Bad Timing

Years ago, while working with a writing partner, we started joking about the worst possible thing someone could come back from in a romantic comedy. You know the moment where the lie is revealed and everything falls apart, but we wondered: how far could you push that lie?

Our answer was:

What if one of them was secretly shooting a snuff film, and the other was unknowingly supposed to be the star?

And then, of course, he falls in love with her.

That was the premise. But years later, when I came back to the idea on my own, what surprised me most was how human the story became. I wasn't interested in making something dark or edgy just for the sake of it. Instead, it became something much stranger: a dark, funny, oddly sweet romantic comedy about two people who genuinely connect at the absolute worst possible time in their lives.

At its heart, "Bad Timing" is still a romantic comedy. It just happens to be one where the obstacle standing between two people isn't another relationship, a misunderstanding, or a job in another city. It's the fact that one of them has been lying to the other about the movie they're making together, and she's unknowingly starring in a fake snuff film that a Russian mob boss thinks is real. Because he paid them to make it. So they can get funding for their movie.

(You really gotta just read the script.)

People who have read the script are often surprised by how it balances that premise, how it can walk right up to the edge of something awful while still feeling grounded, funny, and emotionally sincere.

That's the line I love walking. I want the ridiculousness and the darkness, but I want the people inside of it to matter. I want the comedy to work because we care about the characters, not instead of caring about them.

Sometimes you meet the right person at the wrong time.

"Bad Timing" just takes that idea a little more literally.