Monk ran for eight seasons and offered viewers a fresh take on the television detective genre. It stars Tony Shalhoub as the eponymous Adrian Monk, a police consultant with obsessive-compulsive disorder. Shalhoub is back as Monk in the movie version of the show called Mr. Monk’s Last Case: A Monk Movie. Andy Brecker, who created the TV series and wrote the screenplay for the film spoke with Creative Screenwriting Magazine about bringing this iconic character back to the screen.
We started by asking him whether the movie was a continuation of the TV series or a film in its own right with an updated version of Adrian Monk. “We explore what life post-pandemic would be like for someone facing the challenges that our character faces. Monk, as a mature adult, is still facing those challenges and is in a different place than he was twelve years ago. He has a daughter and he’s looking at retirement. He’s no longer being used the way he was by the police department. So he has to reevaluate his priorities,” says Breckman. He also notes that he too is also experiencing the joys of getting older.
The equation is different for someone like Monk because he makes everything more difficult than it needs to be sometimes
As a hyper-observant detective that notices clues many miss, there were natural parallels to Sherlock Holmes in creating this character. “Sherlock Holmes also has a serious emotional problem and is dealing with mental health issues. He is a strange bird if you read the original Sherlock Holmes stories. When I was writing Monk, I always said that he was a cross between Sherlock Holmes and Charlie Brown,” jokes Breckman.
Andy Breckman
Audiences were shown glimpses into Monk’s past life. “A therapist might argue Monk suffered trauma as a child. We did get hints in the series of his problems with his father, who was pretty much absent, and the problems with his mother, who was very controlling. She was very cold and withheld affection.”
“We can tell from his childhood he wants control. And that kind of explains a lot of his behavior. He just wants everything to be rigid. He doesn’t want any surprises in his life. He doesn’t want crimes to go unpunished or mysteries to go unsolved.”
Breckman recognizes that the television landscape has changed markedly since the TV show, so pitching a movie version of Monk came with different considerations. When he pitched Monk to CBS in 2001-2, he sold the idea from scratch because there weren’t any comparable TV series. “If Monk was starting now, I might have an easier time pitching it because there are more precedents out there.”
The topic of mental health is better represented on our screens now because it is better understood and much of the stigma associated with it has subsided.
Monk is a very successful television series that transcends cultural barriers and is shown in as many as thirty countries across the world at any given time. “Even in countries that are currently at war with each other,” Breckman points out.
“Something about that character resonates with all sorts of people. I think it’s because he has a huge heart, he’s facing his personal challenges head on and always coming out on top, and always succeeding in spite of that. It’s inspiring to people all across the world.”
Writing The Movie
Sustaining a feature length screenplay is different from a TV show because the stories are built differently. “For one thing, almost every feature film that’s based on a mystery needs a second murder about one hour in to keep the interest and to kick the action into what writers call the third act. So, it’s structured and paced differently.”
Then there’s the issue of Monk’s modus operandus. “We realized he could not be an active member of the police force, but he was so insightful. He looked at he looked at crime scenes very differently. He was making connections that even veteran police officers were not making because he was focusing differently than they were.” Although he could never join the San Francisco Police Force, he was invaluable to them, so he consulted to them (much like Sherlock Holmes consulted to Scotland Yard among other places).
Andy Breckman began writing Mr. Monk’s Last Case with the main mystery. “Then we made that mystery personal. In this case, it was Monk’s future son-in-law to his step-daughter Milly, who is also the victim. Then we look for opportunities to build comedic set pieces around that.”
Molly Evans (Caitlin McGee) Photo by Steve Wilkie/ PEACOCK
We asked the writer about his daily writing practice. “I believe there’s a great old saying, ‘Well begun is half done.’ If you get the first couple of pages right, half your work is done because you’ve set the tone and the pacing, and you’ve established the arena. I work very hard, weeks and weeks, on getting the first scene or two locked in and perfect. And from there, I find it’s downhill.”
Breckman prepares for this by writing a thorough outline. “I know where I’m going with the story from the beginning.” In spite of comprehensive outlining and weeks writing the first few scenes, the write wrote around twenty distinct drafts. These weren’t all page one rewrites. He also considered cast notes, particularly from Tony Shalhoub, and feedback from Peacock and his director Randy Zisk and executive producer David Hobermnan. “Everyone has some input and I have to pretend to listen to everyone.”
The Monk world had been set up in the TV series, so it didn’t need to be substantially reconstructed in the movie. “It was a reunion movie as well as tell the mystery story and bring people up to date on where life was. The studio was concerned about fans of the old show making it clear where what our other characters have been doing.”
“Tony Shalhoub has lived with this character for twenty years. He knows if there’s a beat that doesn’t seem true to the character.”
Monk creates its own character universe with his idiosyncrasies. However, it still requires the elements of a crime drama and balancing them with the character’s personal story.
“When I was starting out, I read that most screenplays have forty plot points. Not forty scenes, but forty plot points. And when I plot out these movies, I have three by five cards. When the story feels right, then I count the cards on the board and it’s almost always about forty in a well-constructed movie.” That forms his outline, so he won’t write the screenplay until he reaches that magic number.
Breckman claims that he learns more about storytelling by watching bad films than good ones. He ponders why something didn’t work and how he could improve it.
A common issue he finds in poor scripts is that he doesn’t identify with the main characters and doesn’t care what happens to them.
“It’s really a magic trick if you think about it, to trick your audience into caring what happens to this fictional character that you’ve created. A magician uses a sleight of hand and all sorts of gadgets at his disposal, anything he can hide up his sleeve to fool the audience to cry, be scared, or be mystified. And that’s what a screenwriter’s job is too, in my opinion.”
Andy Breckman has been writing for decades. We asked him what attracts him certain stories and how he makes them his own. “I grew up reading Neil Simon and watching James L. Brooks and Woody Allen, and they have something in common. Their characters were all decent people trying to do the right thing. Those are the voices in my head because those are the writers I admired as a younger writer.”
He believes the great writers have been given a divine gift, while the others have to clock their ten thousand hours of training to master the craft.
