Script Structure: Lessons from Wedding Crashers

Wedding Crashers is a great movie to study if you’re having difficulties plotting your comedy script. A lot of beginning writers can come up with great comedy gags, but aren’t as adept building up a story around the humor. Those are two completely different skills, and it’s definitely not as easy as it looks.

Think for a moment: what if you had conceived of this funny concept of two slacker dudes crashing weddings in order to pick up women? Right away, some funny gags would have immediately come to your mind. But what happens in between them?

It’s a worthwhile exercise to see what kind of story you would have developed around this premise. Would your plot be complicated enough to warrant 100 screenplay pages? Try it and see.

The other difficulty about writing comedies is ensuring that the gags make sense within the context of the story. You don’t want the audience members to think to themselves, “gee, this is funny, but why is it happening? Even at its raunchiest, Wedding Crashers never dropped the plot for the sake of a gag.

Why were John and Jeremy in a montage featuring the song “Shout?” Because they were wedding crashers and it was wedding season.
Why was Jeremy getting decimated by Sack in a game of touch football? Because playing touch is a Cleary family tradition.
Why was Mrs Cleary coming on to John? Because she and the Secretary were only faithful for two years of their marriage.
Why was Jeremy accosted in the middle of the night by both Gloria and Todd? Gloria’s crazy, and Todd thinks he and Jeremy “shared a moment” at dinner.
Why did Jeremy get shot in the butt on the quail hunt? Because Sack was feeling threatened by John and wanted to assert his masculinity.
Why did John visit Chaz Reinholt? Because he was completely lost and thought he could find wisdom from the man who crafted the rules of wedding crashing.

If you notice, a lot of the examples of comedy gags I just listed starred Jeremy, Vince Vaughn’s character. One way to maintain a balance of sweet and salty in your R-rated comedy (as discussed in screenwriting tip #7), is to have all the comedic stuff happen to one character, and all the sentimental/romantic stuff happen to another character. Bonus: this technique easily lends itself to expressing variations of your theme.

Alternatively, you can have both characters experience the raunchy and the romantic, but at different times. Just when everything’s coming together for John, things are getting even worse for Jeremy–and vice versa.

Finally, although Act One of Wedding Crashers ran a little long, it set up a number of obstacles, plot threads and comedy gags. We know things are going to get pretty interesting on the Cleary island estate since Claire not only has a photogenic boyfriend, but also a powerful dad who doesn’t seem keen on Jeremy, a mother who seems to be hitting on John, and a sister who’s completely crazy.

Did I mention that John and Jeremy are completely faking their identities? This setup created a sense of anticipation for the events of Act Two, while introducing us to the major characters…something you should strive for.

So without further ado, here are the plot points from Wedding Crashers:

Plot Points from Wedding Crashers

Meet John and Jeremy. They’re divorce lawyers who believe that the real enemy in the relationship of a hostile couple is the institution of marriage. Their peculiar breed of charm manages to diffuse the tension between the soon-to-be divorced couple.
Jeremy explains to his assistant why he sleeps at John’s house each year, on John’s birthday. He’s fulfilling a vow he made after John lost his parents in an accident.
Jeremy announces to John it’s wedding season–and they’re prepared to crash them all. At the first one, a Jewish ceremony, they assume fake Yiddish identities. Both select their female prey at the traditional ceremony. John even uses visine to pretend he’s crying out of sentimentality. At the reception, they sing Hava Nagila and toast to the happy couple. Jeremy excels at winning the crowd with his dance moves and balloon animal skills.
A montage of a slew of weddings John and Jeremy crash–Hindu, Irish, Italian, and Chinese. At each one, they deliver the same smooth lines: “we lost a lot of good men out there.”
Another montage, this one set to the soundtrack of “Shout!” which culminates with John and Jeremy scoring with their intended targets. However, John appears to be tiring of this superficial lifestyle.
John shares his regrets with Jeremy in front of the Lincoln Memorial.
Jeremy tells John he’s got the Kentucky Derby of weddings to crash: the daughter of Cleary, the Secretary of the Treasury, is getting married. John’s reluctant to crash such a high-profile wedding, and the two friends debate the rules of wedding crashing passed on to Jeremy by Chaz Reinholt.
At the wedding, John spies Claire, one of Cleary’s other daughters. He’s instantly smitten. John and Jeremy manage to crash the ceremony, pretending to be Aunt Liz’s sons, and make bets on what Biblical passage Gloria, another Cleary daughter, will recite at the altar. Claire giggles through the vow portion of the ceremony because her sister has incorporated sailing terms like “first mate, captain, anchor, and port” into the vows.
At the reception, John flirts with Claire at the gift table.
Jeremy’s got his eye on Gloria, and plans to snare her by playing balloon animal man. John plans to woo Claire by dancing with the flower girl. In the middle of the dance, Claire’s mom, Catherine, appropriates John and openly admits that she and Cleary haven’t been faithful to each other. Then Jeremy and Gloria really heat up the dance floor.
John approaches Cleary, and compliments the statesman’s Micronesian policy paper. They bond over cigars, but Claire interrupts the tete-a-tete. She and John discuss her toast. She wants to be funny, but John says she should talk about true love, which he defines as, “your soul’s recognition of a counterpoint in another.”
Claire decides to stick with funny–and her toast is dreadful. In the middle, she takes John’s advice and borrows his line about souls and counterpoints. It’s a great toast.
After Gloria and Jeremy get hot and heavy on the beach, Gloria confesses that this was her first time and she’s in love with him. Yowza!
Claire thanks John for his help with her toast–and then is greeted enthusiastically by her boyfriend, Sack. Jeremy accosts John–he has an emergency–a Stage Five Clinger, and they have to get out of there. But John needs more time with Claire. Gloria manipulates her dad into extending two invitations to John and Jeremy to a post-wedding bash at the family’s island estate.
They arrive at the estate via boat. John and Jeremy change into super-preppy J Crew clothing and play what’s supposed to be a friendly game of touch football. John enjoys himself with Claire, but Sack is intense and keeps on mowing down Jeremy. Jeremy thinks Sack is on steroids, but John thinks Jeremy’s exaggerating his pain.
Sack takes Jeremy out for the second time. Cleary says Sack’s strength is due to “five generations of Lodge breeding.” It’s clear he approves of Claire’s choice as his future son-in-law.
Gloria’s supposed to mend Jeremy’s wounds, but when he tries to distance himself from her, she makes his injuries even worse. As a last resort, Jeremy pretends to be so emotionally invested in their relationship, he doesn’t want it to be all physical. In the stairwell, Cleary subtly threatens Jeremy.
Sack relates a story about sea otters, complete with sound effects. John forgoes being honorable and settles for slipping eye drops into Sack’s water at dinner. Over dinner, we learn that when Claire and Sack get married, they’ll be uniting two great American families. While Gloria engages in a highly inappropriate under the dinner table activity with Jeremy, John pretends that he and Jeremy are venture capitalists who help homeless people make thread and clothes out of wool. The eye drops kick in, and Sack leaves the table. Granny Cleary starts slinging insults against gay people, including her own homosexual grandson Todd.
John goes to his room to change his shoes and is sexually assaulted by Mrs Cleary. On the stairwell, he and Jeremy argue.
Claire and John get fresh air. John tells Claire he loves her nutty family. They share a moment, but her dad calls her away to attend to Sack who’s puking in the bathroom.
When Claire checks on Sack, he’s completely obnoxious to her.
Gloria makes a surprise midnight visit to Jeremy’s room and ties him to the bed.
John tip toes down the hallway to pay a visit to Claire, but he doesn’t have the courage to knock. When he returns to his room, she pads down the hallway, but she taps so lightly on John’s door, he doesn’t hear her.
Now, Todd pays poor Jeremy a midnight visit. He thinks Jeremy and he shared a moment at the dinner table. Jeremy makes Todd go back “in the closet” to hide when Cleary checks in on Jeremy.
The next morning, Jeremy tells John that they have to get the hell out of Dodge. John refuses, and blackmails Jeremy into staying with wedding crashing rule #1: never leave another crasher behind. They make up and tell each other (in a purely manly way) they love each other.
Sack calls one of his jerkwad friends. During their conversation we learn that Sack’s cheated on Claire and that he’s also digging into John and Jeremy’s backgrounds.
Everyone, except Sack who’s still sick, goes sailing. Claire helps John swing the jib.
When they return, Sack greets them with rifles in tow. It’s time to go quail hunting. Sack shoots Jeremy in the butt.
While Gloria tends to Jeremy’s wounds, Claire and John go on a cute retro bike ride. She confesses to John that she’s scared to get married–and then she kisses him.
At luncheon, Sack makes a unilateral announcement–he and Claire are getting married. He’s blindsided her with this proposal in front of her entire family.
Claire rushes outside. John follows her, prepared to tell her the truth about his background.
Gloria confesses to Jeremy that she wasn’t a virgin; she just thought guys liked to hear stuff like that. Blindsided himself, Jeremy seeks solace with a drink and a confessional with the family priest. “It’s horrible being lied to,” he says shamelessly.
John tells Claire he’s falling for her, and he’s about to confess the truth about him and Jeremy, when Jeremy runs out of the house. Grandma Cleary chases him, a rifle in her hands. Sack spills the beans: John and Jeremy are wedding crashers. Everything they said this weekend was a lie. John can’t deny it.
Gloria digs the deception, but she and Jeremy can’t stay together. Cleary kicks both John and Jeremy out of his compound.
John plots to crash Claire’s engagement party with him and Jeremy posing as waiters.
At the party, Claire looks miserable until she dances with her dad. Jeremy doesn’t make it to the engagement party on time, and Sack finds John and beats him up.
Completely betrayed, John visits Jeremy’s house to see what happened to his best friend. Jeremy was in the middle of getting it on with Gloria. Jeremy says he’s in love with her.
A sad montage of John, Jeremy, and Claire. John crashes weddings solo–he’s lost all sense of reality.
Jeremy proposes to Gloria. Cleary has a heart-to-heart chat with Claire.
Jeremy visits John’s house for his annual sleepover. John’s reading a suicide book. They patch up, but then Jeremy asks John to be his best man. John kicks Jeremy out–he can’t stand his friend’s happiness when he’s hanging from a thread.
John visits the famous Chaz Reinholt, who’s “living the dream” by crashing funerals. According to Chaz, “grief is nature’s most powerful aphrodesiac.”
John crashes a funeral with Chaz, but he’s ashamed at how pathetic they’re behaving, especially when confronted by the authentic grief of the dead man’s widow.
It’s Jeremy’s wedding. John sneaks in and assumes his rightful place as Jeremy’s best man. John whispers apologies to Claire during the ceremony. Distressed, she walks away from the altar. In the middle of the wedding aisle, John makes his explanations and begs her not to marry Sack. She breaks it off with her loser boyfriend. When Sack begs Cleary to put some sense into her, Cleary stands by his daughter’s decision. Sack gets furious, but Jeremy clocks him.
Jeremy, Gloria, John, and Claire drive off, planning to crash the Fujimora wedding at 3:00 PM. Todd forms a crush on Chaz.