All screenplays on the simplyscripts.com and simplyscripts.net domain are copyrighted to their respective authors. All rights reserved. This screenplaymay not be used or reproduced for any purpose including educational purposes without the expressed written permission of the author.
Gurza by Khamanna Iskandarova - Horror - When an ancient Azerbaijani myth foretells that the killing of a Gurza snake will be followed by five deaths in the same family, one man's plan to survive may be worse than the original curse. 76 pages - pdf format
Congrats on completing a feature. Now comes the rewrites. lol.
Finished in one sitting. If I mistake anything, I blame it on my quick reading lol.
Spoilers!
My thoughts in no particular order:
I'm presuming the scene where his mom is dead and draws in the eyes is when he starts becoming an artist? If not, you gotta establish that storyline. That's a pretty cool storyline.
What does Davood get with the five deaths completed? Devood lives? I'm guessing so since the father killed the snake in the beginning. So, since the father is dead, Davood is trying to save himself? I would advise explaining the mythical curse or story behind the gurza like to avoid one's own demise, needs to kill five family members.
I would advise showing how Davood and Jeyla improve their relationship since Jeyla has been avoiding him for the longest.
This doesn't mean I don't like it. I enjoy the characters, structure, and storyline.
I'll see if I can think of anything else.
Hope this helps, Gabe
Just Murdered by Sean Elwood (Zombie Sean) and Gabriel Moronta (Mr. Ripley) - (Dark Comedy, Horror) All is fair in love and war. A hopeless romantic gay man resorts to bloodshed to win the coveted position of Bridesmaid. 99 pages. https://www.simplyscripts.net/cgi-bin/Blah/Blah.pl?b-comedy/m-1624410571/
Thank you so much, Gabe, for reading this one mess of a screenplay.
You actually gave me something I thought was clear - so thanks for that, I'll look into that too.
No, he was an artist before that. His mother talks to his sister about his obsession with drawing snakes.
And as to your second question - he's so obsessed with he myth that wants to live up to it. He wants for it to be true. But I don't know if I should change this as it's a bit of complicated. I know I should get rid of a lot of convo so that only important part stays and everything would be much clearer that way.
Looking forward for yours!
And to all - I'll get to the reads soon. It'll just take me time, but I'll read all of them surely. Very excited.
Hey, Chris, Thank you so much for the read and the detailed notes. I'm going to use every single note of your comments. Will do the amends tomorrow. Hopefully.
What kind of receiver are you taking about? Telephone? Gun? Audio-video receiver?
Quoted Text
Narmin unzips it but keeps the bag closed. She opens up a bit of it looks[,] closely inside.
Quoted Text
Her breath[ing] fastens. She [quickly] closes the bag.
Quoted Text
And it’s not one of those darlings that don’t bite, [it] brings death.
Quoted Text
Okay, I believe you. Now, I think I need to do something to help you. You live with a crazy person.
This sounds a bit inauthentic and unrealistic. Plus, too wordy for the given situation.
You usually cut out the "goodbye" in a phone call.
Quoted Text
As soon as she does[,] the key in the lock turns and Davood appears in the door.
Quoted Text
You’re seriously [hung] up on that childish tale.
"Bye[,] [M]om." Always offset names with commas.
Quoted Text
Bye mom. I need to paint a snake, that’s all. You can’t live with a snake, but I can’t live without it. Don’t worry about me, I’ll crash with someone tonight until I get my own place.
Good line, but it makes the exchange too wordy.
Quoted Text
Hey, don’t worry about it. I really appreciate you help[ing] me out like [this].
A "picturesque place" can be any place. Is it a field, a city, a town, a marketplace, a village, mountains? You're the writer.
"something seems [to move] inside."
Quoted Text
He looses his conscious.
I don't understand what you mean.
Quoted Text
She dumps the contents of the cup onto the frying pan, switches the gas underneath it. She waits beside it for a bit, then turns off the stove. She walks with a frying pan to a TV, turns it on.
This paragraph is a little too busy. I'd break it up into smaller portions.
Quoted Text
[She feels] hot[. S]he moves to sit under the draft that gets in through open window.
We, the audience, can't feel the heat. You have to show it to us.
Quoted Text
Then pulls on the blinds string to bring them down.
You could just say she draws (raises or lowers) the blinds.
Top of page 31. I'm gonna call it a night. Where does the time go?
This is a good story and the issues are really simple fixes.
Mostly, I felt the dialogue needed work. Such as when Davood’s mother asks him to read and he says he can’t and you know that. Why would his mother ask him?
But, having said that, I really liked the image of him doing his “pretend read”.
You did a really good job of moving the story along.
I think in a re-write, you can improve the mystical aspects of the myth itself and show it.
Also, I should mention that the opening image wasn’t clear enough. Later, I understood this wasn’t a museum, but a store. In my notes I had written: Big Gallery? Private? Etc...
This is also the case with the use of Picturesque Place. It was a little sketchy.
Pg 7 the sun is about to set so it should be in the header.
Pg 9 they are being interrupted should be tightened to something like Father interrupts them
Page 11 She should crush the pills or he would choke
Page 12 issue with time - It’s night when Malmud rushes away But on pg 13 the header reads Day
Note that a screech of wheels does not waft.
Pg 14 Gabriel asks will you be here tomorrow and Banu answers I would love to. Wrong response.
Pg 14 header should be Next Night
Pg 15 I noted the word “customer” as wrong before I realized it was a store type of gallery.
I like Davood’s dialogue as it mirrored his speech as a five year old. I can’t work. I have to watch out for snakes, you know that.
This clearly represents the fact that he’s off his rocker. Good job there.
I made a lot of X’s as relates to dialogue that I thought needed to be shortened or improved to be more realistic or clear, but those details can be readily fixed.
The story is a good and keeps one interested.
Big congrats on finishing the challenge in such short order!
This is the most cohesive set of stories submitted to the 7WC, making everyone else look bad
There are some minor word choice issues and quite a bit of on-the-nose dialogue, which is a common feature in just about any first draft. It was common enough to pull me out of the story at times, but importantly it seems straightforward enough to fix during a re-write.
The action is little over-descriptive in spots, which is better than being too terse, but it does slow down the read. A good example is Davood and the shrubs at the bottom of page 6.
The garden definitely had a "the cobbler's children have the worst shoes" element to it.
Very cute with Davood pretending to read. It's not unusual for kids that age or even younger to memorize a story, so the only part that seems out of place is Davood saying he can't read.
The family deaths appear to be a "simple" curse maybe a little too long, but everything makes sense after the audience is let in on what's actually happening.
There are a few things about Davood's behavior that don't make sense to me. I get that he thinks five people need to die, and if he can get five OTHER people to die then he'd be better off.
Davood in his early 20s says that he "can't work," and it's clear from this conversation that Narmin has been aware of this forever, but it seems like she's only just this moment doing anything about it. A child who acted as obsessed as Davood does here wouldn't have been able to function in school. Either he's gotten worse recently (maybe when he captured the snake) or he's been a problem child for a very long time. Either way can be interesting.
Davood's interactions with his family also seem a bit odd. He goes through a lot of effort to make contact, they reject him, and he acts like he doesn't like them either. Maybe his only real interest is in locating the family members rather than bonding with them, but the interactions just seemed odd to me. If he really truly doesn't like the family members, it could come up in his dialogue with the toy snake.
Davood seems weirdly calm about catching fire. Even forming the words "It hurts!" would take way more concentration than most people could muster in that situation. Maybe he is that disassociated from his body (remember Gollum's joy at gaining the Ring overrode his pain of falling into lava), but then he'd be showing concern for Girly rather than himself. He could plausibly switch at some point and realize his own plight when it's too late (Richard Prior discussed how even when he was as high as a kite, completely unable to realize he was in danger, once the fire reached him he acted like pretty much any sober person who finds himself on fire).
I think all these issues are fixable, and a round of editing will help with the text issues.
Great job with this feature.
Edit: I also like the open ending. Maybe this (driving a family member mad) is simply how the curse operates. In which case ten more lives are on the line.
Chris, sorry I haven't thanked you properly on the thread, but all great stuff. Nice thing to have when you rewrite. And I'm happy to see you like it. Well, at least the beginning of it.
I'd like to do it tomorrow, so I reread at least half of it and make some amends. My latest draft is still the first draft. I haven't rewritten. But I would like to fix the grammar some at least.