Agent Thumb by Alison Parker and Rodriguez Fruitbat - Comedy - A raunchy twist on the tiny character from English folklore, Tom Thumb is an unmotivated loser who gets roped into working undercover for the DEA to bring down the biggest drug dealer in Los Angeles. 101 pagescontests: Scriptapalooza - Quarter-Finalist; Screencraft Comedy: Quarter-Finalist; LIVE READ LA: Finalist; Burbank International: Semi-Finalist; Screencraft Public Domain: Quarter-Finalist; Rhode Island Flickers: Semi-Finalist - pdf format

Writer interested in feedback on this work

BTW, this won Best Adapted Screenplay at the Burbank International Film Fest, so that was exciting. Got my first trophy

Congrats to you both!  

Congrats on your trophy.

Found time to read the first 6 pages (which actually didn't take that long at all)

Really well written, funny, interesting. Kinda reminded me a bit of Ted in that, I didn't expect Tom THumb to be so rude and crude lol.

I don't have anything helpful to add, just that I enjoyed the read (even if it was only a small read)

I am curious about the dialogue on the opening page - I haven't seen it formatted like that before, why have you formatted it like that? Took me a while to realise Sara was talking on the phone, I just thought you forgot to introduce her.

I love the writing, I only stumbled once (on the first block)

Quoted Text hovers shaking fingers over a glowing cell phone while driving erratically.

Had to go over a few times to know what I was seeing - but after that, super easy read.

Best of luck with it

Thanks LC and Matthew.

We played with the formatting for the texted dialogue in the opening. We could have just done the traditional dialogue format but with (Text) notations, but since the script is very different we didn't mind breaking the rules a bit to set the tone. Originally we even had colored font and emojis there, which some people liked it but others were offended that it wasn't proper so we dialed it back. From your comment, it looks like we could make it more clear that she is texting while driving.

Thanks for reading!

Oh I see, I didn't get that she was texting at all lol

Guess it depends on how you want the audience to see it. Are they gonna read the text straight from the phone? Pop up text? Or are the characters reading it out (V.O.)

Oh, and if it's pop up text then I don't see the problem with including emojis

Super! - Atta go.

Rodriquez/Alison

I read this on a whim, very silly but also very witty. Lots of laughs in here.

One's mileage for short jokes will vary, the pun heavy, puerile, lewd humour can wear thin but it kept me chuckling pretty consistently all the way through. It's fairly well plotted too and moves along at a steady clip.

I can see why it's done well in competitions. You two definitely know how to write.

Have you tried to shop it around?

Hey Colkurtz8,

Thanks for reading! Glad you enjoyed it.

Alison and I tried some VPF submissions, but not much response. (Not sure if you've used it, but it seems the request rate is usually around 1 or 2 for every ten queries) And then we never heard back from the requestors. Maybe we just gave up too early on pitching, but there's really only a couple of producers for high budget/crude comedies.

Do you think there's potential?

Quoted from RodriguezFruitbat Hey Colkurtz8, Thanks for reading! Glad you enjoyed it. Alison and I tried some VPF submissions, but not much response. (Not sure if you've used it, but it seems the request rate is usually around 1 or 2 for every ten queries) And then we never heard back from the requestors. Maybe we just gave up too early on pitching, but there's really only a couple of producers for high budget/crude comedies. Do you think there's potential?

Yeah, it definitely has the tone and pace of one of those R-rated comedies which, to be honest, are not my thing, but I can still remove my personal tastes and objectively recognize a marketable script when I see one. Was "Ted" an influence by any chance?

Thanks for the confidence, maybe we should dust it off for one more round of submissions.

Both Alison and I have written pretty crude stuff in the past and lived in LA, so when we decided to adapt Tom Thumb the concept came pretty naturally. She hadn't seen Ted, but I did note some similarity to Ted in the set-up so we actively tried to avoid being too close.