Gene Bulzi: Human Target by Roger Smith - Short - When your fat and your name sounds like bullseye, you're in for a world of trouble. - doc, format

This isn’t bad. The problem isn’t so much that it’s not that funny as it is that it doesn’t seem like it’s supposed to be. Poor Gene. I did feel sorry for him. It’s not a bad story. It’s got some things going for it. It works as a novelty. But it’s not really a comedy, I didn’t feel. More like a comedy-drama.

This was a good read. The humor wasn't over the top but was enough to keep in grounded as a comedy. The story's a little tragic but this guy's a walking irony and I appreciate good irony. Really nothing to fuss about here. Good job.

Like Breanne said, it was a good little story, as far as a drama goes, nice main  character idea but not that funny..

I appreciated the story though and you should develop this.. The idea is like an Adam Sandler concept but it needs nore humor to justify it being a comedy.

Love the character and his name, good foundation to develop this further..

Good effort, well done anyways..

You stuck to the Theme like a fat kid sticks to chocoaltae cake, which in most ways is good.  The Genre becomes a bit of a problem though.  You didn't fail miserably, in fact you didn't even fail, it was just so-so funny.  There are a few that are less funny then this, but thats beside the point.  The point is, you have a good plot, that completely sticks with the theme, but you need just a bit more humor.

The line that keeled me over: "I got a job at Target." I had to stop for a minute or so to regain myself. Perfect comedic timing on that one. If it had been earlier, it just wouldn't have worked. The little incidents were amusing and worked well in context. The story was perfect for the theme obviously and it was pulled off well.

The downer for me was the ending. After everything that was built up, I was hoping for something better than the golf ball shagging buggy. I dunno. It just seemed like the ending could have been tied in to the rest of the story a bit better. But that being my only complaint, it was good.

Well done. This was laugh out loud funny in quite a few spots. The job at Target was probably the funniest moment for me. I also liked the water pistol scene and the way the kids taunted him, that was very authentic dialogue, as was all the dialogue. The ending was terrific, I couldn't think of a better way for you to end it.

On a less positive note, you need to fix the formatting and you can take that from someone who's been hammered over formatting lately. You also had those horrible green and red lines all over the place, mainly because of your use of slang words, but there were some spelling mistakes as well. But hey, you had a tight deadline. Unfortunately a few people will see those mistakes and won't bother reading your story, which is a shame because it was a great short script. 8/10  

Quoted from Takeshi You also had those horrible green and red lines all over the place, mainly because of your use of slang words...

'Twould be a sad individual indeed to give someone a hard time over Word's incomparable grammar machine that tends to create more mistakes than it corrects. I looked past the lines as I always do, since Word can't spell much of anything I type, and tends to totally hate screenplay format.

Quoted from George Willson 'Twould be a sad individual indeed to give someone a hard time over Word's incomparable grammar machine that tends to create more mistakes than it corrects. I looked past the lines as I always do, since Word can't spell much of anything I type, and tends to totally hate screenplay format.

Hey, ease up on the sad individual stuff there big fella. I didn't give anyone a hard time, I actually acknowledged that the mistakes where probably due to the tight deadline. Anyway, it's easy to get rid of those lines, all you do is right click on the underlined word, then click on the ignore option when it comes up, so why not do it?

And like you, I also looked past the lines, that’s why I gave the script an 8/10   

Okay, let me be the weirdo again that goes against the grain.

I liked this one!

Yeah, it wasn't your LOL comedy, but it was in my opinion a heartfelt story with comedy attached.

How could someone NOT feel for this guy?

Anyways, Roger I liked what you did here.

I liked this one, too. It was a clean and funny script. Poor guy. I thought things were actually going to be looking up for him with the darts. Then my favorite part in the script happened... and he says, "It was short lived".  

I have to give you lots of credit here. For such a short period of time you were able to attribute a lot of things to "bullseye." I loved the narrative too. The dialogue between Gene and the doctor enhanced the scenes.

I agree with George that the ending does feel like a bit of a let down compared to some of the things you had earlier in your script (I was expecting that one great punch line laugh at the end). But considering how well you stuck to the whole bullseye thing it's a forgivable flaw.
An overall nice read, that I would love to see on a screen someday.

I enjoyed this script very much.  I agree that it wasn't laugh out loud funny, but it definitely had some very bright moments.  I did, however, burst out laughing when Young Gene cursed out loud in class.  That was hilarious because I can just picture it haha.  I also enjoyed Gene's misfortunes over the years and the irony that he wound up working at Target.  

I think my main complaint is the description lines.  Some of them were pretty choppy and confusing, such as:

"The buzzer sounds and Tim and Kevin immediately turn their guns on Gene.

Gene wins the game but ends up soaked in the process."

The way I'm reading it is that Gene continues playing while he's being soaked, and even if that is the case it's kind of ridiculous in a bad way.  

So overall I think this is one of the better, if not the best one, that I've read thus far.  Well done!

I like the concept for this one, it had sort of a 'Weather Man' feel. A nice take on the exercise's theme. I would loose some pages though. You've got basically the same joke during the whole script, and IMO it will feel funnier if you avoid repetition.

Despite that, this was a good one.

I thought this one was kinda cute, the part with the dart in the head was great, and him ending up at target was clever.  I thought it was a little slow at times, but then you threw something in to liven it up.  good job.

Mike, I think this one has potential as a Woody Allen Comedy-Drama type. It almost makes me think of Take the Money and Run. This one could really throw people back and forth between laughing at the main character and feeling sorry for him - sort of along the lines of Waterboy. I can’t much stand Adam Sandler but I thought Waterboy was pretty good.

Good job.

Hey Everybody,

Thanks for taking a look at this, and I do agree that this was definitely more on the subtle side of comedy than other things I have written, but the one thing that I noticed when I finished writing and reading it, was that this was like Mr. Gloom: Redux.

To me it followed that bad things happening over and over scenario, although this was kept to a certain theme (the shooting).

Did anyone who read both scripts get that impression?  It may be a little bit more obvious now that it's known that I wrote this.

is it that time to confess which scripts we wrote?

Quoted from The boy who could fly is it that time to confess which scripts we wrote?

The names of all the authors now appear in Don's original post where all the shorts submitted are listed.

They were revealed earlier today in this thread

http://www.simplyscripts.net/cgi-bin/Blah/Blah.pl?b-film_contests/m-1145316160/

damn I missed that! i feel like a dummy

Mike

I enjoyed reading this script and can see it's got a lot of potential to develop this idea further.. Flesh it out with some comedy and you'll be on to a winner..

You could even make this a full-length feature..

Go for it..

Well done, man..


Kevan

Mike,
I should've known this was yours just by reading my own comment.
Nice!

Tomson,

I was waiting for your response.  I figured I'd just let you keep thinking I wrote Bucky until the writers were revealed.

Thanks for the review.

I'm keeping my word, I'm 40 pages in to "Odds of Love".

Thanks for taking a look at it.

Is Micanopy Sinsemilla the type of grass that you can play 36 holes on, and then get stoned to the bejesus belt on the stuff afterward?

I will tell you an amusing story about my dear husband, since you both are quite the comedians.

I don't know anything about any drugs what so ever! Have had a few drinks in my life! Nothing else!

I found this cool looking shirt in his closet 20 years ago. A black shirt with this cool looking plant on it. I tried it on and I looked pretty good in it.

It wasn't until years later that he told me what that "Micanopy Sincemilla" shirt was all about. Meanwhile, I was walking around the grocery store 9 months pregnant wondering why people were giving me the evil eye!
Some call it Micanopy Madness!

Hey Mike.  Those that did not peg this one as yours right off the bat have probably not read "Mr. Gloom".  I guess it's kind of cheap to say, "I'd have known this was you" after the fact -- but I really think I would've.

I thought something was going to happen between him and the doctor at the end.  He would pronounce him "cured", then knock a flowerpot off the ledge while Gene is leaving and smack him in the head.  Your ending works, too -- but it feels like just one more episode as opposed to a real conclusion.  Does that make sense?

I also thought that maybe Gene didn't have to be fat.  He could've been anyone, really.  And the fat thing is kind of like a double whammy for the poor guy -- isn't the "Bulzi Curse" enough?

And I also wondered about the rest of his family.  Do they have similar problems?  That could have been funny to explore, too.

Anyways -- just throwing a bunch of stuff out there -- but when I start thinking about expanding the story, that generally means that I liked the story, too.  And I did like this one.  And again, the dialogue just flows in your stuff.  I don't recall a single line that I wanted to change.  Nice work, Mike.

[p.s. I saw that, Tomson!]