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The Pumpkins Disappearance by Jack - Short, Comedy - A kingdom far, far way has to live with the end of all pumpkins to carving the jack-o-lanterns and the possibility of hasn’t a real Halloween anymore! <12 pages - pdf, format
Okay, this was basically pointless. The theme - carving a Jack-o-Lantern - wasn't really covered here, it was more about the search for pumpkins (a very boring search I might add). On top of that it wasn't even close to being funny.
The SUPER in the beginning pretty much covers everything, you should have just told us how the story ends right there, because the main script seemed like stuffing. The dialogue was terrible and pretty much rehashed the SUPER.
No, this didn't work for me.
Rob
Down in the hole / Jesus tries to crack a smile / Beneath another shovel load
I'm not sure what to make of this?! It is, I think, interesting -- fanciful even. It hasn't anything to do with carving a pumpkin, though, and the humor, while present, wasn't my style.
On a technical level, your opening SUPER should be broken into shorter paragraphs. As it is, it's nearly 20 lines long. It's text heavy and, no doubt, sees readers skipping to the next script. In any case, Sniper is right, just lose it. It's unnecessary.
About Uwesley and Rumbert, are they named after Wesley and Bert, or is this just coincidence? If they are, why didn't you play it up?
It's different, but no actual carving of the pumpkin... and no real Halloween.
The lizards were cute though.
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 story is out there, for sure, but kept my attention. All these carachters and a smoky swamp on top of it all. For a while I was afraid who the snake might be...
For me, the script seems uneven and could only benefit from restructuring.
My suggestion would be to shorten the much too long rolling credit sequence to where it ends with the “all celebrations ceased, because all the pumpkins mysteriously disappeared.” And then cut to the bored lizards in the tree complaining about how dull life has become.
The scene with Chuck and the Smithy is kind of pointless if the writer is doing the lizard story because both first-introduced characters vanish from the narrative after the second page.
The strange thing about the Chuck scene is that it sets up a completely different story. Chuck and the Smithy talk about how the king has offered a reward to anyone who can come up with an alternative to the pumpkin. It’s an odd and unmotivated change to then cut to two different characters who just by chance find a pumpkin. With Chuck you’ve set up a blacksmith and all his skills and his shop and a big reward for some crazy invention and then the reader is suddenly in the forest.
It might be more interesting to explore the idea of a blacksmith invented hybrid pumpkin. That would really be carving a jack-o'-lantern.
Forget breaking the SUPER into smaller paragraphs. It's just too bulky for what it's supposed to be. You'd be better off condensing it into less/smaller sentences that cover the same information. What you have here is basically the "long" explanation. The scene with Chuck and Smithy that follows can (should) go. You take up about a page and a half setting up for a joke about horseshoes. The payoff is weak considering how much it takes to get there.
Onto the lizards. I can't think of anything here that seemed intentionally funny, except for the belly dancing. Phrases like "philistine cat" and "shitty frogs" are chuckle worthy but only for the sake that they sound a bit odd. That doesn't really matter to me though; they did make me smile. Still, the script lacks any real jokes or gags that could beef it up in the comedy department. It also lacks any real plot. The Jack-O-Lantern theme feels as tacked on as the super itself.
Overall, this feels like the framework of something better but can't be due to the amount of filler coming from the opening scene and the lizards talking about being bored. There were a few lines that were funny in an offbeat sort of way but I think this needs a little more sense of direction.
I read it two times and I think the SSs above me are right, it lost the track when stop to tell the real story behind it. After I read it for the second time I thought the writer had smoked a no-jamaican joint, a goes off one.
I was expecting, from your title, something exciting.
I was disappointed. Your story does not cover the theme. Where is the pumpkin carving? As for the humor, well it didn’t work for me. You told so much in you intro that the rest of the story should have unfolded into some great finale; maybe the country folks could have all been madly carving away pumpkins for the festival.
I am sure with a rewrite this story could be brought to life.
Spoilers: Parenthesis are not necessary in your story further the action and your formatting in regards to line spacing is a bit off.
My OWC Challenge rating of your script “Carving of a Jack O’ Lantern”: 3/10 Comedy Structure: 3/10 My rating of your script overall: 4/10
This one was alright, but I don't think that it fit the challenge very well, really didn't have much to do with pumpkin carving and it really didn't have much humour, well at least to me. I did like the diabetic line, that was pretty cute. Other than that it wasn't that funny, I did think it was imaginative though and it moved pretty quickly, but I think it failed the requirements of the challenge.
Something about the dialogue in the earlier half of this script I found absolutely wonderful and hilarious.
Other than that, it was kind of pointless and a little too weird, and I think I'm going to go with Helio in saying that it was probably influenced by...something.
The super at the beginning is totally pointless. Chuck and Smithy and then Rumbert and Uwesley tell the same backstory. I'm not at all sure what Chuck and Smithy roles are for, they don't do anything for the story except reveal some info we already know. Many have touched on this before me, where's the pumpkin carving on the story, and also there's no explanation as to where the pumpkins have gone and why they suddenly found one. There were one or two funny lines of dialogue but the story wasn't strong enough for me.
Check out my scripts...if you want to, no pressure.
Well, this one was not great. Let me down becuase i was expecting some carving action to be going on. Was i out of line expecting that, i dont think so.
The humor was very limited. I got a laugh out of one or two things though. What can i say, cause i dont know.
Maybe next time.
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