Skyways Script Adaptation into a Romcom:
Day After Date Overthinking (Script Adaptation) 

During our ASRC visit, my group chose to adapt a scene from Skyways (Blair & Crawford, 1979), episode “The Waiting Game,” in which an aggressive man holds the airport manager and staff hostage. With romantic comedy as my designated genre to adapt the scene into, I was admittedly intimidated by the idea of turning something so intense and serious into a romcom. As Harrod and Paszkiewicz (2017) note, romcoms are frequently criticised for being predictable and overly reliant on clichés and consumerism (p. 58), which forced me to reconsider some of my assumptions about the genre—such as romcoms being typically woman-led and full of obvious romantic tropes—and think about how to work within its conventions while simultaneously adapting my script to capture the intensity and desperation of the original scene.

To guide my adaptation, I focused on the elements that stood out in the original Skyways scene: the desperation of the hostage-taker and the manager’s tense compliance. Reflecting on Johnson (2010), who argues that effective genre work connects with audience desire rather than simply following expectations (pp. 4–8), I decided to satirise the original emotional intensity and power dynamic while still capturing the romantic uncertainty that drives audience engagement.

Through this satirical approach, I adapted the scene into one where a man tries to determine if his date went well by threatening her roommate with a stolen coffee. While I think the comedic elements are clear, I’d like to explore how to bring in more obvious romantic elements in a way that can be used for social commentary and create within the genre conventions while exploring its “capacity to be textured and intelligent, while simultaneously entertaining and amusing” (Harrod & Paszkiewicz, 2017, p. 61).

 

References

Harrod, M., & Paszkiewicz, K. (2017). Women Do Genre in Film and Television (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315526096

Johnson, C. H. (2010). Crafting Short Screenplays That Connect (3rd Edition). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780080959245

Stapleton, T. (Writer), & Charles, D. (Director). (1979, July 16). The Waiting Game (Season 1, Episode 3) [TV series episode]. In Blair, J. & Crawford, I. (Executive Producers), Skyways. Crawford Productions.