You Can Never Leave by George Willson (tubkas) - Short, Horror - Chris stumbles into an old house for help and finds himself trapped. - pdf, format 8)

As far as short scripts go, this isn't too bad. I wanted to know and discover a bit more. It really didn't rock my boat or anything, but it was interesting. As far as the OWC goes? It doesn't quite cut it. It still made it in, in spite of having more than three characters...and I'm going under the idea that "actors" are playing multiple roles, but even so, the numerous characters in a nine pager detract from the focus on the three characters first introduced.  I didn't mind some characters speaking different languages (although they should be in English) but it just didn't work for me in the long run.

Still, the script appears to be error free and does have an interesting premise.

Typical story in most every case, not a bad thing as I believe the challenge didn't call for one.  But this is one I've heard many times in my day.  And I'm not even old enough to tell legends and lore just yet...  Just yet.

Anyways, a few things bothered me here.  The way you'd bring in Lightening and then stop it with a new sentence.  If need be toss it on a line by itself.  People will say "Orphan" this and that, whatever... They're not that bad.  And Speilberg, believe this or not, is notorious for using them.  So is Syd Field.  Then you'll have someone come in and say "He/they has/have the bank to do so"

Again, whatever.

I also don't think you should speak in Spanish.  I mean, it looks cool and sounds cool, but it's not going to win you any points.  Just use (in native tongue) and then say it in English.  I learned this after having a screenplay of mine professionally critiqued and it cost me 500 bucks.  Imagine my disdain when I got back 10 pages full of red marks... and then a bank statement withdrawal of 500 bucks.

You learn quick.

Anyways, another decent stab but nothing that stands out above the the crowd right now.

The ending reveals much. I was going to complain about villains' motive but there came the ending and the ending of it is just great.

Really enjoyed it. Could do without Pierre and seniora Shavez perhaps.

George,

Can't say i got this at all. Definitely agree with Balt that if you write English, stick with English. When they speak spanish or french just use the wrylie (In French).

Didn't get any tension or creepiness from this script. Just my opinion. Though it was well written. You also, didn't adhere to the rules IMO. far more then three characters. This felt like the song "Hotel California". Yet, that didn't payoff very well either. Sorry I didn't like it. Thought you got a bit too fancy with your language. If they said something important in those moments, I didn't get it. Might have ruined this script for me.

James

George,

I think you needed to increase the tension more.  I was hoping for sort of a slow buildup of dread but never got it.  I was a bit confused  over who these various characters were and what they were doing in the house.  Would have loved to have a universal translator while I was reading this.  The ending was more ironic than unnerving.

Didn't get this sentence:

"A slice rents one of his pants legs revealing
a wicked gash in his leg."

You broke the three actor rule.  But then again, so did I in my script.  So be it.  Anyway, you knocked this out in one week, so good job on that

For the record, before I wrote this, I read the rules carefully. The rules state that there are three actors: one female, two male (one in a wheelchair). In the various scenes, you'll note that it never breaks this rule. You'll note that neither Pierre nor Franz walk because they're played by the actor in the wheelchair who also plays Michael. Delena also plays Gina and Senora Chavez. The challenge does not limit the characters. It limits the resources. None of the overlaps appear in any scenes together.

And as for the other languages, with the exception of Chavez and the bit at the beginning, they all say the same thing, and it's the title of the script. As for Chavez, her Spanish dialogue is extraneous and simply for character. Her visual cues tell you what she's saying. The introductory Italian dialogue becomes obvious when Chris wakes up. I could have either said "Is he ok?" "I don't know." in the voiceover, or add a little mystery by giving that throwaway dialogue in something weird. No one delivers any exposition or important information in the other languages. They're little more than sound bytes. It's important not to fixate on them.

I hadn't read the beast of the OWC thread, so I don't know how, if any, conversation over multiple roles went, but I had the extra characters deliberately to use the actors in multiple roles. I notice that people don't get too deep into these OWC scripts. You burn through, give it a yay or nay and move on. In fact, I doubt most of the previous readers will see this comment. I admit to likely being guilty of it as well. I use these OWC's for inspiration to write something, and so I did...in about an hour on Thursday night. Hey, I proofed it on Friday.

Back to the story, consider the duplicate roles were all whom Chris interacted with. They are all Michael and Delena, even Gina. Why? Because she was already there too. The same person has multiple dialects? Is in more than one place at the same time? Perhaps you saw multiple roles when they're all the same. Why else would you cast that way? The house has absorbed many over the years...and these are their shadows, though as individuals, they no longer exist.

Suspense? Yeah, it could use more. Hotel California? Yeah, that crossed my mind.

EDIT: "A slice rents one of his pants legs revealing a wicked gash in his leg." In short, his pants are ripped and you can see a cut on his leg.

Quoted from George Willson For the record, before I wrote this, I read the rules carefully. The rules state that there are three actors: one female, two male (one in a wheelchair). In the various scenes, you'll note that it never breaks this rule. You'll note that neither Pierre nor Franz walk because they're played by the actor in the wheelchair who also plays Michael. Delena also plays Gina and Senora Chavez. The challenge does not limit the characters. It limits the resources. None of the overlaps appear in any scenes together.

Clever... Makes sense to me.  But, to be honest, I never thought the rule was broken.  I didn't use more than 3 in mine, but I know a few who have and I think a technicality would also be to never have more than 3 on screen at once.

So, yeah, ways around things abound.  You did good work, though.

George,

This was different.   Not sure if I liked it or not.  One thing I do know, the foriegn language was a turn off.  Also I wish you'd get different screenwriting software like Celtix or something.  Your font looks like it's ten years old.   I've got Movie Magic, too.  I don't use it anymore since I've switched to Celtix.  Anyway, good effort.   Tragic ending.   I'll be curious to hear your take on it.  The end.  The beginning.  Eternity.   Dangerous road out there.

Quoted from George Willson For the record, before I wrote this, I read the rules carefully. The rules state that there are three actors: one female, two male (one in a wheelchair). In the various scenes, you'll note that it never breaks this rule. You'll note that neither Pierre nor Franz walk because they're played by the actor in the wheelchair who also plays Michael. Delena also plays Gina and Senora Chavez. The challenge does not limit the characters. It limits the resources. None of the overlaps appear in any scenes together. Back to the story, consider the duplicate roles were all whom Chris interacted with. They are all Michael and Delena, even Gina. Why? Because she was already there too. The same person has multiple dialects? Is in more than one place at the same time? Perhaps you saw multiple roles when they're all the same. Why else would you cast that way? The house has absorbed many over the years...and these are their shadows, though as individuals, they no longer exist. Suspense? Yeah, it could use more. Hotel California? Yeah, that crossed my mind. EDIT: "A slice rents one of his pants legs revealing a wicked gash in his leg." In short, his pants are ripped and you can see a cut on his leg.

Oh.  I see what you were getting at when I read it again.  Not sure how it would play out on film having the same actors doing multiple roles here.  Pretty clever to keep the descriptions of the characters just ambiguous enough, though.

"A slice rents..."  I kind of figured that's what it meant.  Still reads very awkward to me, though.

Quoted from screenrider This was different.   Not sure if I liked it or not.  One thing I do know, the foriegn language was a turn off.  Also I wish you'd get different screenwriting software like Celtix or something.  Your font looks like it's ten years old.   I've got Movie Magic, too.  I don't use it anymore since I've switched to Celtix.  Anyway, good effort.   Tragic ending.   I'll be curious to hear your take on it.  The end.  The beginning.  Eternity.   Dangerous road out there.

I find it completely amusing that this is the second time you've fixated on the font. I generally don't use screenwriting software. I do have Final Draft, and sometimes, I'll import the final Word doc into Final Draft if I need to do some reporting or something on it or really want to dig into revisions. But I actually find some of its auto-formatting annoying, so for just writing, I use Word, and the font is Courier New. It's more than ten years old. This time it isn't faded because I used the actual Adobe acrobat program for the conversion instead of a free plugin.

I think the language thing is going to be a matter of preference. I'm fascinated by languages, so the variety in this one would have intrigued me that much more, whether I know what they're saying or not. Remember that if someone throws out a language and no translation is offered, it probably means the actual meaning is less important than the inclusion of something you don't understand. This little bit of linguistics was simply meant to throw you off and make you wonder what was being said. In films where a foreigner is dropped into a land where he doesn't know the language, it isn't subtitled until he understands it to make the situation that much more frightening.

I'm wondering what you mean by my take on it. I don't have any throwaway lines there, so, yes, there is a meaning. "The end" is the end of his natural life. "The beginning" and "eternity" relate together. However, the "dangerous road" works off of "you'll be missed" because they reference how he died in a sort of call back to the car accident.

This is not in any way meant to be an allegory to the afterlife. It's just a ghost story.

Quoted from George Willson For the record, before I wrote this, I read the rules carefully. The rules state that there are three actors: one female, two male (one in a wheelchair). In the various scenes, you'll note that it never breaks this rule. You'll note that neither Pierre nor Franz walk because they're played by the actor in the wheelchair who also plays Michael. Delena also plays Gina and Senora Chavez. The challenge does not limit the characters. It limits the resources. None of the overlaps appear in any scenes together.

I think that, when Don said 'two male and one female,' he wasn't talking the minimum number of characters.  He was talking the total.  But enough discussion about semantics.

The script really didn't do anything for me, regardless of the body count.  Your introduction of Franz and Pierre seemed like filler.  You want Chris to think he's not getting out?  Don't show people telling him he's not getting out.  Show trying to get out but failing.  More than once!  When I lock my keys in my car, I check all the doors atleast twice before calling Triple-A.  Chris tries once to get out and surrenders.  And his girlfriend's in the house, too.

What a fucking quitter.

Human nature doesn't want us to quit so easily.  As children, we didn't ask Mommy for a cookie once.  We did it repeatedly.  This follows through to our adult lives.  And Chris wants a really big cookie now.


Phil

George,

This one was hard to warm up to.

I wanted to see how Jack & Gina got themselves into the house you can never leave,

Actually, I was expecting an interpretation of Hotel California. Hey, maybe I did get one?!

I didn't like the forgein languages. If it's not important enough to translate, why have it all, capice? NASCAR English only please :)

I wanted to see the STRUGGLE of them trying to leave

I really liked the visuals of  the corridors at the end

Gary

I think my expectations got in the way of enjoying this story...

George,

Good on you for completing the one week challenge!
I have to say my mind went right to the Hotel California song too.
That being said, I marvel at the technical fluidity of your script writing.
All the languages tripped me up a bit, but I figured the words weren't critical.
I get the trapped echoes idea, a nifty theory that sounds better to me than it reads.
There are seemingly so many characters that its hard for me to get invested in anyone.
I felt the repetition kept me at arm's length from your story.
However, I felt you were visually on the mark and I was never lost by your narrative.
Thanks for the post! I look forward to reading more of your material.

Regards,
E.D.

George, George, George...congrats on completing a script for the OWC.

Damn, I don't even know what to say here.  Believe it or not, I actually read every single post on every single thread, so I am aware of what you've said here and I will follow along until the thread is dead.

The way Don stated the challenge requirements was a problem from the moment it was posted.  I knew it was and I tried to get clarification, but he wouldn't give it.  This is most likely why such a simple thing became such a clusterfuck.

I understand how you and/or anyone else could contend that you have 3 actors playing as many different roles as you want, but in all reality, it's a little foolish and would look quite hilarious onscreen.  To take that a step further, it just doesn't make sense why anyone wold really want to do that in the first place.  If for some odd reason, you literally only have 3 actors, then by all means, shoot a script that has 3 characters.  Non human characters should have been clearly allowed, as Don said himself that CGI work was fine, meaning, make whatever non human character you want.

Oh damn it...I digress...

Sorry to say, but this doesn't work on any level for me.  It seems like you purposely wrote a script that you knew people would have trouble with, and I don't understand the reasoning behind such a thing.  Pissers are different.  Pissers are meant to entertain through their absurdity.  I just can't see how anyone is going to follow this, buy into it, or like it.

How many characters are even here..like 5 or 6?  Why would you do that?  Were you trying to stretch the limitations as far as you possibly could?  I don't get it.

OK, a few things...

No FADE IN.  You start with a BLACK SCREEN and never leave it, so that's a huge problem, obviously.

You omitted several Slugs when 1 of the characters left the initial scene and went upstairs.  Even your opening Slug isn't right, as you simply have "HOUSE", with no specific room.  Later, you detail exactly which room we're in, meaning, the initial Slug is incorrect.

None of your characters are developed at all, as far as I can see.  Speaking in a foreign language doesn't develop anyone cause we don't even know what they're saying,and you even said yourself that it doesn't matter what they're saying.  So, if it doesn't matter what they're saying, why even have dialogue included?

You had an additional 2 pages you could have used, but chose not to for some reason.  The story here is incomplete.  Not only should you have used the 2 extra pages, but you should have used your first 8 much more wisely.  You've got basically an entire page about the dude's injured leg being wrapped up.  Who cares?  Nothing to do with whatever the story is.

A number of typos, a number of orphans (and near orphans), lots and lots of meaningless dialogue, and basically no story and no resolution.

I'm sorry, but IMO, this is a mess and an irritating read.

ED, thanks for reading.

Jeff, I find your comments interesting, as always. Did I deliberately write something people would have trouble with? Actually, I kind of enjoy doing that. I knew certain points of the 7WC would throw people off, and they did. And I knew that various points of this very short script would also mess with people, and it did.

You look for everything you're used to, and here, it's all out of place. You want characters and seeing a half dozen, you expect them all to be individuals, and yet, they're not. My narrative is more continuous and you want slugs holding your hand. I'm not saying what I have is perfect, and perhaps I need to simplify what I do, but my black screen has sound with it. It's not just dark silence. There is a slug intro-ing the silence as soon as lighting illuminates it. A lot of scripts have a lot of dialogue. I made a point of avoiding it where I could. Instead, I went for sound and visuals to show what was going on.  

I did not double the roles as a joke. There was a point to it. In fact, if the Michael & Delena roles were played by twins, that would be even better to bring home what's going on here.

As for the foreign languages, I kind of touched on it, but I'll be more specific. Sometimes, it isn't what you say, it's how you say it. Chris is basically lost in this house. We know that these people are saying something, but they're doing it in a way that we can't understand making us feel as lost and disoriented as Chris. The fact that you all felt confused by the languages shows that I at least accomplished that much.

So while it could use some tweaking, I feel like the bulk of the story seems to be missed. I've run into this problem before as well on another OWC where I tried to keep everything in subtext, and it was universally panned because no one got it.

Hey George. This was pretty standard, dude. I liked the ending but I've seen it before, if not in films, in other scripts. There were some cool visuals, like Pierre's deformed body, but not much to differentiate it from the rest. It doesn't seem like that was your intention. You just wanted to write a simple ghost story, right? I guess you did. But you gotta stand out in these things, if only to get people to respond without being influenced by the other entries. There's 40, after all, and more or less, the same story.

I suppose you did develop some suspense and a certain lack of control of the protag's part. You had a bizarre cast of characters which read, more or less, "fine" on paper but I agree with Jeff; it would just look goofy onscreen. Even mentioning the one character isn't really Hispanic just seems... meh. The use of language was "meh" as well. You could've messed around with language barriers but maybe that's for something bigger. Otherwise, it just felt pointless. BTW, I speak French. Not that it's wrong, per se, but you might want to double-check your pronoun use.

Anyway, not bad, I guess. Well written as always. Just mundane.

Congrats on finishing the OWC, George.

You have a nice little ghost story here. I liked the shadows. Would have been cool to have seen more of them.

Not sure about using other languages in the script. I don't speak other languages, so I stumbled on the dialogue, and it slowed the read for me.

I thought there were only supposed to be three actors total, not in each scene.

Like the others have said, I have seen this story before, but you did add in your own spin on it.

Cindy

Quoted from James McClung BTW, I speak French. Not that it's wrong, per se, but you might want to double-check your pronoun use.

I admit to cheating on the key phrase in the languages. I speak Spanish and admit to only a bare minimum on French, Italian, and German, so I used Google Translate to construct those. All of the other phrases I wrote off the top of my head. Based on how Spanish and German translated out, I presumed that the French probably used the formal tense of you. I'm still in the midst of learning it, so I didn't worry about it.

However, after going back and working out the phrase, I find I should have double checked it before hand. It should actually read, "Vous ne pouvez jamais quitter" in there, though I wonder if "partir" would be even better. Oh well.

Thanks for reading.

Cindy, there are only three actors total, and they play multiple roles.

And yes, I've seen this story too. However, if we always seek to write what no one has ever seen, we'll find ourselves beating our heads against a wall since such a story does not exist -- only variations of those that have come before.

SPOILERS

I like the way the story developed, you get a lot of scariness in the way you use the  "you can never leave" theme but the characters blaming each other seems less important and maybe not necessary at all.
I think the strangeness of the situation is enough to make the story compelling.

Hey George,

The first dialgoue the reader comes across to "No lo so" is supposed to be "No lo se".

Interesting piece. I wrote about the same subject. I like the idea of the ending but, I believe it should be better portrayed. Maybe have Chris shout out at someone outside and then seeing that person he shouted to didn't respond? Or something to that affect.    

The many characters were kind of confusing a bit but didn't bother me that much. The end pretty much reveals it all.

I say expand this script a bit more.

Hope this helps,
Gabe

GW, or JB, or GL, whichever you prefer,

Each time I read your title I can hear The Eagles doing Hotel California. No bad thing, I assure you.

I take it the starting dialogue is Spanish or something similar. Aren't we supposed to write it in English then state to be spoken in chosen language. Ah, you're being awkward. Like I do. Fair enough.

Quoted from YCNL , and generally looks run over.

For some reason that made me laugh out loud heartily. I must remember to steal it soon.

Is it me or is your dialogue way over to the left? Ah, some  subconscious writers trick to suggest socialist subversion. Or perhaps your margin wobbled off. No biggie.

I got a bit confused with all the characters. Couldn't remember who was who. I think bigger intros and more personality quirks would help. Or perhaps losing one or two of them.

I know one's German, one's French and one's Spanish. But I'm more confused than people were with my script.

I think I get the idea. Well, I'll read it again. If I'm still confused I'll get back to you.

Some good bits, very original compared to the other entries.


"She got the Mercedes Benz, uh,"

"Such a lovely place, such a lovely place"

R xo

1 - Story: Pretty darn creepy.  A situational horror being trapped in there with those characters much akin to Quarantine/REC.
2 - Filmable & Budget: Easily. Allocate fair bit for makeup, prosthetics and costumes.
3 - Horror & Audience: Situational horror. Looks like a solid PG-13. Don't really see the need to language/violence/gore/nudity it up to an R - unless you want to. Meets all the challenge requirements other than establishing date.
4 - Technicals & Format: Some unfilmables in there, otherwise fine. Dialog, despite being plenty of it, seems light or diffuse, like... dream speak.
5 - Title & Logline: Fine, but somehow it turns the problem situation's attention to the reader/viewer rather than reflecting the story by the inclusion of the word "you". "What do you mean 'I' can never leave? I'm not trapped in there. Chris et al are! Sux to be them! I'm doing just fine." The logline, while to the point, needs more draw to the curious and inquisitive.
General Comments:
A - For the grand number of arguing folk who read the words "actor" but comprehend that as being "characters" then go onto condemning directors that cast the same actor for multiple roles I give you => this <=. Your approach is sound, founded in reality directors face routinely. No big whup.
B - Have Chris exert some effort to recover Gina before immediately running from the house to get the cops.
C - I understand your usage of foreign language to increase the creepy disorientation. Keep it. It works.
D - This creepy eternity h3ll-house is very interesting. It would be nice for the story to spend more time there while expanding the scope of WTH is going on.
E - Emphasize the poor lighting, harsh edges of what little there is and extent of things eternally/infernally being hidden in shadows especially to get away with multiple roles. In fact, the "others" trapped in the house can deliberately be... "alterations" or "permutations" of the people that died in the muddy car crash. Fears realized in the purgatory house.
F - "A slice rents one of his pants legs revealing a wicked gash in his leg." His pants leg is either cut or torn. I don't understand what's so difficult to understand about this.
G - "The weight of the truth crashing down on him." Although this is an unfilmable of the like I see others being pilloried for, a director & actor should be able to shoot the scene to portray the sentiment jussss fiiiine. Readers may object, though.

Quoted from Mr.Ripley The first dialgoue the reader comes across to "No lo so" is supposed to be "No lo se".

Gabe, the opening dialogue is Italian, not Spanish. And I know enough Italian to least have written that one correct.

Thanks all for the reads. I'm catching the angle I need to take with the script when I dig into it again. I'll attempt to find enough time to read at least some of these OWC scripts (at least to return the reads I got).

My bad. Italian and Spanish so alike.

Quoted from Mr.Ripley My bad. Italian and Spanish so alike.

Dude, you're not kidding.

These are notes I made as I read without looking at the other comments:

Pg 1 - “Lightning. It illuminates an old, grey two story house. Though dilapidated, it remains whole, but only a shadow of its former glory.” – I found this line awkward to read. Perhaps it’s because you’ve mixed the ultra short style with a more narrative style. An example of an alternative would be “Lightning illuminates a dilapidated two story house.”

“CHRIS, a man in his early twenties, blinks in the candlelight. He is soaked to the bone, covered in mud, and generally looks run over.” – For me this line is another that could be tightened up quite a bit. Say, “CHRIS, early 20s, blinks in candlelight, muddy, soaked to the bone, and run down.”

“Michael” – Capitalized?

Pg 3 – I’m intrigued.

Presumably the actress has to play Denora, Senora Chavez, and Gina?

Pg 5 – A good chilling scene.

Pg 6 – It’s taken me this long to figure out what the foreign language stuff is saying, but I like the device.

Pg 7 – The stepping out thing is simple, but great.

Pg 8 – The ending is effective.

Overall the story is a clean simple concept, told well.

I wonder if it would make sense to add a scene that shows him arriving at the house.

Philip

George,

I thought this was pretty routine.  Parts of it I liked -- pretty much everything up to Pierre I thought was okay.  After that it took a road that lots of other entries have taken where it's a chase through the house and then weird things come out of the blue to mess with the characters.  So, Senora Chavez and Franz I wasn't big on, nor was I with Gina's final stand and Chris just bailing immediately.  What was that about?  What did work was the ending - that was creepy.  I've seen it before - in fact, I was involved with an independent short that had that exact same ending except with an insane asylum - so I liked where you took it but wasn't too hot on how it got there.

That said, I do see what you were trying to do with it but I think for 10 pages it doesn't work.  A little fleshing out and I can see this working better.  Still routine, but not bad.  Nice job.

Greg

I didn't quite get what was supposed to be going on in the house. Michael and Gina seem to wander around and meet different sorts of people. More like a series of events than a coherent story, ala Alice in Wonderland.