it’s a hard life, Niles Crane

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Niles – Linus – they practically even have the same name! Could they by any chance be related?

On Sunday I was handed a script to read – more properly, a transcript -  with the promise that it would teach me much and entertain me at the same time. The Gold Standard. Well, I’m the person who downloaded the script of Dog Day Afternoon last year, and then wrote a 5-million-word blog post based on a couple of Goons transcripts, and those both certainly instructed and entertained, but it had somehow never occurred to me to read Frasier.

So I read a page or so if it right there. In black and white. And something struck me with immediate force (aside from the fact that my dry white was coming out my nose). It felt familiar (aside from having seen the episode, which of course I have). I had read this kind of dialogue before. Many times before. I understood its ebbings and flowings and veerings. For it was like the Peanuts.

Some coincidence, surely? Here, have a look:

Here’s Looking At You

Series 1, episode 5
Written by Brad Hall
Directed by Andy Ackerman

Scene One – Radio Station.
Frasier is well into his show as he takes another caller.

Frasier: Hello Doug, this is Dr. Frasier Crane.  I’m listening.
   Doug: [v.o:] Look, it’s about my mother.  She’s getting on now and
         she doesn’t have much of a life.  And she doesn’t want to do
         anything or go anywhere and she literally hangs around the
         house all day.  I mean, it’s very frustrating…
Frasier: I’m sorry Doug, can we just go back a second?  You said your
         mother literally hangs around the house.  Well, I suppose
         it’s a pet peeve of mine but I suppose what you mean is that
         she figuratively “hangs around” the house.  To literally hang
         around the house you’d have to be a bat or spider monkey.
         Now, back to your problem?
   Doug: Do you mind if we stop while I tell you my pet peeve?
Frasier: Not at all.
   Doug: [angry] I hate it when intellectual pinheads with
         superiority complexes nit-pick your grammar when they come
         to you for help.  That’s what I got a problem with! [hangs
         up]
Frasier: [happily:] I think what he means is, that is a thing with
         which he has a problem.  Now it’s time for a station break
         and we’ll be right back after a word from our friends at
         [reads:] “Pizza, Pizza, Pizza.”

He puts on the commercial.  Roz enters.

    Roz: Hey, do you want to know my pet peeve?  It’s when you’re
         in a department store and the clerk is right in the middle
         of helping you and the phone rings.  So he starts taking
         care of them.  And you’re left standing there going,
         “Excuse me, but all I did was come all the way down here
         in person, whilst some joker is sitting at home in his
         underwear getting first rate service!”  Don’t you hate that?
Frasier: Actually, I do most of my shopping by phone.  You know Roz,
         this conversation with Doug has got me thinking about my
         father.  He doesn’t do much of anything either.  He just sits
         around most of the time watching TV and doing the occasional
         crossword puzzle.  What does your mother do?
    Roz: She’s the attorney general of Wisconsin.
Frasier: [not believing:] No, really!
    Roz: Really!
Frasier: I guess that helps fill her day.
    Roz: Yeah, quote mom, “Crime never stops – even in the dairy state!”
Frasier: [laughs] I don’t think public office is for Dad, but maybe I
         could find him a hobby or something.  Any suggestions?
    Roz: Well, in her spare time my mom likes to water ski a little.
         She hikes, oil paints… oh, she likes archaeology.  She’s on
         a dig in Honduras right now.
Frasier: [making up for it:] Well, maybe I could get him a wood
         burning set.

There! Can you see it? It moves exactly like the old comic strips. That bit is exactly like where Lucy would say, “I’ve never been so insulted, Charlie Brown!” and I’d go ask my mother what “insulted” meant. All those pithy put-downs, all that me-me-me, and all the peer-based complicity behind it. And, as in the old Peanuts strips, there are no grownups.

My companion and I then had a very satisfying conversation about Niles Crane (a man so real that he once cropped up in my dreams – as a real person, not a character); the movement of the characterisations and scenarios throughout the series; and the awful way the whole thing pretty much jumped the shark when Daphne reciprocated Niles’ wonderful mooning calf-love. And the Peanuts.

Suddenly he cried: “The little red-headed girl! Yes! Yes! Charlie Brown never got it together with the little red-headed girl, it couldn’t have worked, would have been death.”

“Yeah,” I said, “and Charles Schultz would have had to go and be an insurance salesman.”

“He’d have been very rich,” my companion intoned darkly.

“But he’d have jumped the shark.”

Here is what comes out of that: Lilith and Maris are the teachers (“wngah, wngah, wngah, wngah, wngah, wngah,wngah”), Roz is Lucy, Daphne is the little red-headed girl, and Dad and Eddie are, together, Snoopy.

Anyway, leaving that aside, this script is a thing of elegance and truth. Much of its wisdom of course you know anyway, but it is always good to see it done well, and a lesson reiterated is a lesson well taught. Here is what I took away from it.

1. You don’t have to follow any statement with a logical response. People jump all over, they answer with non sequiturs, and the better they know each other the more fun you can have with it.

2. They’re all talking about themselves, whatever it is that they’re saying.

3. The mise-en-scène is established very quickly. There is no exposition: anything that needs explaining is left for later on, scene 2 or 3.

4. Don’t be afraid of wasting gags – just toss them out all over the place. Profligacy is economy.

5. Don’t be afraid of the surface. It’s like pennies. Look after it and the depths might just look after themselves.

6. Just as a point: note how many of the great things about Frasier are sight gags – based on performance, as in Niles’ facial expressions etc. If you were writing for radio, you’d want to include sound gags. And on the page, you just want things that move as fast as the reader’s eye, otherwise they’ll have to slow down and it won’t be funny any more. Unless you go for the slow burn, as below:

7. The running gag. Repeat the motif, wring it out, and never forget about bathos. Set it up and knock it down. Frasier, with its characterisations based on pretension, is great at bathos.

8. You can cover a hell of a lot of ground in very few words.

9. Frasier and Charlie Brown. Why didn’t I see it before???

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