“The Serious Side of ‘Gilligan’s Island’”… and Starting With Theme
An informative post from Scott over at Screenwriting from Iowa: The Serious Side of “Gilligan’s Island. A key excerpt:
When he [Schwartz] got out of the service he wanted to get away from variety shows and move toward situational comedy and wrote for the radio programs Ozzie and Harriet and I Married Joan. But then he wanted his own show and created Gilligan’s Island which was rejected time after time. He said his book, Inside Gilligans’s Island, is about the struggle to get Gilligan’s Island on the air. But remember, like any good protagonist, Sherwood was used to dealing with adversity.
In the TV Party interview Schwartz was asked; What kept you going? Why didn’t you just give up?
“I thought I had a great idea. And it’s still a great idea. It’s people. Here’s a serious show. It’s serious in that Arabs and Jews have to learn to live together for they’re stuck together. North Koreans and South Koreans, they have to learn. If you don’t learn, you’ll all die. So there’s this philosophic basis — this is not an afterthought, this is in the show. When the show first came on the air I got with regularity bachelor’s degree, master’s degree thesis from people in the theatrical area explaining what’s the basis for Gilligan’s Island. Like I didn’t know. It was carefully thought out, these seven people. That took me like a year to figure out who should be on the island. And it was all with a view towards the respect that people have to learn for each other because nobody is the same as anybody else. When would a billionaire sit down and have lunch with Gilligan, except if he had to? The same is true of a movie star and a professor. There’s miles between them, but when they’re stuck in the same place they have to learn to live together. That’s what the show is about, people learning to live together.”
So in the case of Gilligan’s Island, I’m going to put Schwartz down for writing from theme. (As opposed to starting with an interesting cast of characters or a shipwreck. His beginning place was a show about democracy, and how seven people “learn to live together.”)
When Scott emailed me about his post, here was part of my response:
Re theme: That was a big point with Lagos Egri in “The Art of Dramatic Writing,” working from themes. I just don’t go at it that way. I think of characters and/or a plot scenario, then the themes (central one and others) emerge in the breaking and writing of the story.
Obviously Schwartz hit a grand slam with “Gilligan’s Island” starting with theme.
How about you? Do you start your creative process with theme or not? If so, why? If not, why not?
For the rest of Scott’s post re “Gilligan’s Island,” go here.
And for all you fans of “Lost,” here is something fun for you to watch: