Closure by Oney Mendoza (Oness) - Short, Drama - Flooded with traumatic memories of his youthhood, Dano Jensen, will finally end a chapter in his life. - -   Dogglebe One Week Screenwriting Exercise Submission rtf, format 8)

(pretty much all spoilers)

Well, Oney -- if you haven't already gone back and looked at the thread for Marshallamps' story, you need to go back and fix your post. You are kinda' ruining your story.  I mean, I liked it and all, but I would have liked it better if I had not known beforehand where you were going with it, you know?

The strength in this one is the dialogue between the bully and victim; it rang pretty true to me, without false notes. (I hope you didn't really have a bully of your own...)

I also thought the old prostitute was pretty funny. It never occurred to me that maybe they would mess around with us after we were gone just for fun...ugh  :-/

Bert,

 Oops...I hadn't realized the effect with that post...I deleted that part anyhow. Sorry. Thanks for reading this.

 No Bert, I've never had a bully in my life, but I witnessed a lot of bullying go on from my high school and there was this one kid everyone called "fag-boy"(I don't mean to offend anyone) and in the eleventh grade he did get into a really nasty brawl with a bully right outside school. Poor guy...

 Seriously think about it though, doesn't EVERYONE bully someone?

-ONEY

I went back and fixed my posts, too.  Hopefully, not too many people saw it.

Good job, Oness. It stayed pretty tight and you got us feeling sorry for Dano and hating Keith. Made his actions justified on some level...

SPOILERS

...although I would have liked to see him working up to what he did to Keith in the end. My feelings are somewhat mixed on that, however. You made it quick, but a workup to this and the internal conflict about whether or not to do it might've been ok. But it works well as a one page deal too. I dunno. I flipflop, I guess.

 Wow. I'm surprised people are actually liking this...I feel it's super bad, plus it only took me like thirty seconds to come up with an idea. I hate that feeling of rushing...ugh.

 Thanks George for reading it! I had a quick bit where Dano did have that inner moral problem and was practically fighting with himself if he should(you know). I "backspaced" it because I felt it slowed it down just a tad. I should have written an alternate for that little scene...too late now :-/

 I appreciate You and Bert for taking your time and reading this. Thanks.

-ONEY

Hey Oney!


SPOILERS -->


I read this and thought it was good. I liked the overall storyline. The length was fine too.

I too felt sorry for Dano. I really did. I think you handled the bullying aspect of the story well and Keith was repulsive, so good job there. Your voice-overs worked well too.

I am glad that Dano tried at least to stick up for himself by knocking Keith off his bike! I was thinking, "yay, he got one in there!" even though it was a short lived glory.

I found one thing which bugged me though... when someone is murdered, is their body embalmed straight away or do they need to do some kind of post-mortem thingy and police investigation? Would it go straight to the funeral home the next day or somewhere else? I've meant to ask this before, but forgot.

It was indeed interesting to see Norah abuse her job like that. Does make you wonder how many 'jokes' these undertakers play... :-/ I liked that scene with her though, was a nice break in the script at that point.

Good stuff and well written x

Oney - Though I enjoyed certain parts, such as the humor and dialogue, I didn't really like the story overall. It seems you didn't either ;) I guess it seemed a little obvious and uninspired, but it wasn't bad. Perhaps you "backspaced" too much, the story seems to end too abruptly. Good effort, though.

It's certainly better than what I contributed, which was nothing. I didn't get my story finished, and I knew I wouldn't. I didn't even see that thread until late Wednesday. This week I intend to contibute something.

I think you nailed the bully.bullied relationship. Sometimes even if the poor guy stands up to the bad guy, he STILL gets the stuffing beat out of him. The story had me feeling for Dano and a twist at the end, but I saw it coming. Still good.

 Hey everybody! Thanks for the reads...

 ANDY - I suppose they would take at least 1-3 days to examine the body. My fault :B. Thanks for pointing that out to me though!

 PETE - Yeah I felt it was obvious also while writing it, I'm sure if it was a full-length I would have spent more time in building a mystery of some sort around (his) death and all, but this was the first time I've attempted at a short and I felt I really needed to get to the point. But, like I said I came up with the basic concept in a few seconds and wrote it like in a half. Completely rushed, but I do see your point. Thanks.

 IMPULSE - Thanks. I did try to create a "hatred" toward Keith without writing a series of bullying scenes. I'm glad that little neighborhood scene works.

Thanks everyone.

-ONEY

Thought I'd read all of these, but looks like I missed a couple.

You did a good job with this, Oney. I enjoyed it.

SPOILERS



The voiceover at the start sets things up nicely and later, the dialogue between Keith and Dano rang very true. He was a very believable bully

I like the scene with Nora- a nice bit of comic relief. She's only a minor character but you gave her personality which I liked.

You wasted no time getting to the ending and the killing had a good impact. I particularly like the closing lines of dialogue. "Goodnight, you ass."

For a short script, you packed a lot in. If I were to suggest improvements, I'd say expand the beginning, give us more of a sense of why  he's been driven to murder. You do this well in a few short scenes but I'd like to have seen more. Also, you could have left it a bit longer between him seeing the body and flashing back to the killing, give us a bit of suspense.

Overall, I enjoyed it

My only big problem with this script is that it seems rushed.  Adding another five or ten pages to the existing scenes (not creating new ones) would've helped a lot.  And I would've held off on Dano's confession.

I think it was Andy who pointed out that murder victims aren't released right away.  If autopsies are required (and one would be here), the body could be held for weeks.


Phil

Cool story.  I've had a bully in my life, and I've been a bully to others not even knowing it, so this story reflects well on the two different personas.

However, I am curious why Dano waited so long to get back at Keith.  Why then?  Why that night?

Otherwise, it's a reflective and subtle piece of society that depicts the bullies and the bullied very well.  Good work.

When I was in high school these three kids would call me ****tard... So I guess things got out of hand and I egged his house with my friends, so the next day at school during lunch they poured milk all over my hair and beat me raw in the boy's bathroom.

But the day after that I hit the big one over the head with a book. It was all for a good cause.

SHAM - Thanks for reading this. I think adding the "twelve years later" was a little much, but I personally feel that it might actually take that long to build up the confidence and scheme up a plan like Dano did.

HUGGYBEAR - Wow, sorry dude. At least you got *your* revenge with the book! :D
You say it was for good cause, does that mean the a-holes stopped messing with you?

-ONEY