Well it's all done now, so I'm happy to confirm that you are right Kham, I wrote Leo.

Quoted from AnthonyCawood Well it's all done now, so I'm happy to confirm that you are right Kham, I wrote Leo.

Nice play - you kept saying you don't do comedy

I honestly don't normally, thought I'd give it a go

I wrote But I Love You....

Congrats to my opponent Stevie! We were fairly close in the voting so I'll take that as a sign we were equally matched.

I wrote Till Cake Do Us Part.

At first I had zero good ideas for a story. But since our parameters said two people must die at a wedding it was pretty obvious to me they should be the bride and groom. But how could I plausibly kill them off at their own wedding? A jilted lover of course. The next question then became how to do it in an interesting way.

As so often in my thought process, I look back at Hitchcock. Specifically his thoughts on surprise and suspense. What's more interesting? Having a bomb in a suitcase blow up unsuspectingly, or knowing the bomb is there and waiting for it to explode? That became the genesis of my idea. Instead of a bomb though, I'd have a poisoned cake at a wedding and build tension as I teased people eating it over and over.

What wasn't clear, and my fault, was the twist at the end. Roy intended to kill bride and groom at first with the small cake, but when he hears of Matt's cheating ways decides he doesn't want Julia to spend an eternity with the scumbag so kills himself so he can finally be reunited with his one true love. Page length made that hard to set up at the end though.

However as I began to write, the absurdity of the situation pulled me towards taking a comedic approach. In the back of my mind, I kept thinking of Something About Mary with Roy becoming a facsimile of Matt Dillon's character in it. Utterly despicable in a goofy way. I knew comedy is hard, and I've never really written an all out comedic script before but I've always wanted to try. It was really fun to write. However, I knew going for an all out comedy would be a huge risk for the tournament and as the results show, it was a risk that backfired on me in the end.

That's said I'd do it again as I liked this little script for what it was. Was surprised how many people were put off by having a SUPER appear a few seconds into a scene, but not by how many people were turned off by the jokes, good or bad. In my mind's eye, I think this script would play out a lot better on screen than on page since so much of comedy hinges on an actors performance. I might rewrite into a proper short and resubmit.

Good job Stevie. Hope you bring it again it next round!

Quoted from TheUsualSuspect I wrote But I Love You....

Which, of course, means I wrote Blood Brothers.

I already told TheUsualSuspect what I think of his work, but, I'll share it with everyone. I thought it was gutsy and well done. No way he deserved to go home in this round, and no way the vote reflected the closeness of our two scripts. It was a dead heat for sure.

Thanks to all the great comments on Blood Brothers. I've already started a rewrite to clarify the inciting incident, and address several other notes.

For the record: the answer to the "why now?" question is supposed to be Walter's cancer diagnosis. Looking back, I realize I was being way too subtle on the first (most important) reference, and lost the other references for different reasons.

Haven't decided how I'll address the Nam timing issue. I'll figure something out.

Not sure the ending worked how I wanted, either. I wanted to leave the reader wondering if Walter did what he did for the right or wrong reason. Was he selfish? Didn't want to watch his friends slowly die off, and also saw a way to relieve long-held guilt? Or, did he do what he knew they all really wanted to do, but couldn't? (He knew Walter would say "no." Not because he didn't want it, but because he wouldn't do that to his friends.)

I'm not sure I pulled that off.

Anyway, my hope is to repost on the site, look for any interest. Absent that, I might shoot it myself. Shouldn't be too hard.

The night of the due date I had an idea. It was a good piece, and I got five pages in when it hit me — no one is gonna die! There’s no way to make anyone die here. So, I scrapped it and came back to my original idea, which was The Graduate. Enough said. It sucked, poorly written. James wrote a much better script than I did, so congrats to James on his!

So Khamanna is indeed correct once again, I wrote TWO BLIND MICE.

Congratulations to Warren who wrote a superior script, and I'm excited to see what he comes up with for the next round.

I've had these characters knocking around in my head for a while; they were part of a short script I wrote years back, and I thought I could get them into this situation, but obviously it came out confusing.

It was really difficult to move them around the party and get the 'alone time' I needed for the characters to interact with each other. Looks like I tried to jam a 10 page script into 8 pages. I think I was also trying not to spoon-feed the story and thus got too bare on exposition. But a carpenter never blames his tools.

It was supposed to be clear from the interactions between the characters that Tommy and Lenny were low-level mobsters, that Adam worked for a money launderer named Yuri, and that Lenny was there to collect a debt for his "union boss" Joey, because Adam pulled a fast one (letting the tenant do the construction open shop). Was also supposed to be clear in Carlee's dialogue toward Tommy that she was an FBI agent and that Tommy had flipped, and that they were romantically involved.

Yeah, the sniper taking out the guard. I'm going to say that the sniper saw him as a rogue target, something he wasn't expecting. And needed to keep Lenny alive for questioning. Yeah, let's go with that.

I thought I had also dropped enough hints about this basically being OF MICE AND MEN with hit men. The title, the name Lenny, and the ending. At first I had Tommy shooting him in the back like the novel, and then I thought it worked better if Lenny would plead to die.  (Thank you to Stump, who I think was the only person who got it! lol)

Thanks again to all who plodded through this for the greater good. I'm always going to write character dramas if given the chance. I find we remember characters more than we remember plot. Ferris Bueller, Damone and Spicoli, Lloyd Dobler and Diane Court - that's my wheelhouse. I'm always going to write because I have something to SAY, not because I have an idea for a script. So in this case, for this contest, I had to come up with a theme - in SADIE's case the theme was easy, and here it was basically about loyalty and friendship - and then shoehorn it in to the parameters. Lesson learned!

I'm going to expand this to see if some page length gives it clarity and go from there.

Thanks again,

AJR

I wrote The Harvest. And no, I can't tell you what the abyss is. First, you have to think like the abyss. Then, you must become the abyss. Only then will its true nature be revealed.

Quoted from MarkItZero I wrote The Harvest. And no, I can't tell you what the abyss is. First, you have to think like the abyss. Then, you must become the abyss. Only then will its true nature be revealed.

That's deep, man.

Congratulations to my opponent.  I wrote my second drama ever, The Prom-ise of love.

I broke screenwriting 101 because I knew the script didn't have any conflict and I didn't have the pages to make the antagonist their health, much like the weather in The Day After Tomorrow was the antagonist for most of the film.

It was also partially based on a real life story of 2 sick kids who died at their make a wish party.  The kids mom also died. Likely in my story, she had put off cancer treatment so she could focus on her kids, but, died at the party as well.

I'm always trying to push myself to write genres that I'm uncomfortable with.  And this was hard.  

I hope I surprised some of you.  Looking forward to the April challenge.  I feel like I wasted a golden opportunity, but, don't we all.  

As usual, I learned a lot, relearned a huge lesson about conflict, and will come back stronger.

Thanks to all who read, commenced, and voted, even if you didn't vote for me.  Votes were important to the event, so thanks.

I will read all the entries till the final.  

Good luck to all.  I would do this again.  It was a blast.

Perhaps we could do teams next.  Best score wins each round.

Dan

Quoted from AnthonyCawood Well it's all done now, so I'm happy to confirm that you are right Kham, I wrote Leo.

Congrats Anthony, head and shoulders above for me that round.

Quoted from PKCardinal That's deep, man.

So, it's like my toilet after I submit my offerings to the porcelain god??

Dan

Thanks to all who commented (and voted) on mine, Parties by Leo, just thought I'd explain a few things and decisions I made...

The idea that Leo planned parties is apparently historically accurate, he was Master of Feats and Banquets, which I found amusing and with a twist I could finally get this into a short.

Some of the visual jokes only work if you know his works of art, so some may not get picked up by everyone, but I tried to have some verbal and visual gags... but I don't normally write comedy so was pretty much winging it.

I intentionally went with modern speech, no idea in what way I'd indicate or get close to renaissance Italian, so didn't try.

I'll be re-writing this (and my first round entry) after the challenge is over, so thanks for comments, will be using some of the suggestions in the next draft.