[Dana Cowden]

Dana Cowden Funny Scene!

What I learned in this lesson is all the places where humor is exactly
the in congruence between lines or characters. I never noticed before
and now I see it in everything!

Originally, I want to get the screenplay for Steel Magnolias. My favorite scene is when M’Lynn is grieving her dead daughter at the cemetery and she goes on a long streak that’s heartbreaking. She ends up angry that her daughter has died and says she just wants to punch something really hard.

Clairee pushes Wheezer to M’Lynn and tells her to sock Wheezer. It’s hilarious because you were just in tears and now we get a funny line. Clairee continues to push Wheezer forward but Wheezer protests. It’s super funny.

However, I could not get that screenplay except in a photocopy form. So…

Little Miss Sunshine by Michael Arndt

FRANK
Yeah. French writer. Total loser.
Never had a real job. Unrequited
love affairs. Gay. Spent twenty
years writing a book almost no one
reads. But…he was also probably
the greatest writer since
Shakespeare. Anyway, he gets down
to the end of his life, he looks
back and he decides that all the
years he suffered — those were the
best years of his life. Because
they made him who he was. They
forced him to think and grow, and
to fell very deeply. And the years
he was happy? Total waste. Didn’t
learn anything.

Dwayne grins.

FRANK
So, if you sleep til you’re
eighteen…
(scoffs)
…Think of the suffering you’d
miss! High school’s your prime

( NOTE: A big build up of the life of real suffering. Then the punch line is the in-congruence of a lifetime of suffering and high school.)

suffering years. You don’t get
better suffering than that! Unless
you go into academia, but that’s a
different story.

They share a smile. Dwayne gazes out to sea. A beat.

DWAYNE
You know what…?
(Frank looks over)
Fuck beauty contests. It’s like
life is one fucking beauty contest
after another these days. School,
then college, then work. Fuck it.
Fuck the Naval Academy. Fuck the
MacArthur Foundation. If I wan to
fly, I’ll find a way to fly. You
do what you love and fuck the rest.

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