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Welcome Home Brew by Tom Levesque - Short - Bob has returned to his hometown from a lengthy absence, he arrives at a bar to reconcile his drinking demons only to find he is still drinking. 101 pages - pdf, format
101 pages? I'm guessing this belongs on another board, but not this one.
Gary
Some of my scripts:
Bounty (TV Pilot) -- Top 1% of discoverable screenplays on Coverfly I'll Be Seeing You (short) - OWC winner The Gambler (short) - OWC winner Skip (short) - filmed Country Road 12 (short) - filmed The Family Man (short) - filmed The Journeyers (feature) - optioned
This is really dense and filled with alot of prose.
Quoted Text
Warehouses and derelict abandoned buildings scattered along the single road, lamp-posts are lit in the deep blue twilight sky. Wind blows some rubbish across the street.
Lights of a car in the distance break the visual silence, it moves closer and passes the only building with a light on.
The warehouse shaped building is a bar, with florescent buzzing lights in the window.
You could cut this down to two, maybe three lines. Abandoned buildings, passing car, and the bar are the three things the audience needs to see.
Quoted Text
POV: BOB CAN SEE AN OLD DRUNK MAN SLEEPING WITH A CIGARETTE IN HIS HAND AND HALF-DRUNK BEER. BOB SEES FAT WOMAN AND DARYL WATCHING
This should be Bob's POV: or BOB'S POV: and the action shouldn't be in all caps. You do this again on page 7.
So, the writing does get better towards the end, but I think the big problem here is that nothing really happens. There's no conflict, well I guess internally, but that's really hard to show in a 7 page script.
I actually liked the scene where Bob watches the drunk couple. Paints a bleak setting.
I was kind of expecting something to happen towards the end, maybe something with Darryl, but nothing really does. Like reaper mentioned, he just resigns himself to a shitty life for no real reason.
Overall, I just don't think this works as a short. It was confusing and just filled with too much unecesarry description.
I'm sorry, but there was just too much description. It read like a novel. The flow is really taken out of the script if there's constant 3-liners between the dialogue. I also found that a lot of this description is focusing on irrelevant things, like the old man dribbling in his sleep, for example. Not only does this have absolutely no impact of the 'story', but it could actually be seen as satire, and seems as your script doesn't strike me as much of a comedy, I'd just leave it out altogether.
'The Fat Woman still playing the slot-machine wins and the sound of coins hitting the metal tray gets Daryl’s attention.' This could easily be reworded into 'The Fat Woman hits the jackpot and coins come flooding out.' I've pretty much said the same thing as you did, minus 'Daryl's attention', which, in my opinion, would be something the director or actor choose to do.
The amount of times you've told us 'Bob drinks' is a bit excessive. We get it, he's drinking.
I've missed out a bunch of other things, but one of the biggest, if the not THE biggest problem with this script is the story. There is, as far as I can tell, no story. We don't know what's bothering Bob. We don't know why he's so depressed. In fact, we don't even know Bob. We know absolutely nothing about him. How are the audience expected to connect with a character who's frankly, boring and insignificant. Is this just a day-in-the-life of the world's most saddest man?
I can see that you were going for an emotive, internal-battle kind of story, but it just isn't happening here. It feels like this is just a segment from another film. Is it?
I don't know. Hopefully you take the advice that myself and others have given you. Keep writing and have fun.