point, and I think it indicates how Annie's character arc could have been strengthened. Her big problems are her lack of money or a suitable romantic partner. But both are just sort of haphazardly tossed into the soup, like, yup, our protagonist is such a mess! LOL, she's broke and single! And the resolution addresses these problems by conveniently handing her a nice boyfriend and job, but neither of these things has any meaningful connection to the main plot. (Which IS "cheating," in my opinion. If Annie's metamorphosis isn't contingent upon her experience as a maid of honor, then the premise exists only as a vehicle for sketch-style set pieces.) I think it would have worked better if there were a bigger emphasis on Annie's habit of pretending to be the person that others want her to be. She tries to hide all of her issues and insecurities from those around her, which only makes them worse. By delving into that fatal flaw and allowing it to drive the story and to surface in each of the various subplots, they could have tied everything together, and the whole story would have been more cohesive and satisfying.

Caitlin, I hear you. Why don't we pick this up in our discussion on character tomorrow? You raise valid points. But let me ask you this: Imagine Apatow or the writers had had a sudden flash of inspiration echoing your exact insight. And they rewrote the script delving into Annie's "fatal flaw," allowing it to "drive the story" and so forth. Even if that would have made a better movie, do you think it would have made any difference at the box office? I don't know the answer because obviously we can't with such a hypothetical. I ask only because I wonder if in making it a 'better' story, we might have somehow lost something of its whimsy and disjointed charm in the process. These are very much the type of art vs. commerce issues that arise daily in script project after script project generally with no clear answer in sight. So it's good for those hoping to work in The Biz to understand the various pressures that come to bear on any given movie in development and production. More tomorrow in our discussion on character.

Ha, no, I know it probably wouldn't make any difference! Even as I was writing that, I was thinking, nobody cares about this! The story didn't need to be anything other than a vehicle for jokes. (But I do think a more focused character arc would have made it an even better vehicle for jokes, and people might have walked out of the theater feeling slightly more emotionally fulfilled, and maybe more likely to buy the DVD and watch it over and over?)

Honestly, Caitlin, I wasn't asking the question like I knew the answer. Sometimes smart movies make money, sometimes they don't. Sometimes dumb movies make money, sometimes they don't. As Wm. Goldman says re Hollywood: "Nobody knows anything." So your opinion could very well be right. Or wrong. In terms of B.O. In terms of making it a 'better' movie, I guess we'd have to see the alternate cut!

I like this suggestion. Scott is right that it could risk making the film feel less knockabout and fun, but then again that is a little bit defeatist from a writing point of view. Surely the challenge should be to make a script that's knockabout and fun AND thematically satisfying!