SYNOPSIS
This half-hour dramatic comedy show grows directly from Dylan Brody’s recent novel LAUGHS LAST, about the nature of memory and the way in which past experiences shape our present thinking. Damon Blazer’s career as a comic exists only because of the relationship he had with his grandfather, Poppa. His sense of himself grows out of his childhood relationship with his parents and his bullying older brother, Leonard. It is through the lens of the present that he looks back on these relationships.
Through Mr. Brody’s signature style of comedic, nested flashbacks, stories of Damon Blazer’s history emerge as poignant, nostalgic vignettes, each presented as a single-set, single-scene dramatic incident, broken up only by the editorial structure of the show itself.
Wrap-around monologues (performed by Dylan Brody as the present-day Damon Blazer) take place in the PRESENT STAGE THEATER, a space that feels a bit like a comedy room and a bit like a traditional, proscenium stage. Brody will perform these monologues in front of a live audience and these segments will be shot in traditional, four-camera style with high-end television production value. These segments have the feel of live-performance captured for broadcast.
Flashback sequences appear on a large monitor or projection screen to be seen by the live audience. These segments, shot in single-camera film style, or at least have that feel. Once each scene is established, we move fully into these sequences so that the viewing audience is able to become fully engaged in the close-up intimacy of a more cinematic (or rather televisic) experience. By showing these pieces sequentially to the PRESENT STAGE audience as part of a contiguous experience with the monologues, we allow ourselves to have the audible response of a live crowd that is properly engrossed in the realized multi-media performance,
In order to help make clear on the page the shifts between video-style sequences and film-style sequence, I shift back and forth between sit-com formatting (CAPS for action, double spaced-dialogue) and traditional film/one-hour formatting (upper/lower case action, single-spaced dialogue).
As in this pilot script, each episode will nest one single-set flashback within another. This will give a sense of extensive production and scenic movement while actually keeping locations and thus production costs to a minimum.
When flashbacks are recent enough, Dylan may play his younger self. Other times, younger actors will fill the role as needed.