Face The Music by Leandro Porterhouse - Short, Dark Comedy - An shady businessman tries to change a young Indian cabbie's life, but he just may ruin it in the process. - pdf, format 8)

You created some great contrasting characters. The story, however, I wasn't into as much. It felt like it didn't have much of a purpose. The first five and a half pages it seems like it's going somehwere, but it doesn't really end up there.

Thought Heath and the Cabby got way too familiar way too fast to be natural - I'll chalk it up to a function of a ten page short.

The boner stunts didn't work for me - created a mix genre here and I just don't think there is enough time to carry that off.

Format wise everything is solid.

The ending was not rewarding for me.

Confident writing (excepting that typo in the logline… )  Conflict between the two characters leads to some great dialogue and the dark comedy builds with the music and incense to good effect.  Heath’s an asshole but there’s a humour about him that keeps him from becoming throwaway.

Snaring a charger with your wood... :)

Would’ve liked it a lot more if Heath wasn’t rescued -- not sure why you chose that ending; seems to rub it in all the more for poor Pratesh.  

A solid dark comedy.  One of my favourites so far.

Wonderful characters you created here, colorfull and all. I could visualise and hear them. One of them is clearly Saul from Let's Call Saul, right?

Anyway, great job onthe characters! As for the story - youre a great writer, you know it all yourself.

Hmm,, seems a part of a much bigger piece. Some nice dialogue for Pratesh, Hugh is suitably obnoxious, good characterisations,, just felt the story didn't seem to go anywhere. I hoped some kind of moral point would come at the end. It didn't sadly - moral seems to be 'a boner could save your life', even though you're a dickhead. :))

I think it needs more for a stand alone fimed short. Met the challenge in the end although it fel like an add on instead of it being the main thrust (no pun intended) of the story, and it ended up a bit all over the joint. I did enjoy the first act with the backwards and forwards banter.

Writing was good
I was really getting into it and then... it just dragged and dragged. This could have be done in 6 or 7 pages.
A very anti climatic ending and at the least I thought Heath would have died with a boner lol.

Good job on entering and remember to read others

There was some good writing on display here but it felt a page or two too long.

The characters interacted well and there was some entertaining dialogue.

But ultimately it didn't seem to know where to go and just petered out.

Decent effort but...

I kinda agree with everyone else.  The script was well-written.

It just didn't go anywhere.  Like it was trying to be clever for the sake of being clever and not because the story called for it.  

I didn't really buy the entire cab ride.  And he wasn't really "stuck" in the cab till after the accident.  Most of the script took too long to get there.

Technically solid, but, unspectacular story.  6/10

Dan

Well, can't say I enjoyed this one at all, but I did read the whole thing.

I guess it's supposed to be funny?  Not to me...more like irritating.

It's overwritten in many places and you tend to enjoy your asides, which I detest.

Don't use numbers in your prose.  Don't make mistakes in your logline, as it is a terrible start.

2 biggest issues are that there's really no story here that I can see and the theme of being trapped in a taxi really doesn't take place until the last page.

Not for me.  Grade - C-

Writer,

Liked this one a lot. Heath was humorous and arrogant, kind of guy you love to hate. Pratesh was good too, and yes, a nice contrast. Not really much of a point here, or a big reveal, but the writing was fluid enough to keep me going along and in the end, I really didn't care about a reveal. It was a fun story all the way through, and it gets good marks from me just for doing that. Nice job! Definitely one of the better entries.

Steve

Not really for me.

Not too much, if any, comedy in my opinion.

I think my biggest issue is that in a story I’m not a fan of to begin with, if this were to be made, you would also have roughly 10 minutes of varying degrees of loud Indian music. I personally can’t think of too many things I would want to watch less.

As we found with the comedy OWC, comedy is very subjective and I see that here with some of the comments. Personally I loved this and found it very funny indeed.

The dialogue is superb. It sounds real, natural and yet is far-fetched but works perfectly. You don't use the same old cliche sayings and choose to say things in a different way. For example:

"Well, Pra-tesh? Don’t they usually anglocize your names?"

Here's a guy being a racists prick who doesn't think he's being a racist prick at all. You could very easily have chosen a more obvious stereotypical comment but you made it sound realistic and it fitted Heath's character perfectly.

Some of the jokes were lost on me, for example I haven't a clue what Lyft is but I got the intention.
When Heath first takes the pill I thought he'd taken ecstasy (or some other drug) as he seems to go high fairly quickly after this. It's only when he gets the boner did I realize it was Viagra.

I did start to drift a bit during the crash scene but I think that is because it goes on for a while, a bit of tightening here and there will really benefit this script. There are some great payoffs and comedy moments in this scene as well as a bit of tension. I do think the music will be an annoying distraction if this is filmed though.

The ending was quite disappointing, not only because I don't think poor Pratesh deserved this fate but it seemed more like the end of a scene rather than the end of the story. I suspect you simply ran out of space/time here to do this story justice.

I also found the repeating CONT'D distracting. Final Draft defaults to set these on but they can be switched off in the settings, also I must admit I've never seen PRE-LAP in a script before, I had to look it up!

A well written script by someone who knows their craft. Believable characters, great dialogue, some quality comedy which is let down slightly by an abrupt and unsatisfactory ending but this could be very producible. I encourage a second draft outside of the OWC.

-Mark

Some notes.

I found this one too long.  The boner jokes didn't work for me, but then...

I found the ending less than satisfying.  I found no reason for one to live and one to die.  But then, that's life.

Best
Richard

I enjoyed reading this, but it left me unsatisfied, which wasn't your fault. I had an expectation for a different kind of closure, but I get what you did there.

Heath character was amazing. It felt and sounded very real to me. Pratesh was too passive to make the conversation as enjoyable and as effective as I wanted it to be.

Wish you gave us a change to know more about Pratesh life.

I also wish the shift in the story line wasn't that dramatic. I mean, one moment we're having Heath trying to fix Pratesh life, and the other was Heath trying to survive the accident and the music. It hurt the coherence of the story, in my opinion. Specially that the survival part lingered for tad bit long for a 10 pages script about facing the music.

Complaining only about the story and the structure speaks volume of your talent. Description, and dialogue was great. Heath character if very memorable.

Well done.

No, no, no, no!

This was great until about page 5! I was really enjoying it and waiting for the trapped criteria to kick in. The dialogue was pretty cliched into stereotype but it was flowing and funny and good.

Then...it veered out of control, like the writer was torn between adding some action to the comedy. It doesn't mix well i'm afraid and is very hard to pull off. I skimmed the last couple of scenes as I was annoyed at the direction change.

Consider but will become a Recommend if you can nail the latter half of it.

Solid basis, a cabbie being lectured by an annoying passenger which results in consequences, but didn't quite deliverer for me.

Heath I found a tad cliched. Most passengers in these scripts have been baddies/arseholes and often they are over the top. I found that with Heath.

Pratesh I warmed to but I felt he needed to conflict with Heath more.

The story then appeared in deer woods a bit out of the blue.

The boner and keys etc is a sound idea but I think Heath needed to be lighted for that.

For me needs revisions.

Pass/consider

Ah – Face the Music.  Good title!  (BTW – warning re: this post… for practical reasons, I’ve started to find Stream of Consciousness reviews to be quicker – and maybe more useful on a blow by blow basis.  So please forgive my scattered comments – just try to take them as a whole!)

LOVE the copyright snippet on the title page!  

A couple cocktails deep – very pro description.  Nice!

Yenta wife?  Yow!  Though I like the organic dialogue.
Nice one, Chapelle (and the spice rack and Babar comments) also tasty banter.
Ooooooh, tip joke!  A good one, mind you.  :P
Giant crossed out, replaced with moderate.  Whoever you are, writer, I’m liking you.  (God, that makes me sound tacky, doesn’t it?  But the writer’s voice comes through quite nicely throughout this script.)

Huh – I love every bit of this, except for the end.  One would think that whatever happens, it’s Pratesh that comes out on top, and Heath suffers the consequences of his dickishness.  I’d rethink the conclusion.  But the rest of this – and the execution (no pun intened)- is fab.

Right then, theres some really good writing here. I was a bit worried at the page count that it was going to be a slog, but it flew by. The characters are well defined, the descriptions crisp and the style is clear.

Now for the flip side. I really don't know what was supposed to be happening here. It just seems to be two separate personalities having some banter, that's about it. Now that's fine to a point, but I'd like to have seen an extension beyond just the two of them chatting away. Possibly that's just a problem because I'm invested in the characters, in which case you've done your job.

It's a consider from me

Format is good.
Writing is smooth and flows well.
However . . .  
Pratesh is too much of a wimp for me to like.
Heath is too much of an asshole for me to care for.
Being trapped comes way late.
Kinda looking for a story here.

It's a black comedy, so it's fine that Tesh ends up with the short stick. Must be a more fun way to dispatch him, though. Maybe they're both alive until the end, we hear the voice -- "One made it" -- we expect to see Tesh but get a faceful of boner instead.

What didn't work here, for me, was the deer. Tesh didn't particularly make a mistake, or appear to change anything about himself, as the longline suggests. He just got distracted and hit a deer. I think he should be trying to show off or make a point, go to fast, and crash. Something along those lines. Something he's goaded into.

And the boner -- or at least, Heath's penis -- should be established early. It's the synecdochic through line of Heath's grating infallibility, and it should be with us from the start since it's the button on the end.

Solid writing, solid characters, and good work in what's gotta be one of the hardest genres there is. Needs a rewrite, for me, but I think this could go somewhere.

I was along for the ride but the end is disappointing. Some excellent writing but the story needs more.

A pass.

Nice, quick read.
But why did the driver have to die in this comedy?
I didn't think he deserved to die, just seemed a little controlled by others.

Congrats on the OWC script. I think it just needs a little tweak.

Cindy

Loved the banter, and the writing's pro, IMO. I might even consider this cause it was so punchy, fast, and entertaining but... 8 pages of dialog before they're actually trapped? That might sway it a bit. Great work.

There's so much talent here. Heath is a great character.

HEATH
Well, Pra-tesh?  Don�t they usually
anglocize your names? ... Not
important.  Jersey.  Exit 117.

That's such a good opener. He's like Pierce Hawthorn in his youth (please tell me you've seen Community).

The story worked for the most part up till the end. And even the end (at least the car crash) still works... just not for a short. This felt like a feature to me. It felt like the opening of a raunchy road trip comedy smashed together with the inevitable car crash on like pg. 50. I don't know how to make this work as a short. Definitely don't have Patesh die (that part doesn't work in any situation).

But I don't wanna say get rid of the car crash entirely. I disagree with other comments saying its a drastic tone shift. The very end with Patesh dying? Yes, that was jarring and needs to go. But the actual crash and his floundering escape attempts? In my opinion, that was a perfect action/comedy mix.

The little callbacks to all the annoying things in the car... brilliant. The child locks, the music, the incense, the loose plug... each one managing to come back and doubly screw him over in hilarious fashion. Really, that was the highlight of the script for me. That took it to a whole other level. But again, it doesn't work as a short. It may never work as a short. My advice, start writing a comedy feature.

Ok, Heath is a Prick, literally.  Writing was snappy at first.  Each character had their own voice.  It's the typical (and current topic of discussion on threads I read) Alpha male vs. Beta male.  You have the Alpha win in the end, boner and all.  Thought the boner joke carried on too long.  Snagging a cord to a charger with it?  Dang, I have some training to do!!  But really the setup was so good that it ended up having the ending just fall flat (except for, of course, the boner).  All I wanted to do was punch Heath right in the face, so you got me there, just let me down in the end.  Almost my top 3.  With changes could be up there.  Also, not quite low budget and you would have to train a deer!  Good luck with it.

This started promising. There's a lot of unique elements that are pretty well-drawn. But at some point Heath promises to take Pratesh under his wing, but nothing ever comes of that. Then Heath wakes up with Pratesh driving down a strange road, but nothing ever comes of that. And then there's a lot of boner jokes.

I'm left with the distinct impression of a story that went off the rails.  Better luck next time, I guess.

I dug the Fresh Prince theme song reference.

The boner made me chuckle.

Technically we'll written. A few minor issues. That typo in the log line did nobody favors.

Wasn't for me. At all. What. In. The world. Did I just read?

Soft pass. B-/C+