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Truth or Bear by Judy - Short, Comedy - Bandmates James & Oliver visit a Rock N' Roll History museum, with their pizza delivery guy/best friend/neighbour Eric. Hilarity ensues. <12 pages - pdf, format
As a follower of Stephan T. Colbert, I had high hopes for this and after reading I'm not sure what to say.
I found most of the things directly involving the bear pretty funny, especially the bear in a hat. (The only thing funnier then bears or hats is a bear in a hat.) I also liked the thing with Oldie, I thought he was pretty good.
With the exception of James flipping over the table in anger at the very beginning I found most of the stuff between James, Eric, and Oliver not that funny. They did have their moments, (like the bear alarm exchange, some of the stuff at the end). Also, most of the stuff that happened before they got to the museum I didn't like.
Concerning the theme, there was hardly any mention of pumpkin carving, in fact as I recall no pumpkins were actually carved. Also at one point they ask Why they should carver pumpkins when its not Halloween, then ask why would a muesum be open on Halloween. That confused me.
Overall, I found it mildly funny (some stuff, the bear/oldie was really funny other stuff not so much, averages out to a mild funny) Also there was no pumpkin carving only a little bit of pumpkins.
Oh no! It's that newbie's script - I'm gonna be mean to him on purpose.
j/k
It wasn't bad. It didn't really have much to do with carving a jack-o'-lantern but it caught a nice rythym. There were a few chuckles and you seem to have a knack with dialogue. I didn't really mind that pumpkins appeared out of mid-air but I think the script could have been edited down a bit more as it dragged on at times. Are you a Mighty Boosh fan? Can I ask?
A good effort in place but definitely not, a “carving a Jack O’Lantern” story.
I was a little slow and boring at the beginning. Things finally fell into place after meeting the old man.
I assume you tried to create a comedy type set up with the slow motion bit and, it kind of worked OK!
The story is a little hazy and needs refining. You added magical sequences such as the pumpkin and the guitar, but they added nothing really amazing to the story.
This is an Ok story, fairly well written and formatted but, off the OWC challenge.
My OWC Challenge rating of your script:1/10 - consider yourself lucky there only because you at least mentioned the Jack O'Lantern. Comedy Structure: 3/10 My rating of your script overall:6/10
Not on the theme at all, but I did find some of it funny.
It felt sort of like a Bill and Ted kind of story to me, but I think it fell kind of short, and still needs more kick to it.
Imagine, bears allergic to pumpkins. Truth or bear? I don't know...
I did like the ending when the bear broke the guitar.
Cindy
Award winning screenwriter Available screenplays TINA DARLING - 114 page Comedy ONLY OSCAR KNOWS - 99 page Horror A SONG IN MY HEART - 94 page Drama HALLOWEEN GAMES - 105 page Drama
The other thing is your name on the script. No one is really going to give you a bad review because of it, but that does not give you permission to post your comments here in regards to it
I've gotta be honest, this script wasn't written particularly for this competition. It was written as an animated short which we plan to produce over the next year. This is why it's not big on following the theme of the contest.
The story does have one small part where James carves a Jack O' Latern and the pumpkin does become integral to the plot, but next time I'll definently write something more on topic.
I've gotta be honest, this script wasn't written particularly for this competition. It was written as an animated short which we plan to produce over the next year. This is why it's not big on following the theme of the contest.
Okay. You are new to this, so just know that everything I say is here to help you and not hurt you.
You have some really funny images in here, and some really funny nonsense jokes. That's fun, and I smiled a couple of times, but it's not enough to fill a twelve page script. When you have a script with nothing but nonsense jokes, even if they are funny, you have a script that is nonsense. What I recommend is keep a slight sense of surrealism, but ground it more in reality so that we see the contrast between the nonsense and the real world and can laugh at it. In case you didn't mean for this script to be nonsensical, here are some examples of building reality:
1. Motivation. Everything a character does must have some motivation behind it. The character must have a reason to do what he's doing.
2. "Real" characters. Your characters said and did things that no real people would do. This is okay, and can be funny in moderation, but when you don't have a single real character, and they're all doing just the craziest things all the time, what I'm reading is nonsense.
3. ...make sense. The whole pull a pumpking out of nowhere thing. Then the whole put a pumpkin in my pants thing, then the whole guitar shooting lazers bears with hats, halloween/far away from halloween... all that stuff is just too much.
Now I'm not saying you should get rid of all that stuff, what I'm saying is that pick one. Either make your characters real in a crazy world where bears run around with hats and guitars shoot lazers, or make your characters crazy in a world that is normal. You need som element anchoring the story in reality, or else you're just wasting peoples time.
I hope this helps, I think you could have a funny script, but as is, you've got... a project.
I'm going to let the comments stand as is. dslah is new to the Challenge and I give props for giving it a go. The OWC is tough.
Don
Don, Can you please disallow from now, the replies from dsah, it is a post suppose to remain writer anonimous and therefore, comments by the writer is not allowed. Although I do agree he is new but the rules should apply to all. Thanks