After cancer, alcoholism, and post-traumatic stress disorder, the most prevalent disease in the Funkiverse is, of course, writer’s block. Today, Cayla brings the Delicate Genius a snack of milk and cookies. But if he doesn’t quit farting around and get cracking on that script? I’m pretty sure she’s gonna break Les’ ankles with a sledgehammer and keep him hostage in his study ’til he’s done!
32 thoughts on “If You Give a Les a Cookie”
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Son of Stuck Funky 
If this ends with a Lord Of The Late story arc just give me the cancer now
Geeze…kinda “cold” in that garage…I mean the couple not the temperature
The milk and cookies are poisoned aren’t they?
Great post title.
I kid you not (get it?), but the first time I read this strip as “You’re such a loser.”
Did Les’s studio door come from his high school classroom?
Les just realized that’s the only food he’s getting until the script is done, hasn’t he?
How can this fucktard have writer’s block when the book is already written? Act I: Les and Lisa meet in the cafeteria at Westview High School, he is wearing a short sleeved button down shirt (yellow, of course) with a pocket protector and horned rimmed eyeglasses. She is wearing a peasant blouse, inexplicable hair, and a chinless face.
As a real-life sufferer from writer’s block (over ten years now), I would like to introduce Les to another kind of block…the 16-ton kind, as employed by Monty Python.
Tom: I’ve said it before. I’ll say it again. A writer, writing about a writer angsting about how HARD it is to BE a writer is lazy, sloppy, and self-indulgent.
This sort of story is interesting to NOBODY. The only successful examples were done by writers with talent or spin you just DO NOT HAVE.
Is this REALLY the only story you have in you these days? Pity the poor writer?
That’s pathetic, Tom. Truly, honestly pathetic.
“How can this fucktard have writer’s block when the book is already written?”
Ah, but a script has to begin with the first -interesting- (or at least unexpected) thing that happens in the tale, in order to hook the audience.
It’s just sunken in for Les: LISA’S STORY has no such hook!
see Cayla is wearing justin bieber drop crouch pants
If you imagine that’s BatTom & Mrs. B there in panel three (and you ignore the rest), it takes on a whole new meaning, doesn’t it? Yes, Les, we (meaning all of us hidebound literalists) all wish you were funny too.
My first thought echoed Rusty’s comment above. He’s already written the story, all he needs to do is add some extra witless banter which should be a snap for Les. The guy has lived and breathed this cancer story for years and he’s had over a year and a half to ponder the “ifs & hows” involved with turning it into a movie. Yet there he is, whining about having to do some work in exchange for his WOW check. What a complete dick.
And Cayla needs to ease up on the throttle a bit here. After all, the ass-clown only sat down to write the f*cking thing yesterday for crying out loud. If she’d have been this big of a nag a year and a half ago they’d already be rolling in huge Hollywood checks and she probably would have been married sooner too (and in a much nicer venue too).
You know Les, if you didn’t have a plan for the script, or a vision of what you wanted to do, you probably shouldn’t have insisted on being the one to write it as part of your option agreement. The producers are going to have a pretty low tolerance for this clown’s excuses when he starts blowing deadlines. It’s one thing when you’re writing a spec script or manuscript where you just submit it when you’re done. It’s quite another when you have a script you’ve contractually obligated yourself to write.
Otoh, it’s a way Les could completely blow this deal and be forced to give up what he’s already gotten. If he demanded first-draft script rights and wasn’t able to come up with a script, the producers would be well within their rights to demand some of their money back. It’s a simple breach of contract. That’s why you don’t demand something like this unless you know what you’re going to do when they make the call.
So Les would get sued and would lose money that he and Cayla have probably already spent. That would ramp up Batiuk’s stock-in-trade misery porn.
In fact, Les probably had to submit a treatment when they were negotiating that portion of his option contract. In fact, the producers would demand it, so he’d already have an outline.
But then, I forget who’s driving this car.
Does Les know *anything* about screenwriting at ALL? Does he know a single seasoned pro that can give him tips and pointers? Any screenwriting friends he can bounce ideas off of? No?
I like helping people but I can’t just open a doctor’s clinic and start seeing patients.
I must be getting as naive as Cayla, as I also thought Les would have the script finished today. Apparently, he’s not motivated by sex. Or is Writer’s Block just another form of impotence for this loser?
The contents of Les’s bookshelf consists entirely of unsold copies of Lisa’s Story.
a few rejected first lines
“”Call me Les”
“What can you say about my wife Lisa who got cancer and died”
“it was a dark and stormy night and my wife had cancer.”
Writers block is nature’s way of keeping you from writing the first lame, idiotic thought that pops into your pointy little head, Tom BatHack. You would benefit from a bit of that.
Oh, and he has a studio. What a pretentious little snot.
I’m thinking deep down, Les knows that Lisa’s Story now has to appeal to the masses, not to the kinds of ladies who think Twilight fan-fiction is good literature.
Now who’s the slave? Amiright?
So Kayla is greedy and Les…is lame. And these are characters we’re supposed to root for?
Frick-on-a-stick, for a “professional writer” Batcrazy is really tossing a bunch of bullstuff on the wall here.
1. As has been pointed out, there would have been an outline of the movie already prepared to get a green light to go on with the project.
2. No way a studio would have given an high school english teacher the script assignment without “help”. Imagine, even a low-budget Lifetime movie is well over a million dollars to produce, and the producers are going to sit around on their butts, waiting for Less to finish the first draft? — right, when pigs fly.
3. Can anyone say uncredited ghostwriter? Really, studios have a whole host of writers to “help” idiots like Less pull their heads our of their asses.
4. Of course, you have to buy the central premise that a studio would give any control to some english teacher, with no track record of anything, and wait for his genius to flower. No way that has ever happened.
Frick-on-a-stick, this whole arc is Batcrazy living out his fantasy because Hollywood has completely ignored him all these years. Probably crying in his room that Dilbert got a series, but not him. Cayla, run for your life while you can, unless Bathack is going for marriage problems because Less is such a failure…. no way, that would be way too interesting.
To even be considered a valid choice, Ann would have directed Les to send the studio/production company a registered, finished, properly formatted showcase script MONTHS ago.
Otherwise, yeah, there’s NO WAY a situation like this could EVER happen.
Ooh, I got a leaked scene Les is working on! Let’s take a look!
Int: Les and Lisa’s apartment above the pizza place
(Lisa is checking her self in the mirror after the football tackle thing after she landed on her chest. Her handsome husband is in the other room, saying funny, witty things about stuff)
Lisa: “Hmmm…”
(Lisa feels her chest, then there’s like this kind CSI thing where everything gets all CG and like, the camera goes into her chest and you can like see her insides and stuff. There’s like this little white mass and stuff where her breast is. But don’t show her breast from the outside, like, for nudity and stuff ’cause that’s not tasteful)
Lisa: “Uh oh…”
(The camera does that one thing. Like, you know how in Westerns, the camera like zooms in but out at the same time and it looks super cool? It’s like that. ZOOOOM on her face but the background bathroom kinda like zooms out. It’s hard to describe, but it looks super cool.)
Lisa: “Oh no!!!”
After cancer, alcoholism, and post-traumatic stress disorder
You forgot obesity
Davidorth, I loved that. I really can see Bush League Leslie writing a movie exactly in that style.
I see this recurring theme from TomBore. Mopey Pete gets stuck in the mud. Goatee Boy gets stuck in the mud. Oh, writing is JUST SO HARD! (Wonder if world famous author and raconteur Harry Dinkle had this problem.) We GET it, Tommeh one note. Know any other songs on that beat up old horn?
(The camera does that one thing. Like, you know how in Westerns, the camera like zooms in but out at the same time and it looks super cool? It’s like that. ZOOOOM on her face but the background bathroom kinda like zooms out. It’s hard to describe, but it’s look super cool.)
Heh, the dolly or Vertigo zoom. As if having to deal with Les weren’t bad enough, if he decides that he’ll actually direct this movie from within the screenplay, any sensible producer would kick his ass to the curb.
But since they optioned and subsequently bought “Lisa’s Story”, they’re not sensible, so I’m sure they’ll be just fine with Les inserting camera angles and excess stage directions and line read descriptions.
LISA
(Sighing, picking up a snowglobe to examine it
while reading a newspaper, slowly blinking, not
looking at Les)
I have cancer.
LES
(Looking aghast, trembling, striding over to
the table to sit down, close-up onto him
whimpering manfully)
Oh no!
Damn formatting ignoring my proper screenplay format! I wave my private parts at thee in disgust!
And to add something, I can easily see the theory that someone (John? ED?) posted here a few days ago about Les being cast as Les coming true. Batiuk is in full wish fulfillment mode here, so why the hell not? Never mind that in the story as it’s been described to us, the role of Les is the most important one, even more than Lisa.
I hope the Hollywood version involves zombies killing Les.
I can understand how an English teacher/improbably successful writer could have problems writing a script* (thanks for accidentally pointing out what real script writers are for) but why in hell is he ORGANIZING a BOOKSHELF? Yes, sometimes the best way to handle writer’s block is to stop trying and do something pleasant and relaxing. The problem is that we don’t have any indication of that here. There’s nothing to suggest that it’s his way of relaxing so we’re left with the assumption that somehow an alphabetical bookshelf is vital to his writing.
*Even though, as others have pointed out, he would have had to already have something put together and it’s incredibly odd that he wasn’t already working on one considering how much he’s put into this book over the years.
(The camera does that one thing. Like, you know how in Westerns, the camera like zooms in but out at the same time and it looks super cool? It’s like that. ZOOOOM on her face but the background bathroom kinda like zooms out. It’s hard to describe, but it’s look super cool.)
Heh, the dolly or Vertigo zoom
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