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SimplyScripts Screenwriting Discussion Board    One Week Challenge    Scarefest Script Club  ›  American Cannibal - SSC2WC Moderators: Zack
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  Author    American Cannibal - SSC2WC  (currently 3055 views)
Don
Posted: February 23rd, 2017, 9:09am Report to Moderator
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So, what are you writing?

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2nd Draft
American Cannibal by Steven Wood - Short, Cannibal Horror - A wealthy business man shares his new diet with colleagues. 12 pages - pdf, format

Writer interested in feedback on this work


1st Draft
American Cannibal by Steven Wood - Short, Cannibal Horror - After not taken seriously when confessing to a string of horrendous murders, this business man tries his hand at cooking. 11 pages - pdf, format

Writer interested in feedback on this work



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Revision History (1 edits)
Don  -  March 3rd, 2017, 5:46pm
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Steven
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I just noticed I let a couple of typo's get through, damnit.
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Pale Yellow
Posted: February 23rd, 2017, 10:43am Report to Moderator
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Love the title ...the logline reads good too...

No FADE IN ..doesn't bother me too bad but some it will.

Just want to mention and this is just my opinion, but things are overly described: lacquered slick white,  leather-wrapped captain's chair, etc. For me it slows the read a bit and makes the writing feel heavy. I find myself asking questions like is the NM dinnerware the same as the Versace? I want to watch this visually as I read it. And then after the description, the character says something about the high end silverware.

The dialogue was really good between the guys the last third of the script.

Why does he eat people? To get ahead in business? And why the hooker? Inviting her over for dinner instead of sex would be a neat take ...and why dinner...because she IS going to be the dinner maybe. Just thinking out loud about each character.

At the end, I am surprised the guys didn't get more crazy when they found the finger and started believing his story. You may want to have them start coughing up foam as if poisoned about the minute they realize they are in their with a cannibal. I mean he may want to kill them now that he's confessed.

Pretty good story. Cannibals. Uck ... creep me out. Good job on this.
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Steven
Posted: February 23rd, 2017, 10:56am Report to Moderator
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Quoted from Pale Yellow
Love the title ...the logline reads good too...

No FADE IN ..doesn't bother me too bad but some it will.

Just want to mention and this is just my opinion, but things are overly described: lacquered slick white,  leather-wrapped captain's chair, etc. For me it slows the read a bit and makes the writing feel heavy. I find myself asking questions like is the NM dinnerware the same as the Versace? I want to watch this visually as I read it. And then after the description, the character says something about the high end silverware.

The dialogue was really good between the guys the last third of the script.

Why does he eat people? To get ahead in business? And why the hooker? Inviting her over for dinner instead of sex would be a neat take ...and why dinner...because she IS going to be the dinner maybe. Just thinking out loud about each character.

At the end, I am surprised the guys didn't get more crazy when they found the finger and started believing his story. You may want to have them start coughing up foam as if poisoned about the minute they realize they are in their with a cannibal. I mean he may want to kill them now that he's confessed.

Pretty good story. Cannibals. Uck ... creep me out. Good job on this.

Have you seen American Psycho? I wanted to emulate Patrick Bateman's voice. He needlessly brings up brand names when referring to things. In the movie, he goes over his morning routine and talks about this and that moisturizer/shampoo/soap and gives specific yet needless details. All of it was done through voice-over, so that's what I did.

Notice that in the action lines, I don't bring up the brand names, but he does. I say "wine" he says cabernet sauvignon, for example. I dunno, I always liked his voice and wanted to try my hand at it.

I don't have an answer with the hooker. I wrote this out in the course of a couple of hours. I was going to have him kill/eat her but then I wanted to include his work friends from the movie (the guys toward the end). But yea, I don't have a justification for the hooker except that he was turned off by how she tasted when in bed. Maybe he would have killed her if she tasted good?

As for the guys not really being turned off by the hand/finger, that's just another aspect of American Psycho. He admitted to killing numerous people, including Paul Allen (the guy they're eating) but no one believed him, and just dismissed it as confused identity (I had dinner with Paul in London, for example, if you've seen the movie).

So yea, you go into this with the assumption that you've seen and can appreciate American Psycho. That's my fault.
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Pale Yellow
Posted: February 23rd, 2017, 12:03pm Report to Moderator
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Oh shoot! That is why I didn't get some of it. I haven't seen American Psycho! Sorry. I am sure most others will totally get this. I need to spend more time watching movies and less stuck in an office working!
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Steven
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Quoted from Pale Yellow
Oh shoot! That is why I didn't get some of it. I haven't seen American Psycho! Sorry. I am sure most others will totally get this. I need to spend more time watching movies and less stuck in an office working!


That's a movie you absolutely need to see. I'm probably going to keep this story and make it into something longer. I'll just give the characters different names and not use Pierce & Pierce as a place of work, since it's part of American Psycho.
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CameronD
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A) I have never seen American Psycho but I know enough of it to know you nailed Bateman very well.  I'm not a huge fan of people doing "fan fic" with other properties but this is the proper way to do it. I very much feel this script could have been a scene from the original movie.

B) That extends to the writing as a whole. This was quite well written and the attention to all the material goods is exactly how I would picture a script about this character to be. Kudos.

C) The opening is also quite strong. The first scene of Bateman eating alone and the prostitute read extremely well. I could not have written in all those fancy details about wine country, exotic ingredients etc.

However if the reader is unfamiliar with the original movie this could be a hard read as you jump right into Bateman's character and setting without any real explanation. Also, the end falls flat after a strong start. This issue is there is no conflict. No goal. What is the point of him inviting the guys over for dinner only to gross them out? You need a hook of some kind to drive the story forward. Maybe tie it into Paul's office somehow? Bateman wants Paul's office and this is a way to create a vacancy?

Despite that, really solid effort. You actually are making me want to see the original film now. That should tell you something. Well done.


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Steven
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Thanks a lot. This is my first time writing something for an existing universe, and I think it's a little bit of a cheat since I had a unique voice to take from.

But besides that, I think I'm going to use this as a basis for an original story. I'll change the names and the work place, but that's about it.

Paul Allen was Jared Leto's character who got chopped up with an ax in the movie. I think how I mentioned him was enough so even someone who hasn't seen the movie would know this. But in the movie, Patrick Bateman is mistaken for Paul Allen on occasion (a very common theme in the movie). Paul is also slightly "better" than Patrick. They have the same exact title at their workplace, and have the same haircut.

The "point" of this was to have Patrick invite the guys over (they're other characters from the movie by the way) and introduce them to his new diet. What I should have done was go an extra page or so, and show them reluctantly trying the head meat and liking it. Maybe not because they liked the taste, but in this world, these guys do whatever is "in" at the given moment.

Uniformity, and mistaken identity caused by uniformity is an underlying theme of American Psycho.

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CameronD
Posted: February 23rd, 2017, 4:55pm Report to Moderator
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Yeah I was expecting at least one to eat it and say it was actually good or have him chop them all up next. It ended very abruptly on the head reveal. Strong script.


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Steven
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If I stick this thing out, I'll scrap the fact that he was a murderer before. But I'll have to come up with an idea on how he gets his victims and what he does with the carcasses afterwards.

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Conz
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I’ll look past the blocks of action b/c American Psycho is one of the best movies ever made, and Patrick Bateman is one of the best characters of all time… let’s see if you can write in his voice.

Ok, prepare for nitpicks.  You were flowing, until the last sentence in the first dialogue passage.  Not sure he’d say “I can buy more if I need to.”  He exuded wealth, but I’m not sure he ever really spoke about it like that. That almost feels too braggadocios.  Am I wrong here?  Maybe.  I’ve never read the book.

Oh man, I’m already going overboard on the nitpicks...  The dialogue is fine, but I feel like it should be over a series of shots of him actually cooking.    You don’t have to show, and thus spoil the reveal of the meat, just have his voice over the meticulous preparation.

Kill that “it” orphan.  Delete the word “around” and you’re back to 2 lines.

“It’s all the same.”  I like the disgusted look, but an inner thoughts voiceover there would have been perfect.

The banter between the guys reads authentic.  

Was worried you weren’t gonna mention Dorsia.

This kinda ruins the ambiguous (or so it’s supposed to be) ending of the movie.

I could see Jared Leto going method to play a charred, cooked decapitated head.

Not bad overall.  Few typos, bit overwritten, probably can use a Bateman brushover in a few spots, but I would like anything that references that movie.


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JEStaats
Posted: February 23rd, 2017, 9:21pm Report to Moderator
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No sh*t, there I was....

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It's been ages since I last watched American Psycho and I can't remember how it ended. Does this pick up from the first?

Regardless, I could visualize everything in detail. I've been accused of overwriting many times and this seems overwritten to me. Perhaps just saying 'high end' flatware instead of all the real manufacturers as it may not mean a thing to a lot of people. I like to think I've been around but I didn't recognize some of the names.

A few typos and missing words but it's a draft.

Where does it go from your ending?

Good work. I'll look forward to the revision!
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MarkItZero
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The writing is decent enough but I feel like you're missing a lot of the magic that made the movie work. Well, I can only say what made it work for me. In the movie, I liked the internal struggle where he's dealing with a loss of identity, an awareness that he's becoming unmoored. He struggles with it to the point where you can't tell if he has any grip on reality at all.

That struggle, that tension, was what made every scene go. For example, the first scene where he's alone in his apartment and he's doing a voice-over of his daily routine, this is the last line:

BATEMAN (V.O.)
There is an idea of a Patrick Bateman, some
kind of abstraction, but there is no real me, only an
entity, something illusory, and though I can hide my cold
gaze and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping you
and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably
comparable: I simply am not there.

That, to me, is the really interesting thing. The rest was just him listing a bunch of rich people stuff to suggest he's superficial. But that last line is a lot more complex.  

If you look at your first scene in the apartment, it's just him going on and on about food and wine. You're missing that something more. Something that gives me a deeper understanding of the character and his struggle.

The whole script really is missing that tension. When he's with the prostitute, there doesn't seem to be any doubt or uncertainty in him. Same with the final scene.

He had doubts in the movie. He struggled to control his impulses and his very grip on reality. I think there was a scene with his secretary where he doesn't actually want to kill her. That was a tense scene. Because we know what he's capable of. And we get the sense he's trying to hold back. So we're not sure... will he take the plunge or pull back?


That rug really tied the room together.
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CameronD
Posted: February 23rd, 2017, 9:42pm Report to Moderator
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Steven, if you're going to go back and make this about an original character, would you do that for the challenge's rewrite or do it at a later point?


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Steven
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Thanks to everyone that's commented and critiqued. I'll keep it relating to Patrick Bateman for the sake of this challenge but after that I'll switch things up and go for an original take. I'll obviously ditch the American Psycho stuff but I like the idea of a straight laced business man with a cannibalistic desire.

This was just an experiment and a different way of writing for me. I typically don't have blocks of action lines or a lot of voice over, but I like writing this way. Some say it's overwritten, but I don't mind that.

I want to figure out his personality first, then I'll worry about the story and all that good stuff.
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