Unholy Encounter by Allan Amenta - Short, Comedy - With the connivance of his Catholic friends, 13-year-old Tony Perelli joins their church’s Newman Club under false pretenses. His sole purpose in joining is not religious instruction but dancing lessons. It is the era of dancing and big bands, and he wants to be  prepared for high school dances. And what better time and place than the social hour following the Club’s meetings when the girls play the dance-band recording hits of the day and teach the clodhopping boys how   to Fox Trot and Lindy Hop. Eventually, however, Tony’s stratagem is exposed, and the autocratic priest in charge discovers that despite his Italian name and Catholic relatives, Tony is about as Catholic as Al Jolson,  the Marx Brothers, and the Archbishop of Canterbury. 20 pages - pdf, format 8)

Review: Unholy Encounter


Technicalities:

The first thing I noticed about this script is that the title sounds more like a horror script. The title certainly doesn’t conjure thoughts of comedy.

There were a few technical problems right from the beginning but they dissipated as the script progressed and I suspect they were more the result of getting started than anything.

The first thing I noticed when reading the script were “we sees.” We sees just remove the reader from the story. They’re completely unnecessary as it’s understood that we are seeing every image you present. Telling us what we already know we are seeing is annoying in addition to undermining the suspension of disbelief that should accompany any well written script.

It’s also unnecessary to tell us directly when a character is important. If he’s narrating the story, it can be assumed he has some relevance. Telling us personal insights into the characters is a device that generally belongs in novels. With screenplays, you generally just need to show us what we’ll be seeing and hearing on screen. If a character has a penchant to talk about events from the 1930s, then you need to show us that, not tell us.

It’s okay to put a year in the first slugline and describe some scenery as to set the tone for a period piece. You had some good cues with the music and the dances but how do we know we’re not at a 30s night in a modern setting? I think it would help to describe the 30s style scenery a bit. Are men in the church carrying hats? Wearing three piece suits with wide high-waist trousers? Ladies in the 1930s often wore tighter fitting dresses that accentuated the female figure - usually simple print dresses with longer hem lines. How about some 30s style automobiles - Model As or something - outside the church? Simple visual cues such as these will quickly orient the reader as to the period.

The use of beats is a device pretty much on its way out. Beats were originally used as markers to help meter and pace the story, serving essentially the same purpose as a beat serves in music. They have in recent years developed into devices that are most frequently used to break up large blocks of dialogue. Beats are unnecessary and dialogue is best either trimmed or broken up with action.


Now to the story:

**** SPOILERS ****

I liked the tone of the story better than the story itself. There’s some good writing here. Unfortunately, there are also some large blocks of narration that - though good - need to be cut. It’s simply too wordy. It tries too hard to rely on cleverness of word as opposed to being visually stimulating. The narration had a certain charm but it was overkill.

A big problem with the story is that it hinges on the idea that Tony’s false pretenses for being in the church were outrageous. I didn’t find his reasoning all that outrageous. Many people go to church for underlying reasons such as camaraderie. I simply didn’t find it such an insult to the church that a young man would go there initially to get dancing lessons - even if not a member. I realize the story takes place in an earlier time but still I found the subject matter a bit weak as the central element of a story.

Incidentally, why is it exclusively girls teaching boys? Why are there no boys who already know how to dance or girls who do not? That seemed strange to me. I realize that girls generally may tend to be into such things more so than boys - but not exclusively.

The script is generally well written and it displays some inspiration - even some charm. Ultimately, it suffers from overwriting and, in my opinion, a tendency to take its subject matter more seriously than the average reader will.

There’s also the matter of this being posted as a comedy. The script has a certain “Neil Simon” quality about it. And I suspect the writer may be somewhat inspired by Simon’s style. I have to admit, however, that I don’t believe I laughed once while reading. The strange thing is that I don’t believe the script is really all that bad. If it were streamlined and presented as a comedy-drama, it would be more likely to find its audience.


Breanne