Quarter by Cordell Walker - Short, Action - A new game's just a quarter at the arcade, but hot-shot vet cop John Segale's here for a real-life princess. 9 pages - pdf, format

Cordell Walker (action star Chuck Norris)

QUARTER

Action:  High
Budget:  Not low

Now this is what I’m talking about! Action for no reason. Action as a backdrop for deep discussions. Action to top more action.

Only, one thing. The cost to this would not be low budget.

Way to work in the Donkey Kong game.

Gary

I actually read this last night, but decided not to post, in fear of saying something I shouldn't, or in a way I shouldn't.  I slept on it, read it again this morning...and I feel the same way I did last night, so here goes...

I personally don't like anything about this.  I don't like the writing.  I don't see any story.  And, really, the whole thing comes off as irritating, actually.  Maybe it's just me, I don't know.

The writer knows what's he's doing, or at least, thinks he does.  That's apparent.

The whole thing, including the way it's written, just comes off as so cheesy, it's hard to even take seriously.  It's almost like a pisser in alot of ways...a slap in the face of good action writing and action films.

I don't want to to be harsh with these OWC scripts, cause I know how difficult it can be to come up with a decent idea and write it well in a week's time.  But again, I think the problems on display here are all due to the writer trying to be too cool and trying to write in a too cool, hip way.

There are just so many examples of mistakes that don't have to be made if the writer would just write, and not try to take everything so far overboard.

On Page 1, although it's "DAY", John's face is "bathed" in read and blue flashing police lights somehow, as he apparently just stands there in a corny "shot".  Why would this be taking place during the day, anyway?  The effect you're after here would require a night scene.

Then, at the bottom of the page, although we've moved into an INT scene, John and the policeman "stride" up to the entrance (obviously not inside like the Slug says), and then, John locks the policeman out (from inside), yet the policeman pounds on the door (from the outside).  Doesn't make any sense as written.

Then we get the classic "Henchman", retarded, over the top action sequences, some written in detail, others completely glossed over with "fighting styles" used.  Complete cheese, and we're not talking about Jarlsberg here...more like Kraft Cheese Whiz.

The writer tried to be cool with his transitions also, and for me, they didn't work at all, and read awkwardly.  The transitions themselves are written like Mini Slugs, but then, full Slugs are used continually.

Examples of "begins to", "has removed", "is staring", lots of orphans, comical, over the top dialogue that says nothing, and finally, and ending that's just about as ambiguous as you can get, rendering the complete story, useless for me.

So, with all this harshness out of my system now, I will say the writer can write.  That's for sure.  IMO, the writer should try and just write a simple and solid story and not worry about being fancy and over the top.  Action's great, but there needs to be a reason for it...a setup, and then a resolution.

This did not work for me at all.  Hopefully, I've made myself clear on what the reasons are.  Sorry for the harshness of this feedback.  

Hello, Cordell. I've just read your script and here are my thoughts.

Well, it looks like you took the "on like Donkey Kong" suggestion literally. I have to admit, the last thing I was expecting was a classic arcade game re-imagined as an over-the-top 80s-style action film.

The first five pages or so were a gleefully fun read, but the shift in tone at the end from over-the-top silliness to a more serious tone lessened my enjoyment and left a slightly sour taste in my mouth. I think I know what you were trying to say but, as written, the conclusion comes across as esoteric and unsatisfying.

You neglected to add a title page to the script. According to the sluglines, the story takes place during the day but the scenes are written in a manner to suggest they were meant to take place at night. There were some instances where the sluglines and action prose could have made things clearer, such as the scene mentioned in the previous post where John and the officer approach the arcade. Here are the other things I noticed as I read the story.

Page 1: The phrase "six shooter" should be "six-shooter."

Page 2: The phrase "Half-way there" should be "Halfway there." The phrase "quarter sized circle" should be "quarter-sized circle." The phrase "absent-mindedly" should be "absentmindedly."

Page 5: The line "Well well" should be "Well, well."

Page 6: The line "John you've got to go" should be "John, you've got to go." The line "shush babe" should be "Shush, babe."

I hope this response helps, and good luck with your writing.

The literal Donkey Kong script.  I knew it was coming.  

This script didn't do much for me, for a few reasons.  First, the fairly clever, fun set-up you had was followed by a by-the-numbers action feel, complete with typical tough guy action lines.  Those lines kind of ruined the flow of the story for me.

I didn't really understand the relationship between Pauline and John, so I wasn't really rooting for anyone in the story.  BTW, you should have worked "Mario" into John's name somehow.  And Pauline Kael...the old film critic?  How'd she get here?

Didn't get the ending.  She just murdered a cop and now she's walking away in front of the news cameras?  Even "out there" scripts like this have to keep a toe hold in reality, IMO.

So, good concept, not so good execution.

I like the punch to the henchman that leaves the quarter mark, that's awfully clever and artfully delivered.  Cleverness seems to be what you were going after in this script and you've achieved that.  It wears thin, but it's clever.

I read this last night but was too tired to comment.  I gave it another look-through just now and my thoughts are pretty much the same; a lot of action but not a lot of substance.  I honestly didn't get the relationship between John/Pauline/Damien.  I got that at first we think John is the hero but in actuality he's the bad guy...but it still wasn't clear enough to me what was going on and why.  

Fighting with nameless henchmen is also something I've never been a big fan of.  Remember in Austin Powers 3 when Nigel has an exchange with a henchman;

"Do you know who I am?  Have you got any idea how many anonymous henchmen I've killed over the years?  I mean, look at you.  You don't even have a name tag.  You've got no chance.  Why don't you just fall down? Go on son."  

I think in a short, every character needs to count.  

A lot of really descriptive action too.  Maybe not so much detail could be beneficial.  

So...this one didn't really do much for me, sorry to say.  But nice job finishing in a week.

Greg

Not bad and fit the challenge well, some of the dialog was a bit cheesy, but that doesn't really bother me with action scripts, and I liked that there was a fair amount of action in the script. got a little bit confusing at the end. still good work on finishing a OWC and keeping it within the criteria.

One word comes to my mind when I read this. Ambitious.

The problem is that it was too ambitious for me. Low budget was key and this feels like a high budget action flick.

It was clever and the use of the live action Donkey Kong was something I expected someone to write about. You delivered there.

I loved some of the corny one liners, which feel plucked out of an 80's action film. "Tails. You Lose".

Other than that, the script felt like more style over substance.

Congrats on finishing.

I actually did kind of like this one, although, my likeness for it did taper off around page 5 or 6.

I thought it was clever going the literal DK route, but got kind of confused at the end between John's and Damien's dialogue.  Their characters just got intertwined in my head for some reason.

It had a lot of action in it, and I liked that aspect of it (for an action script).  Otherwise, I'm not an action man in the slightest.  But I do get interested every now and then.

Budgetwise, I wouldn't call it low-budget, but I don't think it's exactly unmanagable, either, if you have somebody experienced with charges on the set, and maybe a few make-up effects with all the wounds.

I don't think this was a bad attempt at the challenge at all, though.  Definately my favorite out of the 2 that I've read so far.  :-)

- Mark

I read this one earlier as well but didn't really know what to make of it.

Thoughts:

A quote from The Bard comes to mind:

"Why, i' faith, methinks she's too low for a high praise, too brown for a fair praise and too little for a great praise..."

There seem to be a lot of things in this script, all of them moving in different directions.  There's definitely action -- and Donkey Kong action, at that! -- but the script seems to be written as though the main emphasis isn't on the action but everything else.  Only thing is...what is everything else?  Is it anything?  I'm not sure.

Thanks for the fun read and congrats on writing for the OWC!

#3 Quarter -
A new game's just a quarter at the arcade, but hot-shot vet cop John Segale's here for a real-life princess. 9 pages.

Format: Perfect - Pretty Good -  Close Enough
Action:  H3ll, Yeah! - Pretty Good - Eventually - Needs More
Breakdown: One page of set up before action begins! Sweet! Page 2 through 7 is rock em' sock em' shoot em' up. Close with another page of blabbin'.

Budget Considerations:
Locations - City street, arcade interior, (vintage) straight-shot stair well,  upper floor room, spacious attic
Props - Cigarette, reporter microphone w/ faux boadcaster box thingie on it, large caliber revolver (.357 Colt Python?) , police belt w/ gear, dust, henchman's pistol, Damian's pistol, office chair, bindings and gag, oak barrel, ladder, peculiar looking grenade, desk (ugh! getting that up in the attic will be a b!tch!)
Costumes - Police uniform, John's jacket,
Actors - John, Reporter, Police Officer, Henchman, Damien, Pauline
SFX - Bad Boyz street sign, faux broadcaster logo and reporter's name overlay, wirework for flying henchman and leaping over barrel (likely some greenscreen involved at this point), slo-mo quarter effect superimposed over background, quarter imprint effect, fake blood, 2x barrel explosion effect, fires on legs, barrel throwing effects, seriously burned leg, slo-mo on grenade (more greenscreen!), special grenade explosion & metal rods (flechettes?), metal rod in foot/boot effect, chest shot effect, cheek shot effect, shot in ceiling, news camera view, flashing lights
Other - body pads for fight stunt sequences.

What I like: This was a pleasantly weird little story.
What I'd change: Not much. Since there's already a kinda cartoony feel to it maybe goose the characters up in melodrama.
How I envision this looking: Like a Nicolas Cage movie - Kinda goofy, but well executed.
Budget Guesstimate: Maybe $5k. Toughest part would be for an indie filmmaker in Anytown USA/UK/Aus to find an arcade with all of those classic arcade games. The rest could be guerrilla filmed with non-SAG and Adobe After Effected.
What I'd like to know from the writer: Why didn't you continue the short with Damian & Pauline being forced into the next game challenge level before FADE OUT?

Cordell,

I give you style points for the quarter punch tattoo on the henchman.
It made me chuckle aloud. Kudos.
I'm a sucker for arcade consoles, but the fun backdrop is the only real highlight here.
Lots of worn out action tropes that would even make "The Last Action Hero" blush.
And what was the deal with putting the famed NY Times film critic in here?

I couldn't grasp why John and Damien were such big adversaries.
The relationship triangle was pretty incoherent.
The barrel Donkey Kong motif was pretty good, but blew the OWC budget constraint.

You definitely know how to put together a formatted script page.
I hope your next effort has a stronger narrative.

Thanks for playing, OWCs don't work without efforts like yours!

Regards,
E.D.

This one was interesting, a few mistakes here and there which  were easily forgivable. The story was strange, but in a good way, I liked the video game theme, I do think it needs a stronger ending for a knockout finish. Good job.

A fairly straightforward, classic (and expensive) action piece. The dialog seemed to indicate a lot more backstory, but you never gave it to us. So ultimately I'm taking away from this that it was action for action sake.

I feel weird saying this, but I kind of tuned-out during the stair scene. I thought the barrel exploded, so I was distracted by thinking how they continue to fight. Anyway, the quarter and punch was the highlight of this... too bad it came so soon. I don't get the ending. The reporter nonchalantly states that they were rooting for the wrong person the whole time? WTF?

Decent attempt.

Thanks very much for all of the great and detailed reviews, everyone!  I really appreciate it.  

First off I should apologize for any weak/passive writing...it's been a long time since I've written spec, and in writing for myself and for certain production, my voice has gotten a little weak in some ways.

If anyone's interested, I wanted to try and outline some of my perspective on Quarter.  It may be a bit long winded -- fair warning.

I wanted to try something out with Quarter...action that wasn't driven by physical story.  I wanted to respond to a few comments and maybe give a better sense of what I might have been trying to get at.  Below that I'm going to explain to some extent the basics of what I was thinking about when I wrote Quarter.

Quoted from Dreamscale The whole thing, including the way it's written, just comes off as so cheesy, it's hard to even take seriously.

I agree...it does seem inconceivable that someone would write this as a straightforward action piece.  Perhaps that means that it's not intended as such?

Quoted from Dreamscale On Page 1, although it's "DAY", John's face is "bathed" in read and blue flashing police lights somehow, as he apparently just stands there in a corny "shot".  Why would this be taking place during the day, anyway?  The effect you're after here would require a night scene.

I agree, it doesn't seem as though this would be possible in the day.  The image is clearly surreal.  And yeah...no real person would just stand there in a corny "shot".  Who would?  No real person would ever be fighting a random "henchman", either...random henchmen probably don't particularly exist.  This seems to me to suggest something about the nature of John.

Quoted from Dreamscale Then, at the bottom of the page, although we've moved into an INT scene, John and the policeman "stride" up to the entrance (obviously not inside like the Slug says)...

I meant the camera was sitting inside.  On the line if this is the writer's call but where exactly the shift occurs to interior from exterior (and through a camera) to interior was, to my view, an important beat.  But fair enough, I can definitely see why it reads as confusing.  Consider this: we go from being outside, through a news camera which exists in the film world, to being inside, through the eye of our film's camera, which doesn't exist in the film world.  The camera, the audience's eye, has moved before the characters -- they come to it, it doesn't follow them.

Quoted from abelorfao Page 5: The line "Well well" should be "Well, well." Page 6: The line "John you've got to go" should be "John, you've got to go." The line "shush babe" should be "Shush, babe."

This is an interesting one.  Lines don't have to be grammatically correct, do they?  To me, for example, the phrase "shush, babe" sounds slightly more respectful of a person than the phrase "shush babe".  

Quoted from ryan1 BTW, you should have worked "Mario" into John's name somehow.  And Pauline Kael...the old film critic?  How'd she get here? Didn't get the ending.  She just murdered a cop and now she's walking away in front of the news cameras?  Even "out there" scripts like this have to keep a toe hold in reality, IMO.

Haha it's there, it's just extremely obscure;  the character Mario was named after a real-life person named Mario Segale.  On a related note, Pauline is the name of the princess in Donkey Kong.  But Pauline Kael, specifically...the female lead in the script, who decides between one man and the other, is a film critic.  This seems to me to suggest something about the nature of Pauline.  

The ending definitely seems unrealistic.  Again, I would take this as an indication -- along with moments like the flashing blue and red lights, and of course the over-the-top action -- that the script isn't necessarily grounded in reality.  It is, after all, for much of its running time an obvious allegory for a video game.

Quoted from TheUsualSuspect I loved some of the corny one liners, which feel plucked out of an 80's action film. "Tails. You Lose".

Agreed.  Specifically, John's lines seem to be plucked out of an 80s action film.  Again I feel that this suggests something about the nature of John.

Quoted from rc1107 ...got kind of confused at the end between John's and Damien's dialogue.  Their characters just got intertwined in my head for some reason.

I agree; although John has very defined characteristics at the start of the script, he and Damien seem to sound more and more alike towards the end.  "Intertwined" is a good word.  One way in which they are very clearly not alike is the way in which they react to the news camera.

-----------------------

It's really a toss-up with amateur scriptwriting, but a lot of the things that were identified as mistakes in Quarter were things that I did intentionally.  I think that a good script is by necessity cohesive, and I try to assume that every script I read is a good one off the top.  Therefore, if something seems strange, either by the standards of the genre or by the standards established by the script, it might suggest to me that that moment is an important clue to some aspect of the story.  Scripts are no different than other literature in that they establish theme through a combination of plot, character, symbolism, and figurative and literal imagery.  In my opinion, Quarter uses all of these elements, presenting a literal plot that can't be fully understood to a satisfying extent without exploring its potential allegorical and/or figurative development.

In my mind, Quarter has four significant aspects to it:

1.  The literal story
2.  A major sequence which is an allegory for a video game (a public symbol of style over substance, flash, soullessness, whatever)
3.  An overall story which is an allegory for the evolution of a specific aspect of our culture (is it at all clear what that might be?)
4.  The way in which the allegorical elements of 2. and 3. inform our understanding of 1. to suggest a broader statement about people in general.

I don't mean in any way to imply that the script is "better" than anyone thinks, or "smarter", or that people should have been more satisfied than they were.  Obviously it wasn't successful in getting its point across.  And I don't mean to sound snooty, although I'm sure that I do.  I was just trying to find a good way to demonstrate the way I think about scripts and the way that I approach scripts and the OWC seemed like a good place.  I hope that my perspective makes some kinda sense.  

This was a peculiar read.

I suppose I'll start off by saying that out of the three OWC entries, I've read thus far, this one felt the most like an action script. The characters, plot and fight sequences all seemed to come together in something that just had the right feel to it. It didn't feel like you'd have to make a case for what it is.

I did like how the action mirrored the dynamics of the classic Donkey Kong game. I was actually of a mind, for like two seconds, to write a script with the same dynamics except with the actual characters from the game (DK, Mario, Peach). Wouldn't have amounted to much but would've been fun. I'm happy that you actually built an original plot around it.

Anyway, the ending turned the script on its head. I liked that you mislead the reader in regards to protagonist/antagonist only to turn the tables at the end. Given your post above, it seems like there was a specific reason for that. I'm not sure I follow but I appreciated just the twist in convention.

At the same time, it all seemed a little odd to me. The dialogue all seemed to elude to things that were established outside the script... in other words, not established. What is Damien innocent of, for example. What's the relationship between the three characters? Who is John? Why is he on the news.

It felt like the ending to a feature, in all honesty. I can only imagine what kind of feature that would be.

Anyway, I liked it but I think it might've been a little too ambitious for nine pages. Admittedly, I'm at a loss as to what you've explained in your above post. I'm missing the allegory or at least part of it.

An enjoyable read, regardless.

I guess obviously I may well just have been entirely too esoteric, as Abel said, with the script in general.  I had my girlfriend read it to see if she picked up on things, and she did, but she might have an unfair advantage in knowing better than SSers what topics (in life) I tend to write and/or complain about regularly.

Chris, I'm also completely clueless as to what you're getting at with your script, or even what you're trying to say ion your post yesterday.

AS I often say, and often get into arguments over such issues, it completely boggles my brain how people try and draw comparisons, find themes, allegories, whatever, in what should be a simple script/movie.

I think you're a good guy, Chris, but IMO, this is a perfect example of trying to take something way too far or go way too deep.

But then again, maybe it's the actual writing that's making all this impossible to see?

As I said initially, the writing on display here is a mix of over the top in ever way, pure Limburger cheese, fancy/schmancy attempts at being cool, and irritatingness right from the very getgo.

NOTE - I'm not trying to be an ass or cause any trouble at all - hopefully you know me well enough, to know I'm just trying to help you out into figuring where this works and doesn't work, and why it didn't work for many.

Here are just a few things (some already brought up) that just don't come across well, IMO.

We start off "through a news camera", and never "go back to scene", as far as I can tell, do we?

John is the only character properly intro'd with CAPS on Page 1 - you've also got the news reporter and a cop in the scene, and the Reporter even has a bunch of lines, yet we get ZERO visual description of them.

As I noted in my initial post, When you switch to an INT scene, inside the arcade at the bottom of Page 1, it's incorrect at first.  You said that you envision the camera being inside, but even if that's the case, it's not correct for a spec script, and is totally directing the shot and making it confusing for your readers.

The Henchman isn't properly intro'd either on Page 2.

So, I feel the same way after a 3rd read, only I've found more mistakes (which aren't being brought up, don't worry).

Based on your responses to alot of my feedback, it seems like you're implying this could be a dream or something.  I really hope that's not the case, Chris.

As I said before, it's obvious you can write, but IMO, you've taken everything way too far overboard, inclduing the writing it self.  Now, based on your comments, I'm wondering if you've taken the meaning to far as well.

I'm not sure what else to say, but I do appreciate your responses, as it's always nice to find out what the writer was thinking.

Take care!