This is the Title of my Post About Chase Movie

It's title time again. I've written about titles before, and I think about them often, and maybe that's why I have so much trouble coming up with good ones. Maybe I just overthink it.

But Not Dead Yet is an awesome title, you may say. Why yes it is. I didn't think of it. I was on a popular message board I used to frequent and asked "Hey anybody got an idea for a title for a zombie movie?" and somebody said it.

Burnside has been the subject of much contention among my note givers. The title comes from the name of a character who is not the protagonist, and more than one person has cautioned against it. But at this point, that's the title and I'm not changing it, partly because it's a cooler word than anything else I can think of. I started calling it Burnside as a temporary title and then got used to it so now I can't think of it as anything else.

So here I am again at title time. I have a chase movie that deals with garbage - the major theme is about what we consider valuable versus what we consider trash - so I started coming up with titles that use trash.

Trash Run or Garbage Run. Sounds like Men At Work, the Sequel.
Thrown Away. Sounds like a farce.
Trash. Well that's just inviting people not to like it.
Waste Not. This is at least more creative, but it sounds like a documentary about recycling.

I'm sticking with Waste Not for now, because it also carries a sense of Mom's advice (Waste not, want not), and mothers and daughter relationships is another theme for the story. But I don't think it sounds like a good title for a chase movie, and if I call it that for too long it will stick.

I'm stumped. I suck at titles. I wish I could just call it Chase Movie Title.

Action Comedy Chase Movie

Okay I'm going to do it for real this time. I've tried and failed and given up many times before, but this time, seriously, I'm going to do it.

COMEDY.

It's an action comedy, a chase movie kind of like Thelma and Louise meets Three Days of the Condor but funny. This time I refuse to give up until I've got a script I like because the idea is solid and will stand up to scrutiny as long as I can pull it off.

Every time I've tried to write comedy before I end up killing people and making them sad, and I'm no good with straight up jokes. I can do funny situations, but actual comedic lines elude me. I tried to write a My Name is Earl spec back when I was still attempting television, but after five pages I realized I only had one real joke, and that was something I overheard someone say on the beach once. I abandoned it. Good thing, as it turned out, because two months later they did an episode a lot like my spec.

But this new story idea just begs to be funny. It's one of those stories that is either hilarious or ridiculously sad - there's no in between. People are always telling me to write comedy so I'm going to go for hilarious.

I'm super excited about this idea because aside from being a truly commercial project that my manager likes and could sell if people start buying again, it's also killing two of my greatest desires: write a good comedy script, and write a script where the protagonist is not really a fighter but is thrust into a fighting situation, a la Three Days of the Condor which is one of my very favorite films.

I've gotten so much out of doing this treatment for the producers that I decided to always do a treatment from now on, so at the moment I'm plotting the story for this new chase thing that has no title. I'm thinking about tone, but I can't really think of movies that have the tone I'm going for. Lethal Weapon is close in tone but a little too violent; I'm looking for something heavy on the running away and bickering. My protagonists don't really know anything about guns and they're really annoyed with each other but they have to run together from the bad guys the whole film.

Help me, comedy people. Know any stories like that, either films or screenplays? All I can think of off the top of my head is straight action with a little comedy, not a true action comedy chase movie.