Thanks for the read, looks like this one needs to be brought back to the drawing board  

Hope the next draft works out a little better, well actually a lot better

Thanks again

hello Jordan,
I read your script, nice!
It reminded me of my script, "Hostile"
But yea, great job.






















Lee,

Thanks for the read Lee.  You're one of the few that actually liked this one

Hopefully the re-write will be MUCH better.

Alright, I had no major problems with your script here. The formatting was great, the dialogue flowed (one spelling mistake), and an excellent story to go with it. Where was the ending though?

I was expecting more of a twist, but it never came. Right from the beginning, it was obvious to me who killed them both.

Other than that, it was a good script. Maybe if you fixed some minor things then it would be even better then it is now. Good luck with any future projects, or any you are working on now.

P.S. I'm not too good at reviewing, so work with me.

thanks for the read Bojangles.  Glad you liked it

Hi Jordan,

glad to see you're back on the saddle again. How are things rolling in Vancouver?

You're a very good storyteller. I love the parallel between Oscar's memory and his cigarettes. Some typos, but who doesn't make it?

A kind of twist is missing. Maybe something very simple about Shannon. Oscar could find a hair of her on him to let him show how much he did love her.

Michel

Merci du lu. Je suis heureux que vous l'ayez apprécié.

Hey Jordan,

I enjoyed this but I think it could benefit from another draft or two. There are a few typos which can be easily fixed.

I like your writing. The descriptions are vivid, the action reads smoothly and the dialogue feels natural. No formatting problems except maybe FLSHBCK which is kinda weird. Can I buy a vowel?

You seem to have an innate understanding of when to enter and leave your scenes. You don't hang around, and that makes for a quick read.

The flashbacks worked pretty well. There are some nice touches like the thing with Oscar's cigarettes. I think you could have added a little more in the flashbacks about the characters and their motives. It feels like there's some inconsistency there. Shannon says things early on (I'd love you all the same....) that contradict her actions later (sleeping with his buddy). If there's a subtext in that early exchange between Oscar and Shannon, I missed it. Oscar having to leave and go to work, and cracking a sexist joke isn't enough of a motive for her to look elsewhere, at least not IMO.

You could work on the ending as well, try to make it less predictable and turn the whole thing on its head. I agree with whoever said the lawyer line doesn't work.

Overall, this is a pretty solid piece as it is. You definitely have talent in the dialogue department and you know how to tell a visual story. Work on your characters and their motives and I think you'll improve a great deal.

Hey Martin, thanks for the read and comments.  I know this one needs a bit of work, hopefully I will be able to make it flow a little better and flesh it out.

Thanks again

Yo J-Rock, look what I found!

I've read everything in your signature(aside from Whispers, which I promised I'd read before next February haha), so I figure I'd pull this up.  

It's an interesting thing you got here, but it's the ending that bugged me.  Oscar obviously has some mental problems and I think you should go more into that.  Make him some escaped mental patient or something just to spice things up.  The story ends with him wanting a lawyer, but I was left feeling like ehhh okay.  

Dialogue was pretty good...in fact I think it flowed pretty nicely.  I think the major conflict here is lack of overall development, because I wanted to think of Oscar as the good guy, but in the end it's tossed up in the air.  Another 4 pages or so and you can make this a gnarley psychological short.  Nice work with the title too haha.  Johnny Cash right?

So overall ya know, you've done better stuff, but hey, it was quick.  And Mac's speech was rather inspiring to me    Kudos!

Hey Jordan,

This is the only thing in your catalog I haven't read. I looked for it a while back but couldn't find it. Glad to see Greg decided to bump it. Thanks, man!

Anyway, I think you can lose all of the voice over in the beginning. I think the first flashback would actually be much more interesting if Oscar didn't reveal what it is he saw. The rest of the voice over only reveals either what is implied or what is repeated (speaking of repeated, Oscar doesn't need to tell Mac he was going to ask Shannon to marry him as it's repeated in the following flashback). It's not neccesary and I actually think the scenes would read much stronger without it.

I think you can also lose Mac's story. It really contributes nothing to the story. Mac's a detective. It's his job to get information. I see what he's getting at with trying to make Oscar feel he's just another guy and be more comfortable in answering questions but I think he'd no better than to tell him that story. I doubt Oscar'd be in much of a mood to answer questions if Mac's rubbing his pain in his face. I think Mac knows that too.

Other than that, I really dug this one. The characters were developed, the dialogue was well written, and you made good use of flashbacks. All in all, I think if you make the right changes, you'll have a pretty solid work on your hands.

Nice job, dude!

The first flashback I didn't like. You should show Shannon's dead body, and later you could continue the same shot and just pull back to reveal Isaac, or something else that would make the flashback interesting to see. otherwise I think omitting it and just having Oscar sit there with a glazed look in his eye would be more suspenseful. Or have a quick cut to blood or something would be better too. A couple other flashbacks too were like this, where you just say Oscar walks into the bedroom. some of the flashbacks didn't work well for me, I think you could tie them together better. They didn't do much to move the story or create any suspense.

I also think Oscar may confess too easily. Mac should back him into a corner a little more. Maybe Mac has some information that Oscar doesn't know about that he springs on him instead of just the cigarettes and time.

I think too that you should build up a little more hindsight tension between Shannon and Isaac. Like maybe he offers her the joint instead, or Isaac makes the gimme a beer woman comment or something.

Some of the banter I didn't care for, mostly at  the beginning of the scene between Shannon/Oscar/Isaac, particularly the "five knuckle shuffle" line and the "you're not getting any tonight" line, just seemed odd for some reason. And the "I'm gonna squeeze the life outta you" line didn't work for me either. For the most part though, I thought the dialogue was cool. I liked the "is she a good flavor?" line.

You should also create more of a state were Shannon feels the need to cheat on Oscar, or she at least gives him a reason. Because it just didn't seem to fit with the way she was talking with him earlier in the script.

All in all, a decent read, but not one of your best. It would be better if you just delved deeper into it though.

Thanks for the reads G Spot and Steven, I know this isn't one of my better scripts and it needs some work so thanks for the comments

Quoted from greg And Mac's speech was rather inspiring to me    Kudos!

Haha, took me a few seconds to get that

Jordan, sorry it took me so long to get around to this one. The combination of busyness and laziness is just so overwhelming sometimes. Anyway, I'm here now so here we go.

***** SPOILERS *****

The script overall was good. I was expecting something.... different. I don't know, this didn't seem like a very Jordanesque script. There were no maggots or incest or really bloody, brutal, disturbing stuff, which is kind of your Modus operandi. But oh well. There wasn't even a sex scene, you came in post-coital, which really surprised me. I mean, there's nothing in the world wrong with it and this is definitely not a complaint, but it just surprised me.

Some of the scenes here were really well-written. Such as Oscar snapping out of his flashback and asking about Isaac and then all of his smokes are gone. That's getting into like... Memento territory. And I dunno about you, but I loved that movie. Just adds a nice little touch, something kinda weird to make you go "huh"? I liked it.

The final murder scene, however, I think is very much you. Kissing her at the same time he is strangling the life out of her, very twisted and sick. The idea of love and sex and death being very close together is a theme that a lot of really good psychological thrillers explore, particularly the mother of them all: SILENCE OF THE LAMBS. It's physical, macabre, intense and I thought it just struck the perfect note.

I'm glad you decided to end it there. You needed nothing more and neither did we. So all in all a good script, the final scenes have a strange kind of resonance. Really well done.


Cheers, Chismeister.

So Jordan, I decided to take a look at this.

-First thing, damn good writing. Sharp and rich in description without going over-length. There are some spelling errors as others have pointed out, but nothing too big.

-Mac: "Tell me about this moring?" That's an order. No need for the question mark unless he's asking a question.

-Pg.2 "Face of an angle." I think you mean angel.

-I'm not sure about the others, but I personally didn't like the dialogue between Oscar and Shannon in the first scene she appears. It just seemed too "soap operish" to me. I'm fifteen though, so I have no idea how they would actually speak. It just seemed a bit fake to me.

-Near the end of Pg. 3 you go straight from a slugline to a character talking. You need some sort of action here.

I really didn't like how this script played out. It left me wanting more, but not in a good way. I felt Isaac was not only flat, but he was obviously just there as a script tool for Oscar to kill Shannon. I think more scenes with Isaac could work well, he said he loved Shannon, but why? Since when? Maybe this could be extended to a 30 pager. I just think it could be a lot better than it is.


Goodluck to you.

--Julio