Psychic Meltdown by Will Ball (albinopenguin) - Short - A short tempered psychic deals with three dim witted callers. 3 pages - pdf, format 8)

Thanks for putting this up! This was originally an assignment for a comedy class of mine and it was received quite well. So naturally, i wanted to see what everyone on SS thought

I liked it. It's a nice idea and well executed.  :)

I realise that comedy is subjective, but the gunshot at the end didn't work for me. It felt a little clichéd. The tone of it was also slightly out of place (too heavy for such a light piece). Maybe have the absurdity of the experience make him reconsider? Or just leave it open?

Will,

Really enjoyed that. It worked well for me. Very dark...

Write some more.

Re

thanks guys, i really appreciate it.

the ending is actually new. i wasnt sure if it was appropriate, but I kind of liked it. so naturally, i wanted to see what everyone else thought.

i plan on writing much more. im in the midst of writing a feature and since its my first, its taking me longer than expected. so these shorts are a nice way to escape and write something fresh. plus my good friend and former roommate James M, told me that theres a growing market for these two/three minute shorts.

at any rate, i love the community here and i plan on reading as many other pieces of work as possible.

Not bad Will,

I enjoyed this piece and feel it would be more suitable for a radio environment.  It's funny and works and was worth the read.

All the best,


Javier

Will

First off, what a great name, Will Ball, I love it.

I also enjoyed your script, a real dark humour to it which I loved.

Obviously this isn't to be taken seriously but one line rom the script

"I have time for one last call and it looks like we have one on the line right now."

-- She only takes three calls per show? Must only be a five minutes slot between programs or something. As I said I realise this is obviously not be taken seriously its just that stuck out for me when reading it.

I like the dialogue well scripted and witty the "Trust me sir, pull the trigger." putdown was a knockout. A strange way to promote your business calling the listeners "dumb asses" but hey, this never pretended to be within the realms of reality in the first place.

A cool idea for a short short and a welcome slice of ebony black comedy too. Nice work.

Col.

very simple. A little bit silly. Felt more like a sketch.

Good idea. a harrassed Psychic. That's comedy gold right there and you milked it for every drop of gold.

The best thing is I could imagine this sketch being acted out by a muppet.  

Yeah, hi Will.  This was very well done until the ending. Didn't fit in at all with the fun spirit of the script.
Maybe you could have her say....'you don't need to do this cos you're going to win the lottery in ten minutes'..Something like that but obviously funnier.

You should expand this into a longer skit, maybe 5 or 6 pages. There is heaps of potential for all sorts of weirdos ringing her.

Hi Will,

Enjoyed this loads, very funny, loved the bleak ending too. This deserves to be extended a little maybe, but as it stands, it is still hugely enjoyable.


Craig

You dude. Sorry it's taken so long to get to this. A couple of small things. This isn't an issue with this script in particular but for future reference, you need to write numbers out as words. In this case, nobody's gonna read your dialogue as "One-eight-oh-oh" or "Nine-nine cents." This stuff is a given but about half the time, there's a couple different ways to say a set of numbers. Like I said, future reference. Also, you might have Miss Theo doing something on set to break up the dialogue and make the script more visually appealing. I don't know. Rubbing a crystal ball or something? Not saying use that. Just something to consider in general. Not sure how you expand this into something better. It's pretty straightforward sketch comedy. You could have some behind the scenes stuff with Miss Theo if you wanted but I don't think it's necessary. Anyway, good stuff! The ending's just fine. The dark stuff, when it works, is usually the best.

Not sure if it was just the format that i opened it up in, but the action was starting on the title page.
Isnt miss theo a real psychic?  I would probably use a fake one since its your personal script.
I thought the title was a little weak.  Could think of something a tad more clever or less descriptive.  Like if she had her phsycic slogan or something to that effect.
Also for the last caller personally I think it would be funnier if she was more exasperated than angry, if that makes sense.  Like just upset about people calling the wrong number, but not particularly interested in the suicide.  I thought the "trust me just kill yourself" line a little out of character and harsh.  Maybe something more on the lines of her just being sarcastic 'well, it looks like its just gonna get worse for you' or whatever.
But I did notice someone else pointed that out as a favorite line, so its just a matter of taste.

Overall funny little skit, could see a crappier version of this on MadTV or something.

Enjoyable read until the end but thought it might work better visually if there was an assistant putting through these calls, like Ros does in Frasier, that the psychic could gesture to.
I also wasn't clear about her final piece of dialogue, where she mentions the ambulance team not wanting to clean her blood of the walls twice. It made me think that she had already had a vision of this, and her killing, so that, when the shot fires when she's off the set,I expected someone to have killed her - maybe caller number 3. I know I'm wriitng too much in here, but wondered whether he might have been husband, she the one who had left him, taken the kids, house etc, and when she advises him to pull the trigger, it's her fatal mistake.

Just toughts,

Best,

H

This is one of those shorts that is really more like a skit than a story. Is that what you were going for here? If so then it works ok I guess but I didn't find it that funny personally.

If it's meant more as a short film I don't think there is enough in the way of story to carry this along. It's just a scene and needs more depth to be effective. In the beginning I think you could have described the psychic better. Just saying she looks like a psychic is too vague, how does she look like a psychic? What is she wearing and what is she doing? How old is she? You've only got one character so give us a sense of who she is. I would also reference her as Miss Theo as well in the action passage and not just in the dialogue. Also remember to make sure to use CAPS for the name, or for woman, if you don't call her by her name.

Your script also ends abruptly. So we know it is the end you should include FADE OUT or at least something to signal it is the end of the script.

Cheers,
Tim.

Hey just reread this after it was reposted?  Did anything get changed?  Not sure if you cleaned up anything little but I didnt notice any significant changes.  

Hey Will,

Look what I found, Psychic Meltdown called Ms. Theo.

Javier

This was cute, but I thought it was just too abrupt.

Is Miss Theo doing a television program?  Sounds like she is.  If so, this show lasted only two minutes.  I think the whole thing could be stretched out to more than three wrong numbers.

MAD TV used to do psychic television show spoofs, using a psychic that was always wrong and how she would recover from her mistakes.  They would lead up to each of these mistakes.  I think this script needs this,


Phil

hey javier, thanks for bringing this to my attention. i actually had no idea that this existed. how did you find it?

and thanks for the read phil. ive toyed with the idea of making it longer, but never quite found the inspiration to do so. i didnt want people thinking it was a blatant mad tv ripoff (because it was never intended to be), so i tried to steer clear of things that were done before.

I found it by the tag word simplyscripts.

I remembered the wording was familiar and realized that it your script.