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Sisyphus Imagined by Anthony Russo (ajrscreenworks) - Short, Fantasy - A re-telling of the myth of Sisyphus, who does battle with Zeus and Hades. - pdf, format
Well, here is somebody trying something a little different. Really different.
It's heady, philosophical, scholarly stuff. Imaginative. And nice how the title can be taken in two ways. And nice how it ends so fittingly.
Lord, it even fits the challenge to a T.
But is it too different?
I so want to encourage this author for taking a brave stab at a story such as this. You have done well, for what is likely to be a small, niche audience.
This story would likely make a nice change of tone somewhere in the middle of Cornetto's efforts -- but I fear this may well prove unfilmable -- and it may not even be that popular when all is said and done...
We'll see. But nice job from me. I give it an A, for what it's worth.
If, like me, you find yourself googling different names to get a better understanding of each character, don't. The story explains each one, giving as much info as is necessary.
Still, for me, it wasn't an engaging read. This, though, says more about me than it does the script.
The payoff, though -- the ending, is well worth the read. Excellent!
SPOILER
The idea, if I understand it correctly, that the Gods too have a difficult existence, is compelling. I loved the ending!
I wonder, though, if the story would be better served if it was set in a more modern context? It might be more approachable.
In any case, I doubt any of the scripts I read will be as thought provoking.
How does a faceless man wail when he has no mouth? (Thinking of Godsmack IV CD cover)
Some brutal stuff, but a good depiction of a classic Hellscape (shades of Bosch, perhaps)
So far I've been complaining about punctuation: case in point- Sisyphus, given the challenge of eternal work, turns to rage against the gods by saying.
Curse you, o Zeus and Hades. You who take great pleasure in the suffering of mortals and demi-gods alike.
People get more fired up if the barista doesn't get thier latte right. I said MOCHA, DAMN IT!! DAMN YOU ALL! DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL!!
I can understand that he may be stating this factually, but you need some punch in the first line to drive in some passion...
It was I who was punished because I believe that no man should taste death.
If he was punished (past tense) then it would also be believed (also past tense).
To take this approach, it's important to maximize the impact of the dialogue for the actors. Give them some good stuff to say, to maximize drama with both bombast and subtle inflection of phrase...
Not the stuff of mere mortals, this one...Obviously top shelf level stuff. I do suggest tightening up some of the dialogue...Zeus knows he's talking to Sisyphus, and repeating his name gets a little overdone. Less is still more, even in grand style.
The term hubris is used several times, suggest swapping that out.
A bit more challenging to read than the norm, I hope that everyone will take the opportunity to read this exemplary piece.
Failure is only the opportunity to begin again more intelligently - Dove Chocolate Wrapper
This was certainly an interesting take on the challenge.
Crisp writing, though it was harder to read with the context of the language. It's well written and you obviously wanted to do something a little different, but for this particular challenge it might be a little too out there. I don't know, a 10 page story about Greek gods thrown in with murderers, rapists, suicide, and sodomizers. I do commend your unique choice and the writing is pretty good, but I'm not sure if this is a total hit or miss with the challenge. But hey, good job!
I don't know if it's because I liked Greek mythology as a kid, or because I really got pulled in to Sisyphus's plight with the boulders, but this was a great story. Excellent writing. Turning it into a Machinama would be pretty cool, if its possible. Kudos to the Author for going out on a limb and doing something out of the norm.
I thought this one was very well written and certainly a different take on the challenge. I didn't really have any problems getting through it and I thought it flowed nicely.
I am only familiar with the basic story of Sisyphus, that he was condemned to push the boulder up the hill for all eternity. I was not sure why he was punished or if there was ever any resolution. So I am not sure if you have taken any creative liberties here and added your own take to the myth or are sticking to the facts. Specifically, the ending with him rolling the boulder onto Merope...is that part of the myth? I got the impression you might have added that yourself, which I think works well as a sort of poetically tragic conclusion. Although if this was shown on screen, we wouldn't actually know that it was Merope. I thought the final line of the script by Hades was perfect.
Overall it appears you have spent a bit of time on this, and it shows in the quality of the work. Good job.
I can appreciate the effort here. I really liked the very beginning. I could visualize it perfectly. Then the dialogue started and I was less interested. It was too much of it and grew tired of it. It was a slowish read for me. Don't let that bring you down though. I'm very uneducated so if it wasn't a real hit with me, but got an A in bert's book then listen to bert and be proud of this one.
This was a tough read for me. The dialogue was a little on the nose. I thought the story itselff was great, although i did sniff out the twist early.
Very clean writing, Some interesting quotes in the dialogue. Just too much of it for me. I'll give you props for taking people like me, Who know nothing of greek mythology, and writing a good story that kept me interested.
I fear this may be too much to be made into machinama though. Good luck, quality work.
Very creative, maybe too creative. I'm sure the writer has a very clear vision in her head in regards to the action and story, but they are lost on me.
Basically, I didn't understand what's going on. There are too much talking back and forth with Zeus and Hades, and they are V.O. for the entire time! Not too visual there. The only visual is Sisyphus with a boulder.
Nice try.
FEATURE:
Memwipe - Sci-Fi, Action, Thriller (114 pages) - In a world where memories can be erased by request, a Memory Erasing Specialist desperately searches for the culprit when his wife becomes a target for erasure -- with his former colleagues hot on his trail.
This one was difficult to read. It plodded on with self-referential dialogue that felt like it belonged in a play. I could actually visualize the over-acting chops of stage actors speaking the lines. It was downright pretentious in a lot of places. I know it was done this way to squeeze in all the exposition you needed for this story of Sisyphus to make sense so that the ending would make sense, but it was too much plot for 9 pages. It was more like a short story or Wikipedia entry about him than it is a short dramatizing the tale.
The ending, of course, is right in line with the way the Greek myths tend to go, and it provides a beautiful twist to the story, but getting there is such a chore that I suspect a lot of people won't reach the goal of the story. What you need to work on is spreading the dialogue into actions or conversation so that the audience isn't watching a guy tell another guy everything both of them already know. In fact, page one was all monologue.
I do applaud you for grabbing a little known mythological figure and bringing him out, but it needs work to make it more accessible for a movie audience. FYI, everyone, Sisyphus is an actual Greek figure and even has a word attributed to him: sisyphean, which means endless and unavailing, such as a labor or task. So this is an adaptation.
Very dialogue heavy. Although it may be less difficult to animate this, the action for most of the piece is god-mortal talk. Character is revealed in it, sure, but it gets too repetitive, both in words and in tone. Thus, I don't feel really engaged. The tragic ending, I feel, could have been set up better with actual interchanges with Zeus, Hades, and Sisyphus -- some actionable clashes, q.v. Jason and the Argonauts.
I'm a fan of greek mythology. I studied it religiously for my epic adventure so I'm familiar with the story. Needless to say, it was a breeze for me to get through. Having said that, I didn't find nothing dark with this little piece. I thought you did a good job with this re-telling though.
I will be honest and say I struggled through this. I know nothing about Greek myths, Sisyphus or anything like that so this was all new to me. A lot of talking, lots of things flying over my head, I felt like giving up.
I'm glad I didn't. I thought the ending was outstanding and I never saw it coming. Then again, I know nothing about Greek myths, but I've already mentioned that already.
Great writing, very clean and crisp. Dialogue was exactly what you would have been aiming for, so well done on that. This is different, and you should be congratulated for attempting something like this, even if most of it is alien to people like me.
This is the one script that I knew for sure who the author was(aside from screenrider's junkie script). But, only because of the discussion board where you mentioned you needed a red boulder. Kind of a dead giveaway there. But, I like how you put a spin on an ancient classic. The dialogue was interesting and unusual enough to drive the story forward, although I think I would have liked even more imagery of Hades. Gotta say I'd like to see this in moviestorm.
I'd like to thank everyone (except Jeff) for their kind words (except Jeff), and basically I agree with everything that was said (except Jeff)...
(o:
Seriously though, I do agree with those of you who said it got deep and a bit talky in places. George pretty much nailed it with what he said - it took more hard work than I initially expected to spoon feed the myth to the reader, so that the payoff would work.
For those of you not familiar with the myth, I'll give it to you in layman speak - Sisyphus was a crafty devil, but not a god. He fancied himself their equal though.
So he screws Zeus by announcing that Zeus has kidnapped Aegina. So Zeus banishes him to Tartarus (the region of Hades where punishment occurs) where he's ordered to be chained. He then tricks Thanatos (death personified) into wearing the chains and escapes. And while death is chained, no one can die in battle.
He's returned to Hades after his death, but convinces Persephone to let him go back to the upper world, since his wife Merope did not give him proper funeral offerings - only Sisyphus instructed her not to do so.
He's finally returned to Hades by Ares, and his punishment is to roll the boulder up the hill for all eternity.
Kudos to Rick (decadence) for knowing the Camus essay. This was really the crux of the piece - Camus' famous quote is that "we must imagine Sisyphus happy", i.e., the satisfaction is in the toil, not in the result.
And so the story begins - in my version, Sisyphus baits Zeus into releasing him by convincing him of that which Camus posited - that he was actually happy in his punishment.
And of course it leads up to the greek tragedian ending, where Sisyphus' hubris (sorry Blakkwolfe) causes him to be blind to the possible consquences of rolling the boulder up the hill in the upper world.
And Tim (Trojan) sniffed out a bit of a gaffe at the end (bastage!); the viewer would indeed not know that Merope was Sisyphus' wife. I was supposed to have Sisyphus call out to Merope and then exclaim in horror.
Good work, my friend. "Talky" scripts always appeal to me if the dialogue is engaging, which it was here. There's a real battle of wits happening - or so Sisyphus thinks.
You crafted the story in such a way as to make Sisyphus appear the calculated, clever one, and yet his folly is revealed for all to see at the end.
Your "layman" retelling there was also very engaging and it really does provide fertile ground for a feature script, I think. Clearly you enjoyed it as well.
Kudos for bringing something different to the challenge, and bigger kudos for doing so successfully.
That's two of your scripts I have read now, both very good, so I look forward to your future work.
Very well written. It reads more like a play than a screenplay. I think it would make a nice play. Could even be expanded in that format.
As a screenplay, it’s a little talky and inactive.
Lady wife? Seems redundant.
Overall, I thought it was really good. Very well written with a good ending. I’m not really into machinima all that much but it seems like this script would make a good one.
Hey Anthony. Now that we're no longer in competition for an anthology spot, I reckoned it was safe for me to come on here and say nice things about your script.
Which is what I intend to do, actually. I really enjoyed it, thought you went in a bold direction and I applaud you for that. I'm a fan of mythology - a good grasp of those old, fundamental stories can really help a writer - and so I think that helped my engagement somewhat. I can see what Michael meant when he said that this might not be right for the intended audience of the anthology, but that's not a criticism of you or your script.
You've responded to the comments and I don't know if you plan to develop this in another direction or just let it lie, but since I've read it I might as well list the handful of notes I took:
- Your opening slugline bothered me. It's an insignificant, personal thing, an issue that I ran into in my recent 7WC script that featured a section set in Limbo; can you have 'NIGHT' in a place where normal time doesn't really flow? I'm guessing you meant for everything to be dark, but it still jarred with me. In my script I put 'TIME UNKNOWN', but Jeff called me on that, so I have no idea what would work best!
- I think some sort of visual response to Zeus' "they all belong to me!" outburst would be nice. A thunderbolt striking the ground nearby, maybe an earth tremor that knocks Sisyphus off his feet, causing the boulder to nearly crush him...something like that.
- Generally with the dialogue...I didn't totally buy into what someone called the 'Olde Worlde' style. It lacked a bit of authenticity, and never quite got past the point where it felt like a modern writer trying to 'do' that kind of speech. It's very, very hard to do - Shakespeare in Love does it quite well, but then Stoppard has such a control of the language after years as a playwright. I have an idea for a script set in Elizabethean London but I've put it to the bottom of my pile now because making that kind of dialogue sound authentic is so difficult. So...a problem, but a very understandable one.
- The sequence where he struggled to push the boulder higher and higher up the hill as he left the underworld felt perhaps like it could be a SERIES OF SHOTS.
That's it, really. Well done on what was a very interesting, well-written and fine effort.
Thanks very much for the detailed comments - as I recall now, I enjoyed It Gazes Back a lot, and though I've listed my "top 3" a number of times, I'd place yours a solid #4.
Really, really good idea with the thunderbolt. I guess the mistake I made here was not thinking visually enough as I wrote it, and being too worried about getting the myth told in the dialogue.
As for the "Olde English" - I read a number of these plays - Euripides, Aeschylus, etc. and I just tried to recall as best I could how the translators stated the language. Oh well...
As for the slug - yeah, no more thought went into it other than "I better not make this scene in the day or it won't get filmed!"
Breanne / Andrew / Brian,
Thanks for your kind comments as well. It means a lot coming very fine writers such as yourselves.
I think this was a lovely creative take on legend.
I didn't feel like it was any kind of strain to read at all.
As far as the dialogue goes, I think you could punch it up and also do a little more action on screen, but I what I really feel strongly is that this would work well as a play rather than a film.
As a matter of fact, it would be cool if these guys would sing some of their lines.
Nicely written. Although I'm not all that familiar with the source material, I believe I was able to "get" what your intention was with this piece. I thought the dialogue worked, it seemed "real", if you no what I mean - almost like a throwback to the early days of Hollywood where you had all these actors overacting every part as if they didn't know the difference between a stage and the silver screen.
But, and I suspect you already know this, the script is not very cinamatic. Not a whole lot happens throughout the story. Yes, you do have some - at times - wonderful exchanges - but reading that much continuous dialogue becomes a chore in the end.
This script would work great as a radio play. As a movies, not so much. It could though.
Cheers Rob
Down in the hole / Jesus tries to crack a smile / Beneath another shovel load
Thanks for the read. Yeah, it's definitely been discussed. I think the visuals would be cool - they are in hell, after all - but something has to happen between the dialogue.
Someone earlier suggested thunderbolts from Zeus, which I thought was a really good suggestion.
You might want to write this as part of a play about the Greek myths. It was very well written for the most part. Though I would have superimposed images of Zeus and Hades instead of voice-overs. It would make it seem that Sisyphus can supposedly see right through the gods. Richard
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