Pumpkin Carver by Darell Bystry (sheepwalker) - Short, Comedy - A series of pumpkin related misfortunes drives Jack Carver to brutal murder... in a hilarious fashion. <12 pages  - pdf, format

This had a few funny parts, I particulary liked the Beer Trap...Over the top dialogue of Phil contrasted with the relative sweetness of Nancy was good.

Liked the surprise twist regarding the death of Nancy...That was a funny sequence...then Phil's Jerry Springer reaction to this horrific event.

Dr Mulberry was an effective catalyst to keep the madness rolling along...Don't get at all the rampaging elephant at the end..

Technically, a few spelling errors and what not, but I still got a few good laughs.

I think you did a pretty good job here.  Phil's excessive swearing may have been prevented some of his dialogue from being as funny as it could have been, but the Shaman's "speed racer" chant was good.  Got a good laugh from that one.

Same thing goes for the driver shaving and blindfolded while driving.  Had an Airplane/Naked Gun feel to it.

This was a typo, but I laughed harder here than any of the intentional stuff.  "Phil scratches his gentiles."

Gentiles?  Phil has some non-jews surrounding him?  It's genitals.

Phil's last words were pretty funny.

The elephant was a "weird for the sake of weird" thing, but I don't think it worked.

I liked the story, but I think Dr. Mulberry should have been more like Robert Stack on Unsolved Mysteries than a guy talking in an auditorium.  I just got that from him.

Good story, and some good humor in there.

Hmmm....

Not sure what to say about this one.

There were a LOT of typos throughout. Normally I overlook those, but they became a distraction here.

I can't say that I cared for the story too much. It was bizarre to me and didn't make sense.

I absolutely hated Phil. I think you took him a little too far.

If Mike is right and you intended this as an Airplane/Naked Gun type comedy, I must have missed it completely. I like both of those movies, but I failed to see any jokes here.

I really wish I could be more positive here... Don't take my comments too seriously though. Comedy is very subjective and you can never get everyone to laugh. I'm sure some people here will like it a lot and you would probably not like mine, but that's comedy and why I hate trying to write it.

I really didn't care much for this one.  It kinda reminded me of the remake of Halloween with the verbally abusive father who gets killed by the kid.  And why are Phil and Nancy married, he is a horrible horrible person, who on god's green earth would wanna live with someone like that, she is all lovey dovey and smoke comes outta this guys mouth when he talks.  I was kinda distracted by that, I couldn't see this as marriage that would work.  I liked some of Dr. Mulberry's line, maybe if he was more like troy mcclure from the Simpson's it would have made it even more humorous.  It fit the theme well and I could see there was comedy here so in that way I think it succeeded.

Dear Gustav,

Some typos made it distracting.  Like this one:

Phil scratches his gentiles.

But it's funny.  And the competition is comedy.  He's a little over-the-top with his swearing, bigotry, reckless driving, abusiveness, drinking, etc., but I guess it still works under the category of Exaggeration.

The pumpkin truck driver was pretty hilarious.  Surprised he didn't try to build a house of playing cards while behind the wheel - blindfolded, of course.

I think it would have helped to explain why the President's death drove Jack to madness.  Otherwise, it comes off as arbitrary and difficult for the audience to attach any meaning to it.

The beer trail was funny, but the bat-beating sort of crossed the line into horror.  You laid the groundwork for Jack wanting to kill Phil, but why that paved the way for Jack to become a serial killer, I'm not sure.  I don't think Dr. Mulberry adds much to the script -- in fact, I think he detracts.  Every instance he speaks is a missed opportunity to just show us what exactly happened inside Jack's head.  If you were to rewrite, that's what I would focus on.

I first want to come out that whoever wrote this probably didn't bother to check for spelling errors or just didn't have enough time to fix them, though it doesn't take that long to fix spelling errors in a 12 page script.

Apart from the errors I found, this one was interesting. I didn't really find it a comedy, except for Phil's excessive use of the the F-word and other stuff, but more of a...I'm not sure. It seemed like a creepy 50s short film.

But you did use the theme alright, in a very disturbing way. Your descriptions were well-done.

I did find the Shaman part a bit cliché and pointless because that's all you see from him, and he says the unoriginal "Evil comes this way!" Though, I'm sure the cliché part was part of the comedy, no?

Good work.

Sean

Excellent concept, but, imo, it could've been executed better. The single biggest problem I had with the story is Phil's excessive swearing -- it's not offensive, it's boring.

The story, though, is interesting. I liked how it was presented with Dr. Mulberry acting as a kind of narrator, and the idea of a killer who makes jack o' lanterns of his victims is, I think, marketable.

Seth

Hello Gusto,

I think that the idea of using the screen to help tell the story is good.  It's a classic kind of exposition and I automatically think of Jurrasic Park.

Well, I would feel very bad for any child to have to grow up with a dad like Phil.  His character can be summed up in one word: f*****

Although you didn't work the comedy end, I think that you tried to put forward a good effort.  The elephant at the end is really good.

My own opinion is that you should work the incidents and characters more.  I know you wanted to get across the fact that Phil was a real loser, but see what else you can come up with.  A few f** and then go a little deeper.

I didn't like the cat-o-lantern because I love kitty cats, puppy dogs... fluffy little bunnies you know; so sorry I can't give any raves there.

I made a few typo notes and comments:

murder [murderer]

chilling events [the] that came to twist...

three sizes [to] small *too

pg 3 Hey [Nacy] Nancy

What does an Indian Shaman look like?

7 [whats] * what's

How do you play chess against yourself?

[chocked] choked to death

it [brakes] into ab insane smile *breaks

...you seen the f* [remote] *+?

I didn't get where "The driver was replaced by a bear." came from.  At that point I thought I was back in a different script.

You might trim Dr. Mulberry's last speech and end with some words from Jack.

I think that this would make a good premise for a horror, but it doesn't fit the comedy needed for this OWC.

Good effort.  You had and idea and went with it; and that's what counts as far as developing the craft goes.

Sandra

This was a nice attempt at absurd comedy, but it's not a good sign when some of the typos are funnier than the jokes.  Sometimes this went a little more OTT than need be.  I liked the trucker bit up until he became a bear because

a) it reminded me of the joke in Clerks the cartoon: "Oh no, bear is driving, how can this be?" which no one on this board but me probably gets.

b) it jumped out of the range of the possible.  Most of the jokes have some sort of grounding in reality.  An unlikely reality yes, but a reality.  Here, I'm asking, "Where did this freaking bear come from?" and I'm out of the script.

Phil was so annoying with every third word being profanity that I kept hopping Carver would kill him and we can move on, but that didn't happen until the end.  I think we needed to get there earlier, because otherwise we only see Carver kill one person.  And a cat.  Not only that, but it's with a bat, which seemed kind of pedestrian next to the absurd whole, though the trap bit was funny.  I think we needed to get to the killing earlier and see where Carver went from there.

I just didn't like this one at all.  It wasn't funny enough to be a comedy and it wasn't good enough to be anything else.

Dr. Mulberry didn't sound at all like a doctor.  He came off as someone who was rambling.  The fact that you kept referring to Jack in his pumpkin mask forced me to think that he was Mulberry.  When I learned it was just a red herring (whether intentional or not) annoyed me.

Phil was extremely over the top in his behavior and his dialog.  I received the impression that you were trying to see just how awful and disliked a character you could make.

I got the impression that this scripts was something that you just wrote up in one sitting and submitted it without looking back.  While I understand the time-constraint of the one week challenge, this script seemed like something you wrote while watching television.


Phil