Putting the Comedy in Climate Screenwriting

Life changing moments never announce themselves; they simply arrive, like it or not. Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da. Too often they’re of the unwelcome variety, but sometimes we get lucky. Sometimes they’re invitations. Instead of blocking our path and forcing us to turn back, they step aside and reveal a trail system that gives us greater access to the world, both the world inside ourselves and the one “out there.”

More than once, comedy films have been this for me. Seeing Harold and Maude at the age of 17 invited me to shape my thinking on war and authoritarianism. Mid-90’s films Priscilla Queen of the Desert, The Birdcage, and To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar invited me to see the connection between drag culture and radical joy. Amelie, whose titular character exhibits classic social anxiety behaviors, invited me to embrace my own anxious quirks, instead of trying to control and hide them all the time.

Remember the first time you saw a pharmaceutical commercial that listed a slew of horrific side effects that seemed worse than the condition the drug was trying to treat? The idea of people having to choose between being sick and being treated with something that could, however remotely, cause secondary harm is scary. Enter Saturday Night Live. Over the years, they’ve mined drug commercials for comedy gold. (My favorite features an ax-wielding Tina Fey in an ad for birth control.) Spoofing something disturbing is a classic coping mechanism. With climate anxiety on the rise and posing a real mental health issue, for youth especially, employing comedic exaggeration can help quell our jitters. It makes us feel like our fears are shared and understood. Writing climate comedy at the site of the wound will help others cope with the pain.

I always knew invasive species weren’t great for ecosystems, but it wasn’t until I watched the absurdist dramedy Killing It that I learned snakes were wreaking havoc in the Everglades. Season 1 of the show appears inspired by a very real and gruesome conservation initiative called the Florida Python Challenge, which gives substantial cash rewards to teams who kill the most pythons. In addition to making me laugh, Killing It got me thinking about the fact that there are no easy solutions to ecological issues. 

Another more recent example of comedy as a tool of enlightenment is a promo trailer for a fake reality TV show, Hot & Toxic. It cleverly envisions air pollutants from gas stoves as toxic reality show roommates, and it’s as shocking as it is funny. (Did you know there are 21 toxic pollutants coming from gas stoves? I sure didn’t.) Is it cool when climate stories pose solutions? Absolutely. But that kind of tall order may scare a writer off. If your screenplay can simply bring awareness to an overlooked climate issue, you’re moving the needle in the right direction.

There’s a reason why people have written satire for, literally, thousands of years - it’s the perfect genre to highlight the flaws of those in power. In The Politician, Payton (played by Ben Platt) gives a galvanizing speech about the climate mess today’s youth are being left with. Later in the series, he’s pushed into an action that illuminates and pokes fun at the hollow commitments of politicians who can’t walk the talk. Comedies like this, that skewer those with real or perceived power, are deeply satisfying and can relieve feelings of helplessness. Fortunately-slash-unfortunately, when it comes to those holding sway over climate issues, there are oh-so many opportunities to skewer people in positions of power. If you’re a screenwriter whose sensibilities lean toward sarcasm and wit, you might explore skewering someone in your next climate script.

Comedies can light a fire in us. Don’t Look Up, understandably generated a lot of talk about (spoiler alert!) the comet strike at the end of the film. Many viewed it as a period on the end of a sentence that says we’re doomed to extinction. But if you focus on where the plot diverged from depictions of our current reality, you’ll see we’re not even at the midpoint. Instead of feeling hopeless, it motivates me to help prevent the worst effects of what’s coming down the proverbial pike. Writing films and TV shows that shake people awake are a necessity in a world of social ills. If you’re a screenwriter who can deftly navigate big ideas and big stakes why not write in a way that sets your viewer ablaze?

As a child you might’ve been scolded and told not to “make light” of serious topics. Climate screenwriting provides the perfect opportunity to upend this notion. It actually wants you to make light out of that which is heavy. Recent shows like Ted Lasso, Rutherford Falls, The Good Place, and Schitt’s Creek all explored serious social issues from LGBTQIA+ acceptance to Native representation. And still, they managed to leave viewers uplifted week after week. If you’re tempted into binary thinking that says you can either choose to write something comforting, or choose to write about climate change, know that it’s a setup. You can do both!

No matter how you cut it, comedy is a powerful tool. It sneaks issues in through the back door and allows us to laugh at scary things, which loosens the death grip they have on our psyches. Forget what you learned as a kid, go ahead and take what’s heavy and make it a laughing matter.