Re: The Sneeze by: Patrick Lonergan -- Saturday Night You Bull Sessions

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Date Posted: 19:36:55 05/24/06 Wed
Author: Patrick
Subject: Re: The Sneeze by: Patrick Lonergan
In reply to: Matteo 's message, "The Sneeze by: Patrick Lonergan" on 23:22:39 05/22/06 Mon

Great review! If I could change anything, it would be the ending. As Aykroyd says in the LFNY book, endings are hard to write. For lack of anything greater, I'll usually fall back on sex or violence as my finale (go ahead, check!). I like the idea of the boss continuing to exercise his authority even after the decapitation. I was going to have him struck by the first bolt of lightning, but decided it would be more dramatic to heighten the suspense.

>The boss is immediately portrayed as very rude and disrespectful to his employees, and them not refusing to say God Bless you should have been their way of not paying him any respect, and he senses that, and gets angry about it. ... This guy was so mean, I just didn't see them as the types who would dare argue with him.

Notice, though, that only the secretary is described as being afraid of him. In fact the other two employees enter rather abruptly, without an advanced description, I built their characters instead from their dialogue which ensued. So the Sudeikis and Hader characters argue with him from their first lines, while the secretary sort of keeps out of it at first.

I may have gone too far with the "dickhead" reference, but that more or less encompasses the boss character, the same type we've seen in numerous SNL sketches (ie. Trident). I set this up with his outrage over starting the meeting two minutes behind schedule and the visual comedy of the multiple door locks. The sneeze prompts response from the tow male employees in that one disregards it to get back to the meeting, and the other disregards it so he can challenge the boss about the personal phone calls. The bits on alternate religions is just a way to extend the joke, and it's more that the employees are initiating sarcasm than offering real reasons for not blessing the boss. The secretary finally gets a line in there after she realizes it's safe to join the majority voice. So, in the end, it turns so that the employees have found the boss' weakness and exploit it for the purpose of ridicule.

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Re: The Sneeze by: Patrick Lonergan -- Matteo, 06:19:45 05/25/06 Thu