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Face The Music by Leandro Porterhouse - Short, Dark Comedy - An shady businessman tries to change a young Indian cabbie's life, but he just may ruin it in the process. - pdf, format
You created some great contrasting characters. The story, however, I wasn't into as much. It felt like it didn't have much of a purpose. The first five and a half pages it seems like it's going somehwere, but it doesn't really end up there.
Confident writing (excepting that typo in the logline… ) Conflict between the two characters leads to some great dialogue and the dark comedy builds with the music and incense to good effect. Heath’s an asshole but there’s a humour about him that keeps him from becoming throwaway.
Snaring a charger with your wood...
Would’ve liked it a lot more if Heath wasn’t rescued -- not sure why you chose that ending; seems to rub it in all the more for poor Pratesh.
A solid dark comedy. One of my favourites so far.
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Hmm,, seems a part of a much bigger piece. Some nice dialogue for Pratesh, Hugh is suitably obnoxious, good characterisations,, just felt the story didn't seem to go anywhere. I hoped some kind of moral point would come at the end. It didn't sadly - moral seems to be 'a boner could save your life', even though you're a dickhead. )
I think it needs more for a stand alone fimed short. Met the challenge in the end although it fel like an add on instead of it being the main thrust (no pun intended) of the story, and it ended up a bit all over the joint. I did enjoy the first act with the backwards and forwards banter.
Writing was good I was really getting into it and then... it just dragged and dragged. This could have be done in 6 or 7 pages. A very anti climatic ending and at the least I thought Heath would have died with a boner lol.
I kinda agree with everyone else. The script was well-written.
It just didn't go anywhere. Like it was trying to be clever for the sake of being clever and not because the story called for it.
I didn't really buy the entire cab ride. And he wasn't really "stuck" in the cab till after the accident. Most of the script took too long to get there.
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Well, can't say I enjoyed this one at all, but I did read the whole thing.
I guess it's supposed to be funny? Not to me...more like irritating.
It's overwritten in many places and you tend to enjoy your asides, which I detest.
Don't use numbers in your prose. Don't make mistakes in your logline, as it is a terrible start.
2 biggest issues are that there's really no story here that I can see and the theme of being trapped in a taxi really doesn't take place until the last page.
Liked this one a lot. Heath was humorous and arrogant, kind of guy you love to hate. Pratesh was good too, and yes, a nice contrast. Not really much of a point here, or a big reveal, but the writing was fluid enough to keep me going along and in the end, I really didn't care about a reveal. It was a fun story all the way through, and it gets good marks from me just for doing that. Nice job! Definitely one of the better entries.
I think my biggest issue is that in a story I’m not a fan of to begin with, if this were to be made, you would also have roughly 10 minutes of varying degrees of loud Indian music. I personally can’t think of too many things I would want to watch less.
As we found with the comedy OWC, comedy is very subjective and I see that here with some of the comments. Personally I loved this and found it very funny indeed.
The dialogue is superb. It sounds real, natural and yet is far-fetched but works perfectly. You don't use the same old cliche sayings and choose to say things in a different way. For example:
"Well, Pra-tesh? Don’t they usually anglocize your names?"
Here's a guy being a racists prick who doesn't think he's being a racist prick at all. You could very easily have chosen a more obvious stereotypical comment but you made it sound realistic and it fitted Heath's character perfectly.
Some of the jokes were lost on me, for example I haven't a clue what Lyft is but I got the intention. When Heath first takes the pill I thought he'd taken ecstasy (or some other drug) as he seems to go high fairly quickly after this. It's only when he gets the boner did I realize it was Viagra.
I did start to drift a bit during the crash scene but I think that is because it goes on for a while, a bit of tightening here and there will really benefit this script. There are some great payoffs and comedy moments in this scene as well as a bit of tension. I do think the music will be an annoying distraction if this is filmed though.
The ending was quite disappointing, not only because I don't think poor Pratesh deserved this fate but it seemed more like the end of a scene rather than the end of the story. I suspect you simply ran out of space/time here to do this story justice.
I also found the repeating CONT'D distracting. Final Draft defaults to set these on but they can be switched off in the settings, also I must admit I've never seen PRE-LAP in a script before, I had to look it up!
A well written script by someone who knows their craft. Believable characters, great dialogue, some quality comedy which is let down slightly by an abrupt and unsatisfactory ending but this could be very producible. I encourage a second draft outside of the OWC.
-Mark
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I enjoyed reading this, but it left me unsatisfied, which wasn't your fault. I had an expectation for a different kind of closure, but I get what you did there.
Heath character was amazing. It felt and sounded very real to me. Pratesh was too passive to make the conversation as enjoyable and as effective as I wanted it to be.
Wish you gave us a change to know more about Pratesh life.
I also wish the shift in the story line wasn't that dramatic. I mean, one moment we're having Heath trying to fix Pratesh life, and the other was Heath trying to survive the accident and the music. It hurt the coherence of the story, in my opinion. Specially that the survival part lingered for tad bit long for a 10 pages script about facing the music.
Complaining only about the story and the structure speaks volume of your talent. Description, and dialogue was great. Heath character if very memorable.