I Scream by Pat Fitzgerald - Short - This is what happens when the ice cream truck business gets too far out of hand. 6 pages - pdf, format

Sorry Pat, but I just don't get this.  You have six pages of over-the-top violence without any rhyme or reason,  None of it really makes any sense.  It's as if your inspiration for this was some ice cream fell on your lap while you were watching Grindhouse and you hammered the script out before the ice cream melted.

Your characters severely lack and personality.  Kevin and Smitty were identical, one was just angrier and the other.  The reporter's report same very fake.  You should watch newscasts more closely and learn how they report the news.


Phil

I Scream - Ice cream, the penny drops.

While I didn't think the story was good, it was pretty well written. I see it as sort of a metaphore for the drug business. And I agree with Phil, the characters are too much alike. The story in itself feels a little bit pointless and way over the top. Obviously Kevin is deeply involved in the business but he seems like your everyday mindless punk that we've seen in countless movies only worse.

Remember to cap a characters name the first time you introduce them.

Rob

Hey guys, I didn't expect this to be up so fast so props to Don for that.

For me this was mainly just a piece of more practice material than anything.  I hadn't written in a while, so I wanted to make sure I still could.  Rereading this again I realize exactly what you mean by the characters.  As for the news report, I don't know how I thought that it was anything realistic when I wrote it.  I wouldn't even expect Fox news to do that bad.

The funny thing is, I haven't seen Grindhouse yet.  I think I just wanted to create a nice over the top script for no apparent reason.  Perhaps my testosterone levels were too high Friday night.

I'm suprised I missed the character caps thing when I reread this, but then again, looking at the overall script, I must have been a poor reader that night.

To save my name on this one, I think I'll completely rehaul everything this week and resubmit it.  Thanks Phil and Rob for panning this one (it deserved it) and to anyone else, I suggest you wait a week until I redo this before you read it unless you want something mindless.

Sorry about this one everyone.

-Pat

Hey Pat. I think these are the kind of scripts you should keep to yourself. We don't want to read your Practice, we want to read your material to its full potential--your juiciest stories, your greatest characters. Not just something you farted out to excercise your writing-  

Since this was a practice script I don't think it was even revised, and it shows. The characters were so flat I actually thought you did it on-purpose.

I hope the re-write turns out well. Good luck.

--Julio

Quoted from ReaperCreeper We don't want to read your Practice, we want to read your material to its full potential

While I understand where you’re coming from I don’t necessarily agree with you. I think the short section is a great place to try ideas on for size, see how other people respond to it and maybe pick up a few valid pointers.

Most of time when a writer have written a script, the writer is usually pretty blind to his/her own mistakes in the script because of the knowledge and feelings you went through when you wrote the script. You may have thought you explained everything just right but when somebody else look at your work they’ll pick up the short comings right away.

So in the future, please don’t assume you are speaking for anybody but yourself.

Rob

Hey Pat,

I pretty much agree with everyone else (flat characters, bad dialogue at time, etc..) but I think this could have some potential.

And I think the title is absolutely perfect. Especially if you plan on this being a B-level, exploitation flick a la Grindhouse. Love the title.

Haha I Scream. Funny in its sheer simplicity. Problem is, the script wasn't.

If you don't like what i am about to say about your script, that's cool but i have to churn out fair reviews based on honesty, and with that i thought your script was crap. And i can safely say this because a while back i submitted a little writing exersise named "Goose" which got completely slaughtered and rightly so. You have a very weak plot, weak characters, but the thing is your dialogue is good so maybe this writing exersise was good after all. However i wouldn't even bother re-submitting a revised copy because i just quite honestly don't think this has any scope. If you come back with something else in the future i will most definately give it a read because i like some aspects of your writing.

So overall, didn't like the script, but you have obviously learned where you have went wrong. I like your format though. Bang on.

And i too have those sorts of Friday nights lol.

                                                                   Robert

Hey there,

I'm back to reading stuff at this place again. Been distracted by other scripts, but love this place so....

Anyways, here goes my thoughts on this short.

First off, how can you misspell Haagen Dazs? That should be a crime in itself.

Okay, seriously now. I didn't like this script at all, however, I think you actually managed to have three acts, or a beginning, middle and an end which is good.

Bad thing is that I disliked all the characters and nothing seemed realistic at all. I hated Kevin and I think he's supposed to be the protag.

How do you peel out as you speed away?

Try to make your protagonist somewhat likable, even if he's a bad guy. If you don't who are we supposed to root for? I didn't care for anyone in this script.

Don't feel too bad though. My first script posted here (deleted now) still turns my face red.  

Hey everyone, thanks for reading my script (even though I warned you not to!).  Anyway, I plan to rewrite this tomorrow.  I'm going to be changing mostly everything then: characters, plot line, developement, etc...

Hopefully the second version of this will be better.  (I'm pretty sure it will be because it can't get much worse than this).

Once again, sorry for this script.  Like Pia said, it makes my face red.

-Pat

Update:  I just submitted the new script today so hopefully it will be up soon.  I think it's a lot better this time around as the only scene that remains mostly intact was the opening.  Other than that, I basically deleted the rest and started from scratch.

Well, I liked it. Then again, I'm a newbie to the script writing business and probably don't know good from bad. But it was enjoyable. Only noticed a few errors, but nothing that made me want to stop reading.

"It's only ice-cream..."

Hmmm, much has already been said about this Pat so I wont go on about it.  It's a crazy idea to have a war over ice cream, I wonder if you ever saw a comedy by an English comedian called Peter Kay (sorry I'm not sure where your from).  Anyway he wrote and stared in this comedy about waring ice cream men.  Yours was quite over the top though and it just didn't work.  If you wanted to work on it I'd make the conflict more subtle.