Opposite Sex by Will Ball (albinopenguin) - Short - Three guys hit the club for a "boys night out" where nothing is as it seems. 28 pages - pdf, format

Sorry - but this just didn't work at all for me. Your character descriptions are questionable. The club scene just doesn't work. People just don't talk like that. Are these men or 16 year old girls with insecurities? A 30 year old man going to a club because he's worried if he doesn't 'have it'? Really? A guy turning his back on 'a chubby girl' and then calling his friend bitch in front of her? None of this is plausible to me.  

lost interest the first time Johnson spoke.  What is he a Looney Toons spoof of a 1920's gangster?

hey guys, i appreciate attempts, but i'm going to assume that neither of you finished the script. this was actually my biggest concern while writing it.

this one's a hard sell. the first 2/3's are iffy. but by the time you get to the end, the script has a whole new meaning and reads differently. the reader has to read the script twice to get it in it's entirety.

so im going to ask that you temporarily suspend your beliefs of plausibility. im writing in this film's universe and i have to abide by its rules.

and conz, i was definitely worried that the guido character would come across too strong. i wanted "jersey shore" without overdoing it. but i think its hard to write guido dialogue without coming across as self parodying. i think im just going to scale it back a bit. an easy fix for sure.

im no pro, but you can't sell something by saying "the first 2/3's are iffy"  you gotta grab hold of the reader from the get go.  I'm not saying I do that, but it's definitely what I strive to do.  The one thing you always hear is that a producer will read the first 5 pages and if it isn't gripping, it's trashed.  

i dont mean to be too critical, and I don't even know how the guido character progressed, but I hated the way he spoke right out of the gate, so if he isn't supposed to be a hated character, I'd definitely tone his dialogue down a bit, at the very least, make it english.

i definitely get what you're saying Conz and i really do appreciate it. what i meant is that the first 2/3's are iffy the first time you read it. once you get through the entire script, the first 2/3's of the script take on an entirely different meaning (when you read it a second time). this is a script that warrants two complete readings.

the guido's supposed to be an asshole and i'm okay with the reader hating him. but im going to scale back his dialogue. i tried making his dialogue consistent and this is what happened.

Will,

Just got finished reading your script, and it wasn't really my cup of tea.  I saw what you were doing very early on, and from then on it became kind of repetitive and dull.  At 28 pages, it's a bit of a stretch for something that's this one note.  You could easily cut this down by 10-15 pages and still have the same effect.

My question is, what were you going for here?  Was there anything deeper than switching up the sexes to highlight stereotypical ways?  Was it supposed to be funny?  And if it WAS supposed to call attention to these traits, what were you saying about them?  What does highlighting them in this manner teach us?

Oh, and I'd tell you to fix Johnson's dialogue, but I see you already have that covered.

-Matt

thanks for the read Matt. surprisingly, you were the first one who told me that they saw the twist coming. i previewed the script for several people before putting it up on SS, and no one suspected it. one of my biggest concerns was that the reader could guess the ending. because if he/she does, then the script completely loses its impact. i'll wait and see if some more people guess the "spoiler" and if they do, i'll scale it back a bit and not make it so obvious.

it actually wasnt supposed to be funny. i wanted it to be real. more importantly, i wanted male readers to identify with the male characters and female readers to identify with the female characters (simply because they were the same sex). thataway when they reached the end, they realized they were sympathizing with the opposite sex all along.

and i agree, it could definitely be shorter. i intended it to be just 10 pages long, but it ended up being longer. quick question. where would you suggest that i shorten it? just overall or is there a specific scene that could be chopped down. i wanted the relationship between Dick and Jane to be real so i followed them through the attraction, comfort, and seduction stages.

thanks man!

Quoted from albinopenguin surprisingly, you were the first one who told me that they saw the twist coming.

Well, very early on I was writing down a comment like "No guys talk like this", and then it hit me.  After that, it all started to make sense.

Quoted from albinopenguin it actually wasnt supposed to be funny. i wanted it to be real. more importantly, i wanted male readers to identify with the male characters and female readers to identify with the female characters (simply because they were the same sex). thataway when they reached the end, they realized they were sympathizing with the opposite sex all along.

Hmm.  Not sure if I got that out of it.  BUT it could also be helped a lot by being filmed.  Maybe if you scaled back on the stereotypes just a bit, to make it less harder to digest?

Quoted from albinopenguin where would you suggest that i shorten it?

You don't need to take out any of their relationship stuff.  I'd moreso concentrate on not densely packing this thing with stereotypes and let it breath a little.  If you do that, I think you could easily lose several pages.

Good thinking. Thank you sir! I'm looking forward to reading your new short. Please excuse the delay however because I'm in the middle of moving and barely have a minute to spare haha. but i WILL be reading it.

Quoted from albinopenguin Good thinking. Thank you sir! I'm looking forward to reading your new short. Please excuse the delay however because I'm in the middle of moving and barely have a minute to spare haha. but i WILL be reading it.

No sweat.  I have a new short (Just Coffee) being posted in the next few days too, if you'd like to read that instead.  Either or.

I think Dressel brings up some good points, dude. This one's hard to swallow as it is, naturally with the concept itself but also with how different the first and second half are. I think any snippets you make will help bring out what I think it a very ambitious, albeit weird concept, especially if they help shape the tone of the story.

I can't get out of that bar fast enough. By that I mean the reading is confusing to me. Are Suzie Q and Jane Shemales?  
Is everyone except Harry gay? Is Johnson a 1930s junkie or, damn. Tell me it gets better (the shemales and such)after the first 12 pages.

Maybe yous could move this whole bar scene to another part of the script.

Let us get into the script a little before we go heavin our lunches or dinner, (the shemales and such)whatever the case may be.
The writing and formatting are ok from what I could read. The dialog needs help, or  maybe just Johnson's.
My two cents worth. I will read the whole script to find out if they ever get out of that weird bar.  

DLH

I was right, girls a guy, guys a girl and a guy. A porn movie.
Good twist Will.

Read the first 12 pages of Pyramid and you can yell at me. Then read the rest, yes?
  

Thanks James, I appreciate the input. I might have been a little too ambitious with this one.

Same with you Sci. I definitely appreciate the read and thanks for reading all the way through. I'm actually going on vacay in a bit, but will read Pyramid when I return.

It's funny because this is actually the second draft of the screenplay. The first draft was a lot more scaled back. But when I had a few people read it, no one guessed the ending. So I pushed the boundaries a bit and tried to make the male dialogue sound even MORE like a woman's. Furthermore, several other differences between men and women came to mind (that i wanted to exploit), so i crammed them into the second revision as well. This is probably where I went wrong. I just think it's hard to balance meaningful dialogue with believable dialogue. I want my dialogue to sound cliched the first time you read it, and then take on a completely different meaning the second time. Add that to the fact that i DONT want my reader realizing that the sexes are switched the first time through (but rather I want him/her to think that the dialogue is stereotypical to the character's sex), and things start getting complicated. Oh well. I guess I have a lot to work on haha

Good twist, but there felt like there was a lot of unnecessary filler in the beginning. Sorry, but that was just my take. I found myself wanting to read faster than I could.