Jeff Goldsmith and The Los Angeles Film School hosted an advanced screening and Q&A of Jason Bateman’s film Bad Words last night. The raunchy comedy is Bateman’s directorial debut, and centers around a crass, middle-aged man (played by Bateman) who attends children’s spelling bees. His motives for doing so slowly become revealed, eventually leading to a reevaluation of misplaced priorities.

The Main Theatre was filled with LAFS students, staff, alumni and industry professionals, and hardly a minute passed without the large group erupting into laughter. Responsible for that laughter, ultimately, is Andrew Dodge, the film’s screenwriter. Dodge was in attendance and participated in a Q&A with Goldsmith following the screening.

When asked what inspired him to write this quirky, hard-R rated script, he laughed and reminisced about his own childhood: “I was on a debate team in school. That experience made for a lot of funny situations. I’ve always wanted to write a movie like this. About an out of place guy, invading these kids’ space. And it worked.”

Bad Words is Dodge’s breakthrough screenplay, and he worked for over 15 years at Columbia Pictures reading other people’s scripts before getting his own off the ground. “I learned more from reading the bad scripts than I did from learning the good ones,” he says. “That’s how you know what not to do; that’s how you improve your own writing.”

Dodge decided early on in his career that Comedy was his calling, but even he gets stuck. The remedy he suggests for writer’s block? “Watch a movie. Any movie. And analyze it.”

The entire Q&A podcast will be available FREE on iTunes via Jeff Goldsmith. Link will be made public as soon as it is live.

Bad Words hits theaters March 28th.