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SimplyScripts Screenwriting Discussion Board    One Week Challenge    October '07 One Week Challenge  ›  How To Carve a Pumpkin
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  Author    How To Carve a Pumpkin  (currently 4180 views)
Nixon
Posted: October 7th, 2007, 2:34am Report to Moderator
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My first one, so here goes:

I really enjoyed this one; it was a creative way to approach the theme and genre. For the most part your descriptions were effective, especially during those scenes of violence. Although the farm and “ghetto area” could’ve been flushed out more. Dialoged wise, it flowed well and you were able to convey the jokes in a clear manner. This one had me laughing several times. The disposable child actors in the beginning and the migrant worker/ farmer parts were my favorites. Great job.

edit: If anyone found this offensive, you need lighten up or light up.(smoke some weed)


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elis
Posted: October 7th, 2007, 3:05am Report to Moderator
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Quoted from Nixon


edit: If anyone found this offensive, you need lighten up or light up.(smoke some weed)


Each to their own!
We all have our personal likes and dislikes. That's what makes us so special as human beings - Pretty boring if we all thought the same.




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Nixon
Posted: October 7th, 2007, 3:22am Report to Moderator
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Quoted from elis

Each to their own!
We all have our personal likes and dislikes. That's what makes us so special as human beings - Pretty boring if we all thought the same.


I couldn't agree more. Everyone has a right to their own opinion and I stated mine above. Now back to the script, since thread hijacking is not cool.





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I WAS WRONG.
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Zombie Sean
Posted: October 7th, 2007, 10:43am Report to Moderator
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Heeeeey Punk,


So when I read the logline for this one, I immediately thought of Troy McClure or maybe something they'd show on Mad TV or Saturday Night Live.

I liked the beginning. Like some other people said, physical humor is funnier when watching it, but when you read it, you're just like, "Okay?" Though I liked it how Henry and his mom shook hands before he left.

Oh wow, haha Stanley is a racist bitch. Yeah, people might find that offensive, but we see and hear it every single day of our lives from the people we know and on television. But the "Go back to collge, Pablo" line was funny. I wish you could have gone into more depth with the farmer though.

So, I feel you're starting to lag with the comedy. The whole poop thing with Sparky, I didn't find that really funny.

Oh my God, not Sparky! Haha, and "How do you feel, Henry?"

So the ending seemed a bit...cliché but I still chuckled. Nothing like an explosion to end a happy pumpkin carving, eh? But yeah, your beginning started off good, but then you began to lag throughout the middle and most of the things weren't too funny. I feel you can spruce it up a bit. But then by the time the ending comes around, things started to pick up again. I didn't find any spelling mistakes and your descriptions seemed well-written. Your dialogue sounded good with the 50s theme.

Good work.

Sean
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Blakkwolfe
Posted: October 7th, 2007, 11:22am Report to Moderator
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Liked the concept of this, taking the classic Ward and June Cleaver of TV Land and just messing them up completely.

Good tackling of the theme of pumpkin carving taken to the most extreme degree...


Failure is only the opportunity to begin again more intelligently - Dove Chocolate Wrapper
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alffy
Posted: October 7th, 2007, 1:34pm Report to Moderator
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I thought this really funny, I loved the concept of a 50's training video.

The opening was great and the 50's views came across well.  The accidents were funny and I the ending was fine for me.

Overall I thought this was well funny, good stuff.


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bert
Posted: October 7th, 2007, 9:08pm Report to Moderator
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The author might have hyped this one a bit with their logline.  I can recall only two episodes I would deem racist, and those were actually quite tame.  The comedy here was mostly bloody slapstick.  

And there was a bit too much slapstick for me.  A little of that goes a long way, and you have a lot of it.  One carving knife episode would have been plenty, but the constant maiming of onlookers became predictable after a while.

Having said that, the opening bit where we lost one child after another was pretty funny, and it set the tone well for the remainder of the piece.  And I enjoyed how Stanley was menacingly benign throughout.  You did a good job with him, except for one small lapse near the end, where you had him drop the F-bomb.  That seemed out of character.

This one fit the challenge, with bits that worked early on, but the bloodletting became repetitive for me after a while.  I would have liked to have seen this take a few more unexpected turns with the subject matter.

OWC Score:  80%  


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Shelton
Posted: October 7th, 2007, 9:38pm Report to Moderator
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Yeah, I think the logline here was a little much.  I didn't find this to be overly degrading, racist, or offensive.  I mean you called a Mexican guy Pablo, and a black guy a negro.  That's about a 1 on the racism scale.

This was fairly good, comedy wise, in a slapstick way though.  Most of the ways in which the characters hurt themselves seem to have been in pretty dramatic fashion.  

I think Stanley could have used a different method of conveying his anger near the end instead of dropping an F bomb.

Anyway, a good effort.


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michel
Posted: October 10th, 2007, 2:47am Report to Moderator
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One of the best shorts I've read for this challenge. I laughed by myself in the train that led me to work. A very good job indeed Tulip (?)

Michel


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Ben
Posted: October 10th, 2007, 10:32pm Report to Moderator
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Very good! Serious form - instructional video and totally wild comedy. It was like a spoof of "Final Destination" - a good target. I always find it weird when death gets a laugh. Some of the best scenes of "Groundhog Day" are when Phil is repeatedly killing himself. I think you've pulled off the same strange but hilarious mix here.
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tomson
Posted: October 11th, 2007, 3:21pm Report to Moderator
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I actually thought this was pretty funny. In a sick dark way, but I like that.

I also liked how these over the top accidents and injuries keep happening, but the show goes on like nothing happened.

I did see the whole thing in my head in b/w too.

I bet whoever wrote this would like this film http://www.atomfilms.com/film/timmys_wish.jsp?channelKeyword=channel_wtf also sick and wrong, but funny and b/w too.

Pia
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Mr.Ripley
Posted: October 11th, 2007, 5:02pm Report to Moderator
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I chuckled at the beginning scenes, when the children needed to leave. That awareness of something might go bad should have continued onward though. The other jokes was kind of good but not as the first ones.  

Gabe


Just Murdered by Sean Elwood (Zombie Sean) and Gabriel Moronta (Mr. Ripley) - (Dark Comedy, Horror) All is fair in love and war. A hopeless romantic gay man resorts to bloodshed to win the coveted position of Bridesmaid. 99 pages.
https://www.simplyscripts.net/cgi-bin/Blah/Blah.pl?b-comedy/m-1624410571/
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Tierney
Posted: October 12th, 2007, 1:12am Report to Moderator
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I like the idea of a send up of a social guidance film as a means of meeting the jack-o-lantern challenge.  It has the stiff narrator/commentator and the typical views on race you always find in them and in spots it is very funny.  But it kind of misses for me.  

What makes the originals so comic are that the characters/victims always make some sort of extraordinarily bad decision that leads to their demise.  In the short, people and pets seem to just get massacred for no other reason than the writer wants some gore.  And the set-ups and bloody pay offs get older and older as the pages go by.
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EBurke73
Posted: October 14th, 2007, 9:14pm Report to Moderator
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I liked the idea of this, based on the logline, and figured we'd have an OTT straight man allowing all sorts of things, politically incorrect now, but fitting for the 50's.  A little bit peeked through, but got undercut by being flat out racist in a way that the 50's wouldn't have gone for either.  

The migrant Mexican worker not knowing what the kid was talking about I can see, "go back to college Pablo," not so much.  "Uh oh, a negro," works pretty well, but then it went to Henry selling his sister to the guy, and we've gone in an uncomfortable direction as opposed to "ha ha false racism used for humor."

I think the physical comedy might have worked well here, and you used the rule of three pretty well, sorry, I'm a stickler on that one at times, but the physical comedy ended in violent death for kids.  It was kind of like the racism attempts, kid falls into a table is fine, but then the knife falls and slits his throat is on that uncomfortable side.  The bit where Henry slices Stanley's thumb works because the violence was used in a slapstick way, as opposed to adding to a body count.

Maybe I'm being cantankerous, but there's a lot of potential, just ease up on the fatalities and use the innocent idiocy of the 50's to mine some good un-p.c. humor.


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