Pitiful by Michael Joseph Kospiah - Comedy, Dramedy - A character study about a neurotic restaurant employee who, not only blames his dysfunctional and tragic upbringing for his relationship problems with women, but uses it to gain pity. 114 pages - pdf, format

hey michael,

not sure this is a comedy but i liked it a lot. very real. lots of punch and it hits right in the heart. curious as to how much is autobiographical.

as for brass tacks, pretty clean script. flows well and there's a nice mix of action and dialogue. caught a few typos but nothing major:

14 - spelling is cervezas
56 - jessica suddenly becomes caroline
81 - ashley suddenly becomes jessica

on the whole, though, you got a winner here. might play better in the drama section but it's still good. lots of luck with it.

best,
mike

Thanks Mike for taking a look at it. I'm glad you enjoyed it. You're right, I should have put this in the drama section. About 75 percent of this was autobiographical. All the restaurant stuff happened within the last month - the abortion (minus the protester getting zapped by security), the whole situation with dating at work. The whole opening scene with my mother and father happened almost verbatim (to the best of my memory).

However, I have a great relationship with my mother and my father now (mom's alive, thought it would be more dramatic if I changed it for the story - which was hard to do because I love my mother). I've forgiven them and myself.

This was one of those "me" projects I just had to get out of my system. The bar scene with my character (which is based on me - people who know me who've read this say I capture my essence to a tee) happened. I called an ambulance and spent the night in a psyche ward. I took a week off of work to regroup, so I wrote this.

And thanks for catching the typos, I fixed those already. Also, working on another draft, even thinking about making this into a play. Had to cut the cocaine scene out because, even though I liked it (and that also happened), it didn't really fit the story that well.

It's funny, another person read and reviewed my script, not knowing it was autobiographical, and complained that the character wasn't someone she could root for. He was too pathetic and too "pitiful". A sad, unlikable person.

Though I like to take myself seriously, I had to laugh at that.

i had a hunch it might be something like that. i applaud you for keeping it real. i think a lot of writers are afraid to do that. good luck with the next draft.

best,
mike


p.s. for what it's worth i thought the coke scene fit in just fine. didn't think twice about it.