Quoted Text MARTIN (O.S) We have your little brother Jack, and I will put a bullet in his fucking head if you don�t fucking tell me where my fucking shit is right fucking now! JACK You fucking c**ksucker, I�ll rip your fucking heart out if you lay one fucking finger on him. This is between you and me!

Okay. Do me a huge favor, and read those two bits of dialog to yourself the way you want them to sound...with the right cadence and without hesitation. No goof ups or snickers. If you stumble, you have used one too many f-bombs. You might as well have written this :

A proper copper coffee pot.

Point is that you think you're using it for shock value, but what you wind up doing is taking an actor and making them speak the equal to a tounge twister. One or two bits of profanity is one thing. Having 3-4 F bombs combined with c-suckers is, pardon the evil pun, a mouthful to say. Also keep in mind these two things: it isn't the fact that some people may or may not be offended by the profanity, although that could be the case. It is the fact that it can get tiring to read and/or hear if that's the extent of every character's limited vocabulary. The effect is you can't tell who's talking anymore. Adding Thug #1 and #2 and it becomes that more generic. (Also, during some action, Thug #2 reads "thug #2")

Second, while a short script might not be on the ame plane as a feature, you have to consider marketing the script as well.


I, too, had a slight problem with the old bat on page one. It's actually a description that isn't needed. For (dark comedy) effect, all you need is the false teeth falling out. It's cheap as chicken nuggets, but that's all you need.

Some nice action though. I would cut the last line though. You describe it in action; the character doesn't need to be OTN with it.

A few mistakes here and there - first page, the revolver would surely be in just one hand, not two if he's running? Old bat - writer is English or from down under I'm guessing, but then cell phone is used which is curious or maybe deliberate? Lots of bad language, which is okay but just a little over the top.

By page 2 the dialouge is too on the nose and pure exposition.  'Have you tried . . .' has he tired what? Impaling a guy with a chair? Is it made from oversized knitting needles? Then it smashes apart? What kind of chairs do you sit on?

The dialouge between the man getting car jacked doesn't serve any purpose. Either cut it or use it as a play on Jacks name in the exchange, 'Hi Jack'.

The word large is redundant before mansion, as a manison by definition is large. same with gate. The exchange between the Goons doesn't advance the story, it's just padding. Things have been elevated to cartoon status now. Martin and Jacks exchange before Jack pulls the trigger? Not buying it.

Stabbing a guy in the chest with a shard of glass then sawing it open? The skin on his hands must be like leather and how does go through the chest cavity with a piece of sharp glass?

This was a stab an action script with a piece of glass that had too many flaws in logic to work for me.

I kept waiting for something funny to happen.  I thought it was going to be a toungue-in-cheek story the way that the descriptions read and from the outrageous dialogue.  But nothing funny ever came, so I guess I was supposed to take this one seriously.  Oops.

The action's there.  The story's not.  I just didn't like any of the characters.  I know that characters don't have to be liked, but in this instance, there just wasn't anything for me to care about what was going on.  Probably because I was waiting for that laugh to come.  That funny twist that would make up for the cardboard characters and more-than-raunchy dialogue.

formatting: acceptable from my end

writing: some problems, but seemed due to being rushed at a few points. At times the dialogue flowed very nicely, seemed very natural. At other times it really stuck out as something people would not say. Overall, my impression is the writer can be effective with dialogue, and the problems here were caused by time limitation. I think the word Zen was missing from one line, and we had to fill in the blank. Not even sure if I filled it correctly.

action: IMO that's probably a strong point for the writer, possibly something he enjoys too.

story: as with most of these OWC action based shorts, this was a problem. I believe in a short you want to leave the audience with one powerful impression An emotion, an image, a thought. There's nothing in this story that the audience will remember it by. The protag, Jack, is not someone we sympathize with. He remorselessly runs over old ladies, steals from his employers, is disloyal to those that hired him, and lies about it. He loves his little brother, great.

There was no twist here. No character arc. No unique, lasting image. And since we don't care about the characters, no emotion. You don't need all of these things, but you need at least one of them.

But, I do think the writer shows plenty of game. The problems I mentioned above seemed to be a common issue with this action based OWC. And action movies are certainly the most marketable, so a lot to be optimistic about here.

Thanks everyone for the read an comments. I got this done in about thirty minutes on the Due date, looking back there are many changes i would make, some have been pointed out, except for the "old bat's" line I would never change that!

I wish I had some time to go over it before, but I never did, seems to happen with me with the owc, i don't get an idea till the day it's due, oh well.

Thanks again!

So it's been a while since I checked out an OWC, but I thought I'd give this one a read because, well, it's just so darn short.

Basically, I liked it. It's just simple goofy, bloody fun. Nothing more, nothing less. I don't think I can add anything that hasn't been said by other reviews, so I'll just say that it gave me a few minutes of entertainment. And that's basically what a script like this is for, so that's a win in my book.

Well done, Jordan!

I think everyone should know what to expect when the elderly woman is violently shoved onto the sidewalk, breaking her false teeth. Anyone else either has unrealistic expectations or needs to change their perspective.

This was a fun read. It reminded me of Troma in the sense that everyone in this world is just a massive dick. The number of expletives inserted into the dialogue forfeits realism completely but there was something methodical about it and in the end, it enhanced the "massive dick-ness" of the whole thing.

Overall, the excessive violence and vulgarity made me laugh (in a good way) and the ending was all too appropriate, taking a menacing figure of speech and making it literal. It's ghastly, hilarious and just flat out ridiculous all at the same time - executed with a shard of glass that most certainly would've broken midway, no less.

Too vulgar, mean-spirited and excessive to be taken seriously but certainly entertaining.

Thanks for the read Mathew and Jimmy.

Quoted from James McClung vulgar, mean-spirited and excessive

i would love that as a tag line!!!!

Looking back now after a couple of weeks I think I should have made it more hard core, i think if i made it nastier it would be more clear on what i wanted to do, but i didn't quite get there, but i think the main tone got across.

thanks again for the reads.