Quoted from George Willson Since I did like it, I'll explain a little why I thought the humor worked for me. In my own opinion, there are two basic kinds of humor: sarcastic and cynical. Sarcastic humor creates situations where characters point fingers at someone else and make a joke at that person's expense. Cynical humor creates situations where a character does something to poke fun at themselves. This humor difference is most clearly evident in British versus American comedy TV shows. I've noticed the comedic shows that come on PBS and originate from the UK are cynical in nature (from Monty Python to Keeping Up Appearances). Most American sitcoms, however, are sarcastic in that they make a series of jokes at some other characters' expense (reference The (fill in the comic actor's name) Show). Ironically, my favorite American comedy show is The Simpsons, whose humor is of the cynical nature, and I prefer this variety of humor over the series of jokes. Also ironically, stand up comedians tend to be more cynical in nature with the sarcastic ones being known as "insult comics." Mike's script is highly, highly cynical with the characters being parodies of types of people. These parodies are over the top from the writer with the bizarre writer's block to the germophobe who gets trapped in the bathroom because he can't open the door without his wet wipes. Some of it was over the top, but that's the nature of this sort of thing. If it weren't extreme, it wouldn't work as well. He combines this humor with another classic humor category: slapstick. Where is the slapstick, you ask? Jill's deaths. The first time I was concerned because it was so shocking. By the time she was killed the 6th or 7th time, I was laughing consistently. When the gas chamber trapped whats-his-name, and he revealed Jill behind him in the box also to die, I about fell out of my chair. When she survived, it was satisfying and still funny because she finally was able to speak. Did it have a classic structure? No, but that wasn't the goal. This was a simple parody of personalities and the tale of a writer with a serious case of writer's block. It wouldn't surprise me if this tale were partly autobiographical in nature.

Nice little write up on the differences of Comedy.

I personally however enjoy both cynical and sarcastic as well as slapstick comedy, I love all comedy I would have to say my favorite is probably cynical comedy however.

With that said none of the comedy in this hit a chord with me, this may be a script that I would actually need to see on the big screen for it to make me laugh, I dont know but as is I just did not find it funny.

Everything seemed kind of forced. This whole story would have been better served as a thirty page short then a feature to me.

Shelton is great at writing natural dialog and that is very evident, the Dialog throughout this was very natural and felt "real" the problem was it wasn't funny and it didn't have a strong enough story around it.

I did not think this was a terrible script, it was written wonderfully, no complaints there. I just did not think it was particularly funny which is kind of a killer for a comedy script.

But Comedy like Beauty is often in the eye of the beholder.

As I said earlier, I found a bit more comedy in it this time.  Perhaps because I expected the parts I wasn't going to like so I relaxed more about the script.  I even like the idea of this coffee shop with all these stories happening inside of it, or inspired by it.

I didn't mind Jill or her many deaths, even got a chuckle out of a couple of them. They were  forced occasionally but that's what a running gag is about. I think there is definitely humor in here, and like most comedy you aren't going to get every joke.

My big problem with this script is Jack Amsterdam.   He comes in and swipes the hero role from Gabe. He is obnoxious in this script and I don't find him likable at all. He is a larger than life, unreal character, among realer ones.  And he just doesn't fit.    

As far as very first impressions go, I think that this has a really good opening. It reminded me quite a lot of Toy Story 2. But that's not a particularly insightful comment.

I think I agree with YaBoyTopher that the dialogue here was well-written, good to read, but what's lacking is a strong plot that has a definite sense of purpose. This has a sort of wandering quality that I don't think does it a whole lot of good. Also, the dream scenes, while funny, have the adverse effect of making what's going on in the real world have even less of a sense of progression, because they break things up quite a lot.

One of Jill's deaths struck me as odd - she gets hit by one of Del's darts, but he's already told us that all they do is incapacitate their target for 15 minutes. So she's not dead, right? I thought maybe this was the beginning of Gabe being cured, but then in the next dream Jill gets killed by Lily's heel. So that sort of ruined the dreams from then on for me.

As for characters...when the bum called Bum turned up, I instantly thought of Mike's waitress called Waitress in 180. I actually liked Franklin, thought he was quite funny. I was never particularly warm to Jack Amsterdam, as someone else said. He wasn't quite rogueish enough to be a rogue, and at times he was almost unpleasant.

I'll think of more things to say.

Quoted from mcornetto As I said earlier, I found a bit more comedy in it this time.  Perhaps because I expected the parts I wasn't going to like so I relaxed more about the script.  I even like the idea of this coffee shop with all these stories happening inside of it, or inspired by it. I didn't mind Jill or her many deaths, even got a chuckle out of a couple of them. They were  forced occasionally but that's what a running gag is about. I think there is definitely humor in here, and like most comedy you aren't going to get every joke. My big problem with this script is Jack Amsterdam.   He comes in and swipes the hero role from Gabe. He is obnoxious in this script and I don't find him likable at all. He is a larger than life, unreal character, among realer ones.  And he just doesn't fit.

Yea I agree with that, Jack did not really fit with the other characters and seemed out of place. He was a cool character but it seemed like he was in the wrong story.

I never really liked the Jill deaths all that much, the funniest to me was the stiletto heel.

Maybe it is because the only time we see her is during the dreams but I just did not think it really worked, it would have been funnier if she was a actual character in the story who he constantly kept seeing get killed in his dreams.

Yeah, George, it is interesting that our roles have reversed themselves...but...I said over and over again how I didn't think The Strangers was a great script or great movie, but it definitely did work onscreen.

I can't imagine this working onscreen, but then again, this comment is coming from someone who absolutely despises Seth Rogen flicks, but enjoyed Heartbreak Kid.  Most comedy just doesn't work for me.  The stuff that does, usually doesn't work for the masses.

But even worse than not being funny, this is just downright boring, with unappealing characters in ugly settings.

I’ve read to about page 68. I don’t normally like to comment on something until I’ve read the whole thing but in the interest of participating - and since I don’t know how soon I’ll be able to finish - I thought I’d go ahead and offer some first impressions.

First impressions of the title:

Coffee & Inspiration doesn’t really excite me. When I think of the title and premise, I immediately think of a writer drinking coffee and thinking to himself, what am I going to write? I know, I’ll write about a writer trying to figure out what to write. I immediately think of an exercise in overcoming writers block.

I’m not a big fan of writers writing about writers. I realize it can be done in a very compelling way. Charlie Kaufman’s Adaptation is one example, although I don’t personally think that’s really his best work. Stephen King makes a very lucrative living doing it.

Most often however a story about a writer trying to find inspiration is a way for the writer to essentially say that he didn’t really have any when he began the project. So I went into this with the expectation it would be slow and boring. It was solely based on the fact that I knew the author that I looked forward to it.

First impressions of the story:

I think it started off on the right foot by setting up that our main character was a bit of a Walter Mitty. It demonstrated right away that we would not spend the entire story merely sitting claustrophobically in a coffee shop. The fantasies were much less fanciful than what they could have been. It’s obvious that the script was designed with a lower budget in mind.

But in order for this story to succeed I feel it really has to harness its strong points. And I don’t really think it’s doing that up to this point.

The Jill character, whom we know nothing about except that Gabe is obsessed with her, is nothing in the story but a recurring pop up. She never speaks. We don’t know her and have no reason to care about her, and no reason to sympathize with Gabe’s situation.

Cam says she’s gone but that’s cryptic. We really don’t know anything about the situation, which would be fine if the situation would become clearer as the story progressed. But that area of the story, at least up to page 68, hasn’t progressed one bit. Jill, silent and meaningless, continues to just pop up and die repeatedly, without any real significance to the story.

Gabe is supposed to be our hero but he transfers everything to Jack and then Jack becomes our surrogate hero. So now the dream sequences don’t focus on Gabe and we have no one to really root for.

Lily is a good character and I’m interested to see where she goes, but we’ve lost Gabe now.

The odd assortment of characters are interesting but they haven’t contributed anything meaningful to the story.

I keep wanting more of Gabe’s motive to become clear. I want to know more about Jill and more about where Gabe’s fantasies are coming from. Writers block is treated as a mystery but we already know Jill is the answer. We know she has something to do with it. The mystery would be fine if we had a sense this was going somewhere but you’re beginning to lose me as a reader. I’m becoming disinterested due to the lack of any real insight from any of the characters.

Gabe is a nice guy but he’s not really progressing. Barb is a good character but she has no real arc, at least not any discernible one as of yet, and as a character contributing to Gabe’s character, she really doesn’t have anything to contribute to. Gabe himself doesn’t seem to have an arc. At least not one that is very interesting. He’s not even anyone important in his own fantasies anymore.

I like the Lily character and at this point I really hope her character will go somewhere.

Now please don’t take all this as totally negative. I would have put this script down a while ago if it didn’t have something to keep me going. I enjoy much of the conversations and in that sense, the script does much of what it was designed to do. It succeeds in a great deal of its goals.

The story moves along at a decent pace - albeit a bit of a reserved one - but it moves along before the reader feels too stagnant. Characters are just interesting enough to pull the reader forward (at least to a degree because my impatience with the lack of story progression is growing).

So it’s got good dialogue from a writer who knows how to lure a reader along. The problem for me is that the lack of any story unfolding is wearing thin. I want the story to unfold. I want an actual story to progress, not just events leading from one situation to the next. Gabe’s goal is not just to write a book. It’s to overcome his block. More specifically, it’s to overcome the source of his block. That’s his obstacle. He’s made no progress toward that goal. And progressing toward writing his book through arbitrary situations isn’t working for me as a substitute for progressing toward his real goal.

That’s how I feel up to this point. I’m enjoying the writing and seeing how skilled the author is at maintaining interest in the face of an overwhelming lack of substance to the story. And I do think this would work better on film than on paper. I could sit through this movie thus far and still be willing to give the movie a chance. But as a reader, at this point, I’m a little disappointed in the underdeveloped story and the lack of story progression.


Breanne

I'm not completely finished with this script.  I guess I'll give my first impression... when ever I look at a script for the first time I like to skim through it to see how much dialog is in it and how many actions are in it, and just looking at this script I could tell it would be an easy read, although like Breanne said the title is a bit boring and unexciting.

The dialog with in the few pages that I've read is a bit boring and sometimes on the nose, it helps the script move forward but it does too much to explain too much in too little space, like with in the first four pages the dialog is trying to explain Gabe's whole situation, I think that Shelton should have left somethings for the reader to learn on their own, like all of Jill's deaths, instead of having Gabe's roommate say that it was part of the writers block right away I think it would have been better if Shelton let me discover that on my own, sure I would have learned it quickly but it would have made for a much better read and most likely a better watch, instead of having to listen to people talk about what's going on in the movie let me discover it on my own.

I've got to say that I like the actions, they're short and they are well described.  That is what makes a screenplay easy to read.

Above All I like this story so far... I hope I can say a whole lot more about it when I'm done with it.

Finished this today.

My first gut reaction comment is the same as yesterday... too talkie. However, I did think things picked up at the end and turned out nicely.

I personally liked the "dream" sequences the most.

Sure i agree with some of the other comments here. Like, I would like to have got to know Jill just a tad more. Explore Gabe and her relationship a little more.

I also agree that JA, turns out to be the main character towards the end. And I did fid that a little disappointing because I liked him in his own script. Here he's not quite that likable.

Ok, since most of us seem to be in agreement for the most part on this script, why not discuss why this one was picked up for production? What made some filmmaker want to take the time to go through pre-production, production and finally post-production?

PS, on page 96 or so... you should have used the line "is she a great big fat person".  

I think it was picked up because it seems like an easy film to make.  Like you said it is very talkative, and that could be very easy to film.  Most filmmakers like myself would pick a script like this because it's made up of a lot of dialog, doesn't have to many locations and most of the actions sequences could be shot for a pretty low price.  It's a little like Hard Candy, although that film took place in only three locations and was much easier to film than this could be.  

The idea seems very cheap, I would have made it just for that reason.

Xavier.

I don't think it was chosen 'just' because it was cheap. I could write you a script where a man peels an orange and eats it. For ninety minutes. Cheap to make? Yes. Interesting? No. No-one would pick that up for production. Part of the reason this was picked up HAS to be because the producer/director saw a film in it. Which, after all, is the point of any spec script - to try to put across the film that could be made from it, right? So this obviously did that to whoever picked it up.

It's funny. It IS funny, perhaps not as funny as I was expecting, but it has laughter moments. Yes it's cheap and easy to film, but there's surely more to it than that.

So, X, are you saying that it's difficult to find scripts that could be made on the cheap cheap?  You're saying you would make this soley because you could do it cheaply?

I think this getting picked up has much more to it than being an easy, cheap film.

Sometimes working on something simple with a producer will lead to other things...

If I remember correctly, this work of Mike's was not just produced but also led to assignment work.

That seems completely plausable to me, because I've seen the same thing happening to me and other "old regulars" here. we write shorts that lead to good relationships with filmmakers which in turn leads to feature assignments and stuff.  

I feel like laughing just thinking of Mike laughing at some of the comments. He's probably got a little red notebook going like Gabe in the movie with such brief notes that look like they have zero potential, but they do. Oh yes they do!!!  

People seem to be taking a script that doesn't take itself seriously too seriously. Reflecting on Gabe's disappearance as the hero in the story. I betcha Mike planned it! I bet he did and he's got an evil grin right now, just like he did when he was writing the scene that had Jill captured under the glass with Cam in his final moments.

I think the good dialogue is part of what makes this a strong script. There are many Barbs out there and this is as much real as it is funny:

BARB
And here I thought I was just a
crummy waitress.

GABE
Nah, you’re not a crummy waitress.

Keith walks up to Barb and hands her the check and a ten
dollar bill.

KEITH
Yeah she is. I’ve been waiting for
her to grab that for twenty
minutes.

Quoted from Sandra Elstree. People seem to be taking a script that doesn't take itself seriously too seriously. Reflecting on Gabe's disappearance as the hero in the story. I betcha Mike planned it! I bet he did and he's got an evil grin right now, just like he did when he was writing the scene that had Jill captured under the glass with Cam in his final moments.

I'm sure he did plan it Sandra.  I can see that myself.  However, just because he planned it doesn't mean it works.

Exactly!  Of course he planned it...he planned everything about this script.  There's obviously alot of thought and planning involved here, and Shelton knew what he was doing.

But, as Conrnetto just said, that doesn't mean it works on the level that it is intended on working.