The Deal by Jordan Wiebe - Short - Jerry, a mild mannered young man, has a meeting with a mysterious stranger named Louis, and is offered the deal of a lifetime, but it will cost him more than just money to get what he wants, it could cost him everything. 6 pages - html, format

thanks for posting this Don.  This was something I wrote up and plan to shoot in the next moth.  I just wanted practice filming so I wrote something as simple as I could think of, it's not much and only six pages and only has two people in it.

This is engaging enough for something you plan to do yourself.  There is alot of dialogue here -- maybe a bit too much -- but most of it works pretty well.  There are a few parts that might be a bit raunchy for some, but whether or not you choose to rein some of that in is a matter of personal taste.

(SPOILERS)

*  For a reader, "What if I?" is pretty confusing.  If you change this to "What if I...?" it will be more clear as to what you mean.
*  I would just have Jerry say, "I wanna be the man..." and lose the part about the b.b.b.
*  Louis is a little too vague about the terms of the deal.  I think it would be a little more real for Jerry to insist on a few specifics regarding the timeframes.

Now, this story had all the elements of leading up to something...but then it didn't.  Not really.  It feels like it ends too soon.

Nobody is going to be surprised as this story moves to its natural conclusion.  You should consider taking this story just a step or two further -- show us some consequences -- that is what would help this story feel complete.

I think you could do that and still keep it within budget, because you did a real nice job with that so far.

thanks for your comments Bert, I know some of the dialoge is pretty strong and raunchy, I don't have the cleansest mouth in the world (really doesn't go to well at church), and it does have a bit of an anti climax, hopefully not as bad as The Village, I probably should put more in the ending.  I'll take what you said into account as I re write this.  thanks again.

Hi Jordan

For a short film this is a pretty good script. It does, however, lag a bit at the end. Some unexpected twist might leave the viewer going away with your film stuck inside their mind. And I think that is your goal. Also, the description lines should be broken  up further. Try to use only three or four or maybe even five lines per action description. This sytle only makes it easier for the reader. Good job and good luck with your film.

Spencer McDonald

This was a decent read. I liked Louis' character, particularly because of his sing-songy, Tarantino-esque dialogue. I thought it was very well written. The only problem with the script is that too much is implied and, as a result, not that much actually happens in the story. Something's are better left implied (Louis for example. He's the Devil, right? It seemed obvious to me but maybe that wasn't what you were going for). But other things should be spelled out. As Bert said, the terms of the deal. I know Jerry's getting the girl but how? What's Louis get in return? Stuff like that. Otherwise, it's a very interesting, well written piece. Nice job.

thank you Spencer and James.  I'm gonna film this in a month or two so you're thoughts really help.  I know the ending needs some work, I don't really explain what's what.  Yes Louis is the Devil and what he gets in return is Jerry's soul.  I should make that more clear.  The reason there I put in so many lines of dialog is that this is practice for me.  I wanna learn how to film long passages of people talking and still make it interesting, that was my purpose with this, but I should probably break it up more, and yes the end, I do need to be more clear.  Thanks again for your imput, it will definatly help with the re write.  good luck with all your writing.

Hey Jordan

I gave this a read and I know this is quite an old one and your probably done with it but I'll still review it.

There are a few typo's but I'll leave them cos they've probably been picked up on.

Anway I must say I thought this was really good.  Like mentioned before it implies much and maybe the ending could be stronger but it does imply that Louis is the devil, so it works.

I understand why this is dialogue heavy, what with you intending to film this, and the dialogue was excellent.  Just out of curiosity, did you ever film this then?

Good stuff mate.

Wow, this one came back from the dead....LOL

Thanks for the bump and read Alffy,

I actually did film this over one evening with a couple friends and it did not turn out they way I had hoped, but now I have access to better equipment so I am gonna give this another shot.

Thanks again

This was a cool short Jordan. The dialogue I thought was top notch. I really liked their discourse and you brought out a lot of their character through the speech. Louis was a cool cat. And I liked the Buddy Holly glasses reference.

I read through some of the reviews and I didn't know he was supposed to be the devil, I thought he was just a mob boss or something. So you might wanna make that more clear. But really cool short. If you shoot it again and it turns out how you expected you should post it here. I'm interested to see how you'd shoot this from how it played in my head.

Thanks for the read Steven,

Yeah, Louise was implied to be the Devil, I may have to do something to make it a little more obvious, or maybe I'll let the reader decide.

Again thanks for the read.

I’m glad this one got bumped because it was an enjoyable read.

*SPOILERS*

It was clear to me that  Louis was Satan and that Jerry was selling his soul to him. It’s a very used and known dramatic situation that you’ve got here, yet you managed -through well written dialogue- to make it quite interesting to read.

You’ve got a grabber right away in the first page, I wanted to know more about this deal. But -as other readers have mentioned- there was something missing at the end. Some kind of twist, surprise or reveal, I don’t know, something to stray away from the classic soul selling scenario.

An I didn’t quite like the last bit: Louis laughing and saying to himself “this is too easy”. I could expect that from a villain in a cartoon (who usually talk a lot to themselves in order to give information to the audience, and usually laugh at their own dirty deeds) but Louis is much more stylish like that. His last line and evil laugh don’t make justice to his character; I would have expected something more subtle from him.

On the technical side, you could trim a bit the dialogue and some of the descriptions (i.e. “LOUIS, a young man in his twenties” = “LOUIS (20s)”) but overall it was nicely written.

Good job, man.

Thanks for the read Matias,

Yeah, there really isn;t a twist at the end, it's kind of anti climatic, I was kinda going for that, but maybe looking back on it I should give it another ending.

I was actully gonna have horns come out of Louis's head at the end but I decided against it...LOL, it would have looked cheesy.

Thanks again for your comments