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Notes from a script doctor
Writer
David Freedman
shares his
remedies for
reviving stalled
storylines
BY KATE CALDER
UK
-based comedy writer, show runner
and voice director David
Freedman makes a living fi xing
what others have led astray.
“They took a left, instead of a
right. Or they simply lost their
way and accidentally wrote 184 pages on a 90-minute
fi lm—on that one I wasn’t a doctor, I was a surgeon removing
giant lumps,” he recalls. Freedman has also worked on
projects where he basically kept only one redeeming element
from the script—its title. “It’s still considered a rewrite
because the topic and subject matter remain, but at least I
know I can’t go down that road again. Everywhere else is
open to me.” he says.
We interviewed Freedman as he was embarking on an
intense page-one rewrite on a comedy/horror and got him
to dish on his experiences in doctoring kids TV projects.
What leads producers to his door is the stage between initial
pitch and fi nal production where a script undergoes three
drafts and a fi nal polish—a process that often makes a script
get worse before it gets better. “You follow it and sometimes
it takes you down the wrong road; it happens to everybody.”
Writing to potential
Groove High from Paris-based Planet Nemo (airing this fall
on Disney Channel) is a sitcom based on two young rock
stars who recall their time back in high school—Groove
High—via animated fl ashback sequences. Penned by a
top-notch team of live-action sitcom writers, the animated
bits weren’t living up to their squash-and-stretch potential.
“I thought, ‘Why are we going to animation if we’re
not benefi tting from what animation can give you?’” says
Freedman. So he went to work adding exaggerated ridiculousness
to the toon segments. Retooled, the sequences
show characters pausing in mid-air to quickly create a
Freedman exploited animation’s
full squash-and-stretch potential to
amplify the comedy in Groove High’s
fl ashback sequences
July/August 2012
tv
squiggly outline of the Mona Lisa while jumping rope, or a
marching band appears out of nowhere to add some overthe-top
profi le to a popular student, for example.
Make funny funnier
For animated comedy series Lucky Fred from Barcelona’s Imira
Entertainment, Freedman was hired as a voice director.
But his practice of leading the cast through improv sessions
ended up having an impact on the scripting. The cast was
able to further fl esh out the characters and make them more
distinct from one another, which ultimately helped pump up
the comedy in the fi nal product.
For example, after putting Friday the shape-shifting robot
through the improv process, his wise-guy attitude morphed
into bravado underpinned by a neurotic energy, which gave
him better chemistry with his boss, 13-year-old Fred. “With
a cool robot who’s really neurotic and a neurotic kid who’s
trying to be cool, the funny stuff just got funnier,” says Freedman.
During production Freedman worked closely with lead
writer Evan Gore and often sent back alternate recordings of
the script that included a lot of improvised jokes. “Eventually
we’d fi nd notes in the script that said, ‘We know you guys will
improv something here, so go for it,’” he says.
Make the most of your characters
In Groove High, an anthropomorphic lizard named Scoot
was cut from most of the original scripts, but Freedman
brought him back into action. “Often the solution to a
problem was to let Scoot back in,” says Freedman. “I
stuck a Post-it note above my desk that said, ‘Where is
Scoot?’” Introducing Scoot at the beginning of an episode
added a reliable go-to comedic element. “For the purposes
of animation, and for making this script a little less sitcomish
and more cartoony, he was a nice device to have
around,” notes Freedman.
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