There may be no person in Hollywood who knows more about rom-coms than Billy Mernit. At his wonderful blog Living the Romantic Comedy, Billy has been dispensing wisdom about this particular sub-genre since 2005. His book “Writing the Romantic Comedy” is universally lauded as the definitive text on the subject. Speaking of universal, that’s the studio at which Billy is a story analyst after stints at Sony and Paramount. Since Billy was involved in the script development of the project Bridesmaids and we just concluded a week analyzing the project, when some questions arose about differences between the draft we read and the movie itself, I figured why not reach out to Billy to see if he would answer some of our inquiries.

Billy agreed.

The questions below are what I collected from our discussions last week. The answers are from Billy. They offer an incredible insight, not only relevant for a writer trying to craft a story, but also the very real world in which a script exists in pre-production and production. Read this post. You will learn a ton.

The collective sense of readers was even though this is a very rough draft [there are spots for dialogue in which the writers say, "Something goes here" and on 120 a note to readers, plus an alternate ending of the script], there is definitely something there where the script feels like a movie. Did you have that same experience when you read your first draft of the script?

Something that needs to be explained regarding this entire discussion is a key context for the development of the movie. This was never a spec script that came in sight unseen to a studio that decided, “Let’s buy this.” Universal’s deal with Apatow gave him a home – a kind of creative carte blanche, so to speak, that enabled him to shepherd in projects for development as producer, and so the word I got, when the script first showed up, was that Judd was producing this, which meant “we’ll be doing this with him (i.e. if he gets serious about it).”

In other words, Mumolo and Wiig had a unique entree with what was then an untitled, very embryonic project. Judd had essentially told the team, Go ahead and write this, I’ll set it up. Because of this genesis (“Writers, a very powerful creative team is going to help you make this happen”), Mumolo and Wiig were able to literally and figuratively try whatever they wanted to to try (as novice screenwriters), with a studio safety net and a comedic-genius sounding board on tap. How unique is that?

As a story analyst doing project notes, my response to the first draft I read was, “This is funny, but it’s all over the place.” I was a fan of Wiig’s work as a character actress, her and Mumolo’s voice was already strong and definitively quirky, but the first draft was some 140 pages long and read at times more like a collection of sketch variations on a theme, than a cohesive, logically thought-through piece. I could “see the movie,” but there were definitely junctures where I thought, Wait a second – what IS this movie?!”

Was there something about that initial script or the script development process that surprised you?

Since lines of communication between readers and executives (and the talent beyond them) are often… um… less than direct, it actually took me a draft or two to read between the lines and catch onto what seemed to be the process, mainly: throw it all against the wall and see what sticks. Meaning, there was a sense from early on that Apatow was encouraging M&W to give full, free rein to their ideas and just let it rip. Add to this that Apatow’s development method also involves having comedy writer colleagues periodically come in and punch up material, and that he encourages improvisation on the set – so the tacit understanding, throughout, was that things would ultimately “come together,” in terms of cohesion and clarity, pretty far down the road. So the on-page development process is often a matter of exploring choices and then discarding or rethinking them… knowing that if the basics of character and plot beats are in place, the finer points may well be discovered and finessed in the actual making of the movie.

For this reason, a number of the questions posed by GITS readers seem to speak to an idealized notion of “development” that implies a more singularly directed effort. Here’s a case in point. Early drafts started in prologue/flashback, with scenes of Annie and Lillian as kids. There were any number of present-day scenes that attempted to establish their friendship – an essential setup for the entire story – and the first 15 pages of the script worked through many variations on this through a myriad of drafts. No draft that I ever saw, as the picture went to camera, had the exact dialogue and gags between Annie and Lillian at the restaurant (where they talk about Annie’s sex with Ted)… because much of it, particularly the food-in-the-teeth kidding around, was improvised in the shooting. So ironically, after three-plus years of rewriting, what came up for the actress-writers (Wiig and Rudoloph are seasoned SNL people in addition to being buddies) in probably under three hours of “live” work, was a giddy, funny bit that accomplished what no amount of notes-giving and screenwriting credos could have provided: a vivid, totally believable “these two have been best friends for years” buy-in.

Was there any concern in script development process about Lillian’s character becoming too unsympathetic, especially during the height of her bridezilla phase? Annie’s friendship with Lillian is the crux of the story, but when Lillian is so oblivious to the financial and emotional strain she’s placing on her best friend, is that friendship still worth rooting for?

From the studio’s end (I speak cautiously in terms of attributing anything to anyone, as I was only one, lower-echelon voice in what was a chorus that Apatow – famously averse to studio input – may have routinely ignored), our focus was far more on defining Annie’s character. Lillian actually came off as empathetic with some consistency. It wasn’t too hard to understand what she was going through, on her end, especially given the sometimes truly bizarre, absurd stuff that Annie was embroiled in, throughout, and the writers made it clear from the get that Annie was circumspect about her finances; you had a sense that not even Lillian knew quite how under water Annie was.

How and why did the Annie bakery backstory [she lost her bakery when ex-BF took money from the business] come to be added?

The bakery back story came in pretty early on; what shifted over time was how much emphasis and exposition this story received.

What was the rationale behind dropping the Vegas sequence?

The Vegas trip was in there for a long time, and didn’t get cut until the last draft I saw, in May of 2010. Maybe HANGOVER knocked the whole idea down a peg, but I always assumed it got dropped cause it a) helped the budget b) gave the movie a nice twist (i.e. they DON’T get your expected girls-night-out-in-vegas), c) gave Lillian a clear, no-argument reason for suggesting that Annie step down as Maid of Honor (i.e. You sabotaged the party!) and meanwhile d) the airplane set piece was getting bigger by the draft and served as a midpoint in its own right, and once the bridal shop sequence was in – Vegas actually seemed unnecessary.

When and how did the food poisoning idea come into play?

The food poisoning was an Apatow suggestion, which transformed (his guidance, the writing team’s execution) what had been a bridal shop scene of a far tamer sort (many drafts included a fractured Disney-esque fantasy for Wiig) into the iconic set piece it became in the finished picture. I remember this material showing up late in the process, and being immensely cheered (it somehow felt like the moment that the whole movie was jelling).

One of the strongest changes [in development] was the resolution of the Helen story. The bones of it are all here in the we-slapped-this-together-this-morning draft, but it’s clear that Annie’s final battle with her nemesis is much more deeply felt in the final movie.

Helen’s role and the resolution of it went through radical shifts from draft to draft. One of the last elements to come together in the script was the climax, which went a loooooong way round the barn to get there in some versions (for a long time, there was a whole subplot about reconstructing Annie and Lillian’s favorite childhood restaurant as a wedding reception venue). What’s on the screen, faithful to the last draft I saw, is a fairly succinct recapitulation of many different approaches; it was understood that all we really needed was Helen being hoisted on her own petard and Annie owning up to her part in it, en route to Annie’s climactic scene with Lillian (other jettisoned material, for example, included a long “Annie apologizes to everyone involved” sequence).

What were some of the central themes that kept coming up as important during the script development process?

The most important issue, from my point of view, which keeps getting sounded throughout my many sets of notes, was: Who is Annie supposed to be – a figure-of-fun pathetic loser, or a more grounded Everywoman we can really root for? This was actually the hardest nut to crack for the writers, I think, and it took all those drafts and all that time for them to develop a rounded, grounded protagonist who is nonetheless an LOP (Lots of Problems) girl, with one very specific flaw – her inability to take responsibility for her own mistakes. Once they really nailed that down, the role coalesced.

I see every other story element in this character-driven movie stemming from and feeding into that. For example, the one element I can point to in my own notes as being a specific contribution to the movie (though it may ultimately have been a case of Great Minds Think Alike) is that I kept lobbying fiercely for a change in the conception of Officer Rhodes. He started out as a caricature-like SNL character (he even had a Sean Connery-in-a-wheelchair crazy Irish dad stashed in his apartment at one point) and my argument was: No way! Rhodes has to be a good, decent, feet-on-the-ground regular guy kind of guy, or the whole arc of the story for Annie makes no sense. We can’t perceive Annie’s mate-to-be as more pathetic than she is; he’s got to be more of a prize, someone she’s worthy of by the end. Subsequent drafts revised the character, and the casting, I thought, really cinched it. (After the movie’s release, I ran into actor Chris O’Dowd on the elevator at Uni – he’s really tall – and I wanted to say, “Thank you so much for bringing to life so well what I imagined for this character,” but instead I blurted out something about how great he was in the movie, thus preserving a modicum of dignity; readers are so delusional.)

Similarly, speaking of casting, the emergence of Melissa McCarthy as the gift that kept on giving had a lot to do with solving what had always been a key problem in the project’s story development: triggering and articulating Annie’s big epiphany. For the longest time, Wiig and Mumolo couldn’t seem to get a handle on this; they kept throwing the moment to other characters, including some who were entirely extraneous to the plot. Once Megan became such a fun character, it was almost a “Duh!” that she be the one who literally slaps Annie into awareness (“I’m life! Am I bothering you? Life bothering you? C’mon, take a swing at me!”). McCarthy KILLS with this stuff.

In parting, I’d point out a general takeaway from this process – the idea of honoring every idea. We can’t all have an Apatow and a Universal and a cadre of great comedy writer-performers at our disposal as we’re developing a script, but we can pursue our stories with the same spirit of adventure. Story Departments can bitch and moan (e.g. for three years I kept complaining that the movie was too long, and asking for cuts), but the more you as a writer are willing to experiment – to really, radically pursue new notions and entire story/character trajectories, no matter how nuts they seem – the stronger your sense of where you want to and need to go with a given screenplay will become. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Some most interesting insights. Which ones grab your attention most? I’ll see you in comments to continue the discussion about Bridesmaids. And please offer your thanks to Billy Mernit for taking the time to answer our questions. Finally if you haven’t bookmarked Living the Romantic Comedy, here’s your chance.