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SimplyScripts Screenwriting Discussion Board    Unproduced Screenplay Discussion    Comedy Scripts  ›  Don't Get A Mime Talking Moderators: bert
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  Author    Don't Get A Mime Talking  (currently 1384 views)
Don
Posted: November 15th, 2009, 2:54pm Report to Moderator
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So, what are you writing?

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Don't Get A Mime Talking by Max Borinstein - Comedy - A stressed-out crime novelist, struggling with a story about a talking mime, manifests a wise cracking apparition of Marcel Marceau. 116 pages - pdf, format


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jackx
Posted: November 20th, 2009, 7:58pm Report to Moderator
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Yes, that’s what the world was missing, more movies about mimes…

Looks like your formatting got jacked up when you converted to PDF, might want to work on that.
Glass of orange juice, full coffee press, coffee cup, and
vitamin bottle laid out in perfect symmetry on the dinning
room table on a place mat of plastic wrap.  Bit of a run-on there.
Good dialogue with the agent.  
Who’s isabelle?  Is she the female bartender or the other costumer?  This needs to be clarified.
Dialogue with her is pretty funny too.
Not sure who Bip the clown is, by referencing these things you’re kinda alienating your audience.
Having marcel reference things like ‘blowing his motherboard’ and talk shows seems a little out of place.
Why the random bits of bold dialogue?
It’s a little confusing switching back and forth to the bar like that, wasn’t sure if it was later, or continuous or what.  Might want to clarify.
I would even say that the second visit the the sister is totally unnecessary.  Why not have him have that convo with a receptionist or someone in the doctors office, and lead up to it that way.
Though the joke about ED later is pretty good.  But still feels odd to have him show up at the bar, talk for two minutes then go to doctors office.  Who then sends him to a shrink.  Lotsa jumping around.
How does the doctor know the mime talks?
Amiss is one word
The psychiatrists reaction seems a little flat.
That’s up to p16
Have to go, but so far fairly funny, and certainly different.  I’ll read on if I hear back from you.

Oh and I would change the title.


Mine:
HARD CASE
            (65 Pages) Stealing the case is just the beginning...

APU
            (80 pages) A city where superheroes are murderers and villains walk through walls...
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cloroxmartini
Posted: November 20th, 2009, 10:58pm Report to Moderator
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Man, right out of the gate I feel like I'm in STRANGER THAN FICTION.

NICK ZACK NICK ZACK NICK ZACK. Sound like you might change one? Not that you have to, just got hung up on it for a moment.
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cloroxmartini
Posted: November 20th, 2009, 11:14pm Report to Moderator
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Okay, so the Mime shows up and says how piss poor Nick's life is and Nick is stressed. Here's the deal, at least for me: you didn't show me Nick's life is all that, you've only told me. Being anal retentive is not showing me how Nick's life is all that. Take my earlier comment about feeling like I'm in Stranger Than Fiction. Now think about Harold Crick. We see Harold live his life. We watch, and I for one think, wow, what a drag. His life sucks. But Harold is fine with it. It takes a journey through the story for Harold to find out his life sucks, and when he does find out his life sucks, he sets out to change it. That's long winded, but his life was shown, not told about.

So on-the-nose with everything going on so far. The evolution of Nick's imagining is not working for me. Too much too fast. You're force feeding me Nick's condition and his Marcel hallucination.

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cloroxmartini  -  November 21st, 2009, 12:02am
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cloroxmartini
Posted: November 21st, 2009, 12:02am Report to Moderator
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So far, I don't have a reason for Nick to have Marcel around to help Nick learn a lesson. Can Marcel see dead people?

Marcel drinking coffee.

There are rules when you have a Marcel type character. Who can see him, who can not. To what extent does Marcel intrude into the real world. Think GHOST. Is Marcel really just a figment? Why is he drinking coffee? You've just changed the rules. Marcel has his own first-class plane seat.

I'm a third of the way through and I'm not going anywhere with this. I should have a set up by now. I'll refer, again, to Harold Crick. By now we knew that he knew what was going on in that story. Harold was going to get killed off. We knew who the author was. We knew who the love interest was. We were on our journey to find out what happens in the end. You've got none of that. You have the compliment of Karen Eiffel in Marcel. You have your compliment of Harold Crick in Nick. So far, in your story, Marcel is just there to deliver "funny" lines, which for me don't come off all that funny. They're late-night jokes. I'm not invested in your characters. Harold Crick, no matter how much we loath the IRS, is going to get knocked off, and getting knocked off trumps being an IRS guy in the sympathy department. We want to see Harold fall in love with Ana Pascal. We want to see Harold live.

You have nothing at stake here.
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cloroxmartini
Posted: November 21st, 2009, 1:55pm Report to Moderator
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Found it difficult to keep going on. I made it to the cemetary and then Nick decides he's still trying to get rid of Marcel. However, Nick told Bernie that's he's trying to write a crime story based "here." I skipped to see how things ended up. Apparently Lucy gets to see Marcel as well. Another rule breaker. I noticed that a crime really happens, but the end is a sceance, not a complete novel.

My first thought is that this lacks focus. What's it about? I don't know if Nick ever wrote his novel yet that's how this starts. Novelists write. I get a long way without the novelist ever writing a word. He's trying to get rid of Marcel.

The ending betrays the set up and that just reinforces a lack of focus. Happy go-lucky-just-see-where-my-writing-takes-me doesn't work. Each scene really should support a follow on scene, and in the end the whole supports the ending. I should at least be able to read what I read and then get to the end and be able to trace back, but I can't. Now maybe you'll say I should have read the middle. That's the second act. That is where you tell me how the protag is going to get where he needs to get so you can set me up for the final act. What you're missing is the first act to set up a second act.

What if Marcel was a real person to play off Nick the straight man? Ever see ROLE MODELS? You had Wheeler the clown to Danny the straight man. Wheeler was not entirely there to help Danny out, but Wheeler had a view on life that Marcel has and Nick and Danny don't.

For this to work you need a defined goal that can be set up in the first act. I need to know what is at stake. Of course you don't want to be on the nose about the stakes, but I need to know something that can be built upon. If Marcel is a mentor, then he has to leave after his job is done, no? Like Obi-Wan. Marcel is there at the end. You mentioned something about Grandpa. All I can think of is that somewhere between where I stopped and the end, Marcel is Lucy's Grandpa. I don't know. That would be a whole new story that is not set up.

Take TRUE LIES. What do you get set up for in the first act? Harry Tasker is a spy, big time spy, and he's married to Helen, a woman who has no idea that her cover-story-computer-geek husband is a spy. We also find out that Helen's an ignored housewife with a mundane existance and she wants Harry's attention, which he really pays none since he's so focused on protecting us from terrorists. Upon that Cameron builds each character. Helen is so bored she's willing to get risky with her behavior and finally Harry notices. It incidently winds up that Harry takes Helen for the ride of her life; just what she's always wanted. In the end, the story is about a man who keeps his family together. So the set up, what we see in the begining, is paid off in the end. Everything is paid off. That's why structure is so important. Good story within structure. You have no structure.
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