Straight To Video by Andrew Roby - Short, Comedy - James, a video store employee is in for the night of his life as two robbers are in his store. 6 pages - html, format

This is one of my older shorts which i thought would be good to submit. I hope you all enjoy this.

Sort of spoilers



Those two jerks shot a woman in the head, a guy in the chest just to get porn movies? Huh. Realistic movie that guy has there. Nice twist at the end, though. Funny.

So what do you think overall of it? Good? Bad? Or What?

It's cheesy and unrealistic, but it works.  Know why?  Because you have a funny ending that makes it worthwhile.  It had me laughing.

Then my job is accomplished  

That was so funny at the end... It had me cracking up hysterically. My God what a funny script. Wow. What a nice ending...

"Oh shit"

Great ending

Quoted from Antemasque So what do you think overall of it? Good? Bad? Or What?

The ending made it for me. Like I said, it was unrealistic but the end made up for it.  

Good.
I was aiming for a ending that would make people laugh. Thank you for reading this.

Hey, if you want you can scroll down the forum and read "Talent" (sorry, shameless plug but Phil does it all the time )

If you haven't read this then you should.
It'll give you a good laugh.

Haha funny ending. Loved it.

Sean

I'm not sure what to think of that.  It was funny, yes, but also strange.  I mainly found the violence too random.  Good twist at the end though.

props

It was meant to be random. All of it meant for the man's reaction and the build up to the twist at the end.

That makes sense.  Without the violence he wouldn't really care when the twist came around (the man watching the video, that is).

Wow... Feel sorry for the owner. XD

Haha that ending was classic.  

I liked it.  For six pages, it was pretty entertaining.  

The ending was the best though.

Good job.  

Thanks for all the positive reviews everyone and i'm glad you all enjoyed it.
Should i make more shorts like this and put them all in one script?
(With different endings that is)

Go for it dude.  I for one will definately read it.  

Hey loved your script. I directed a short film two years ago at film school coincidentally
about a video store robery called Straight to Video.  Go figure. But i bet there are plenty more.

But i think your script was better than the film i made. Loved the ending

haha. I'm glad you like it.  

Andrew it was a good and pleasant reading, but please format it correctly, buddy!

Good idea. This was in the MS WORD days. Now i have FD.

This is some funny stuff. Great ending. The whole situation was kinda random though. Kinda wish the clerk had a different name ... just kidding.

great script, man. it had me cracking me up. for some reason I picture Benny being an old guy who looks kinda like Stanley Kubrick, lol. "You like whacking it man?" dunno why, but i couldn't stop laughing when I read that line

haha. thanks for checking it out.

I just submitted a new version which is in HTML format. I also added like some extra lines to it. Not much though. I just wanted it to be HTML so it would be an easier read.

Yeah, this does have a pretty good ending.  And a really good title too, by the way.  It is nice and short and reads pretty quick -- like a bullet haha.

Got some general thoughts (and Spoilers):

*  The first 4 paragraphs might be a bit chatty.
*  The names of new characters should be in CAPS.
*  Why is Benny wearing a name tag?  Maybe he should explain why?
*  I don't know if I would have James cry.  I thought he was handling himself pretty well up to this point.
*  Why do they shoot the lady but not the guy?  And some people might not like that -- shooting the lady -- you know?  Maybe reverse these roles, and let the chick live instead.
*  And why not describe the video store owner for us?  I mean the second one.

All of this builds up to a pretty nice conclusion, but the format is kinda' off.  You have lots of double spacing.  But I suspect the version you just submitted will have most of that cleaned up.

So sure (referring to your previous post), this would be good in a script of combined shorts.  If I'm not mistakin', you've got several short scripts floating around that all have a little something in common --

-- you could gather them up and call the script "Wanton Gunplay with Andrew"  

I kinda agree about the name tag thing. At first when I was reading it I got confused and thought he worked there or something.

haha yeah

is it bad to say i think my best writing so far is like 4 pages? hahaha

Quoted from Antemasque So what do you think overall of it? Good? Bad? Or What?

Yeah, I thought it was okay. You had a fairly interesting scene, with a couple of shootings, capped off with a nice twist. I can't think of anything else that would have made it better, so well done.

Andrew,

I found this under the new scripts posted yesterday, didn't know until I clicked on the link to comments that it's been around for a while, at that point I had already read it .

Anyways, don't take it personally, but this did not work for me. I'm not a prude, subject matter is not the problem for me here. My problem is that you manage to gain my sympathy for James (for starters) and then you kill him off, same thing for the woman.
At the same time I developed a very strong dislike for Karl and Benny. I understand these things can happen during a robbery, but there is no satisfaction for me as the reader at all when apparently these two murdering bastards never have to pay up.

And what's wrong with the owner of the other store? Wouldn't a normal person call 911 if they witnessed this.

On a more positive note, I do think that you write really well, I just had a problem with the story itself, but I'm not really normal, so who cares.

I thought the guy in the store watching it was like wathcing the recording on the news? Did I misunderstand?

SPOILERS



the person at the end was watching TV and witnessed everything that happened... on the TV.

I'm actually planning on rewriting this with better dialouge and action and with more scenes.  

I agree with some of the format problems. Do CAP your characters upon introducing them.

I too was confused over Benny’s name tag. What’s that about?

One thing that doesn’t jive with me is motivation. I think Benny and Karl have to rob the place before all the tormenting takes place.  That would elevate the story, put it closer to Tarantino’s work.

But, if you don’t want them to rob the store,  then the killing should be triggered by something. Let’s say that Benny and Karl really came in for the videos and during the course of conversation with James, they get into a debate masturbation. Benny could get ticked off and this leads to the violence.

I would like to see James be the first person to speak.  James smiles, but isn’t he trained to say something like, “Can I help you find a particular movie?”

Why does Karl jump up and down in a couple of scenes?  Is he supposed to be happy?  Excited?  In one scene, he says “Time’s up.” Then jumps up and down.  Still not sure how to take his actions.

It’s kind of funny, but when I first read it, I thought he was a little dim-witted.  I pictured him jumping up and down like a mentally-challenged person might.  Is Karl kind of slow?

Here’s a contradiction that bothers me a bit.  When Karl says that the average American masturbates every day, James responds with “bullshit.”  That tells me James isn’t milque toast.  He’s in a situation where two guys he doesn’t know, appear to be goading him into some kind of confrontation. Yet he barks out “bullshit.”  And follows that with “that’s a lie.” Strong words.

Now I don’t have a problem with that if James is indeed a tough guy.   But then he wimps out and cries in another scene.  I lost respect for James right there.  He should either be tough, or weak.   Just my thoughts.

I’m wondering, but why is the video footage being viewed in another video store? Are the stores linked in some way??

Here is something to consider. The woman walks into the store during a tense moment. James is crying and his tormentors are toying with him. Wouldn’t the woman sense there’s a problem. Benny is also brandishing a handgun, right?   A way to get around this is to have the woman enter the store with an Ipod.  She could be absorbed in her music and walk smack into a bad scene without a clue, until it’s too late.

What might also be funny is if Benny and Karl use the woman in their little “masturbations Q&A.”  Maybe they should pose the question to her and torment her.  You could create some funny back-and-forth dialogue between  the four of them.

Are Karl and Benny supposed to be gay?
They seem to be turned on by exploiting a guy, James.  But not the woman. They just kill her.

Why does Benny say “Liars must pay,” after shooting the woman?
James did the lying.  If shooting the woman is to create guilt in James, then Benny should say something like:  “Liars must pay. I killed an innocent woman because you couldn’t give me a straight answer.  Shall we try again?”

I think Benny has to let James know that he will keep killing customers until James follows instructions.  This forces James to do the very thing(s) that he doesn’t want to.  Which in this case is to PERFORM.

Another twist might be:  Don’t shoot James. Just humiliate him.  Have James drop his drawers and masturbate.

When the last customer enters the store with his return videos,  Benny could say: “Hello, sir. To aid in your movie-going experience, see James the clerk over there. James is friggin’ Tarantino reincarnated. Right now he’s doing his impression of Val Kilmer doing John Holmes in Wonderland. Check it out.”

Finally, what if the man watching the TV at the end is not a video store owner.
What if he’s the guy next door at the doughnut shop.
He might think he’s just watching a crazy cable TV channel, until Benny and Karl show up for coffee…

Hahahahahahaha. Best review i've ever seen. Sorry it's so late. I was actually going through this and saw there was a comment on this i never viewed. All of your points are perfect. I love it all. If you don't mind, i actually might use some of them in the next version.

I have decided to completely rewrite it. Everything about it will be new. I think it's for the better. I've added some more scenes which actually feature a few of our own here on SimplyScripts.

I just started rewriting it. I'm on page 3 and Karl and Benny just walked in the store. If you remember in the old one this happened in the first scene. So that means i'm adding a lot of new stuff. So it's almost like a whole new script you're reading. I'd say this might end up to be somewhere from 10 - 20 pages.