Subverting Stock Characters

High school movies have certain character expectations. There’s the hottest girl in school, the nerds who will never get the girl (maybe), and the jock.

The Chernins depicted the girl in a less than glamorous light. “I don’t think anyone’s ever seen the girl that everyone is in love with have such a dark, twisted, disgusting story.”

Katrina Aurienna (Loren Gray) Photo by Spyglass Media Group LLC, Artists Road LLC & Netflix

The creepy high school teacher played by Bobby Cannavale “is not just stock character in high school movies, but he’s a stock character in life for a lot of people. We wanted to see a teacher who was really good, pure-hearted, and genuine, and truly was interested in helping these kids and nothing else,” adds John.

Stock characters are a cliché for a reason

“We approached a lot of these characters from the perspective of ‘before we can subvert the trope, we have to establish the trope,’” elaborates John.

Raising The Stakes For The Characters

No matter how much the characters are bouncing off the walls in constant motion, the characters need to feel grounded no matter how over the top the situations get.

The characters shouldn’t feel they’re in a comedy

Dave Chernin also mentions that the “joy about writing for kids of this age is that the stakes feel so high no matter what.” There is this relatable feeling of doing anything to impress your crush and your friends. “Those are what make you care about the movie, so we feel like we can go to these crazier places and people will be willing to go along for the ride with us,” elaborates Dave.

Bailey (Isabella Ferreira) and Alyssa Nielsen (Ali Gallo) Photo by Spyglass Media Group LLC, Artists Road LLC & Netflix

Writing The Screenplay

The idea for Incoming had been lingering the Chernin brothers’ minds for almost twenty years.

The underlying spine of Incoming comes down to establishing characters, their goals and needs. The writers start with several stories that feel separated and then look for ways to make them complement and intersect with each other.

There’s a scene in Incoming when the boys picked up the girl in an Uber. “That’s where this movie started in a lot of ways because we saw an opportunity for the stories to intersect midway through the movie. And then we reverse-engineered it from there,” explains Dave.

Juggling so many characters requires extensive time management. The Chernins are “big on index cards to keep track of everything and everyone.” If they haven’t seen a character in a while, they bring them back. If they occupy too much screen time, they pull them back, That’s the nature of ensemble casts.

Once they’re done brainstorming and coming up with off the cuff scenes, they pin the index cards on the wall and start ordering the story. They decide when they’re a little heavy or light on story elements and adjust accordingly.

We spent a lot of time on the architecture of a story

They continue until they’re ready for the shortest part of the screenwriting process – writing the actual screenplay.

“We know the beats we need to hit, and now we can just have fun with dialogue,” says John. The pair spent about a year constructing the outline and wrote the script in a week.

Going Too Far With The Comedy

Comedy is subjective and there is never a clear line between how far the comedic limits should be pushed. Even during the editing process, the Chernins allowed themselves space to “dial things up or down,” especially the “eww” factor.

Few scenes were deleted entirely. Some big set pieces needed to be scaled back. “Most of what didn’t make it in was language or nudity,” recalls John.

Given that John and Dave make films for the broadest audience possible, crossing a line and alienating audiences is never their goal.