Philistine! Has this writer never even watched Thundercats?
“You like the films of François Truffaut Joey?”
“Well not his early work. But once he matured as an artist….”
That brief exchange from the early 1990s sitcom Blossom filled me with so much rage that I never watched Blossom again. (Actually to tell the truth I hadn’t really seen the show prior to that scene. I basically tuned in to the program by chance just in time to get infuriated by it.)
Allow me to explain. The “Joey” character from Blossom (played by Joseph Lawrence) is usually meant to be stupid. The joke in this exchange is supposed to be that this largely clueless character has unexpectedly erudite knowledge of French New Wave cinema. The other characters gape at his sudden appreciation of culture marvelling that there is more to this dumbass than meets the eye.
Meanwhile I’m grinding my teeth in fury because no real François Truffaut fan could possibly have written that line. Y’see although he was an undeniably brilliant filmmaker Truffaut peaked early. He directed three bona fide classics right out of the gate ( The 400 Blows Shoot the Piano Player Jules and Jim ) but his later work got a bit dull. Does Joey really prefer The Last Metro to The 400 Blows ? Madness!
I’m not really mad at Joey (who is after all fictional) but rather at the writers who made him say that. They clearly just looked up the name of a respected French film director and gave the matter no further thought. Were there no real François Truffaut fans on hand to advise them? (A depressingly plausible possibility.)
It’s frustrating to see something you care about being misunderstood in public even if the subject of your obsession is not the speaker’s main point. That’s why comedian (and self-professed nerd) Patton Oswalt famously told somebody off for getting a minor piece of Star Trek trivia wrong. Never mind the fact that it was his physics professor and they were in the middle of a final exam; it’s Sulu who fires the phasers on the USS Enterprise not Chekhov! Learn to Google you tenured cretin!
Which brings me to my main point. If you’re going to reference a piece of pop culture in your sitcom (or film or physics exam or whatever) make it a topic you actually know something about. The fans can tell when you’re faking it. Fortunately there has been a lot of improvement in this area in recent years. When the characters in The Big Bang Theory discuss Star Wars for example you get the impression that they’ve actually watched the films. That makes a difference.
The same rules apply if your characters discuss science or video games or sports or butter churning. There are going to be a lot of scientists/geeks/sports fans/dairy farmers out there who will appreciate it if you get the details right. If the topic is outside your area of expertise consult an expert before finishing the script. That’s what I’d do if I had to write a scene in which two people discussed football without it sounding like “Hey last night’s sports match was intense! McGregor really kicked a lot of home runs!”
