Night at the Pizzeria by Ayham Saati - Short, Thriller - It's closing time at the restaurant, but has everyone really left? 10 pages - pdf, format

I do not understand this one, Ayham.  The ending is very strange.

I would give the pizza workers actual names -- not because it is confusing -- but just because, I guess.  "Pizza Guy" is OK for a character with no lines in one scene -- but for a major character, it just feels like the writer does not care for their characters that much.  Does that make sense?

I read on your other thread that these have already been filmed, so I am not really sure what kind of feedback you are looking for.  You should have posted these before the cameras rolled so people could help you out.

As it is, it is not bad, and what you've got does constitute a surprising twist, but I think I will need you to give me a "spoiler" post to clarify what happened.

Thanks for the read, Bert.

Cigarette Break has been filmed but not this one. What made me post them up? I've been gone for a while from these boards and I wanted to come back with something, and also wanted to raise the issue of "filming and producing" and get some feedback from you guys, because I wasn't really happy with the way it went, but I will do that later in a different thread.

On to this story. Some people liked the ending and some didn't. One guy suggested that I should add another page in the end with the gate opening again and Pizza Girl would walk out to see Brian, and Pizza Guy is apologizing to her for " The Joke " he played on her... Someone else liked the ending and thought Pizza Guy has a major cruch on Pizza Girl but she ignored him and went out with Brian, that's why he killed her, and that's really what I was going for, that's his motive for doing what he did. I know I didn't clarify that and I kind of left it to the readers or viewers to come up with their own explanations. I hope this makes sense.

I'm hoping to get more feedback on this, and based on that I will adjust the ending.

As I'm typing this reply I realized how annoying to keep typing Pizza Guy and Pizza Girl NAMES will be added in the next draft, I just SUCK at names lol

Thanks again for the read, Bert. Any suggections are very welcomed.

Quoted from Ayham Cigarette Break has been filmed but not this one.  I'm hoping to get more feedback on this...

I see.  Well, in that case -- even with the ambiguous ending, which is fine -- in my opinion there are just too many loose ends left dangling to call the end of this story a true resolution.

The first loose end is the mysterious intruder, and the second is Brian.  These characters do not fit cleanly with either of the scenarios you give.

If Intruder is working with Pizza guy (I am so pleased you decided to give them names), there must be a motive. If it is a case of unrequited love, why is this guy even involved?  And if it is a joke, why are they missing, with Brian in police custody?  Wasn't Brian right there to see everything that happened that night?

What I am saying here, I guess, is that you have got four characters, and you need to tell the story of all four of them.  Characters do not just disappear.

Something happened that night, after the story ended, to lead to that news reporter -- but right now there is no way to draw a clean line connecting the two.

The "it was a big joke" scenario is lame (to me, anyway) and overused.  I would not recommend that route.  Maybe a theft?  Or perhaps a joke gone awry?  What if Intruder is in on the joke, but Pizza Girl, unaware of the joke, stabs and kills the intruder?  Then Pizza Guy comes in with his fake blood and is, like, "Oh my god, what have you done?"  Then Brian arrives to the "rescue"?  Now you have a nice, dramatic situation to play with.

That is just one scenario out of many I am sure you can concoct on your own.  I do not mind an ambiguous ending, but you need to account for every character you choose to include, and you are not doing that now.

On a non-story related note, I also noticed your confusion (on the other thread) when somebody brought up the use of present tense.  The way you have written things is not technically wrong, but your scripts will generally read cleaner if you can kill all instances of "ing" in your verbs.

For example:  "Pizza girl is now working frantically" becomes "Pizza Girl works frantically".

One is not more correct than the other, but the second is shorter and tighter.  Do it wherever you can, and the reading experience is improved.

Good luck with the script and the filming.  I will be interested to hear how it goes.  I hope the owner of the Pizza shop does not read this script before you guys go trashing the place!  

Thanks for the clarification on the grammer, Bert.   You came through as always and thank you very much for the great suggestions as well. I will not make any comments on them right now because I want to kind of sit and think. But I just NEED to say this very quickly, you know, how many times we walk out of a movie theater saying to ourselves: What the hell just happened in there?? who killed who?? Was that his mom?? I thought she was his dad!!! (in Arabic movies that DOES happen haha).. And in the end we say to ourselves: Darn it I must've missed something lol... so I kind of wanted to give this short a similar: What? Who?? And get away with it...But I guess this is not gonna cut it here!

Cigarette Break was fimled in late December. The owner of the restaurant was kind enough to let me use his place..so basically I had an easy-to-shoot script, taking place in one room and with very few charactors, and a couple of film makers liked the whole package and decided to do it... I think I should stop here and go shopping for a good spot on the General Chat thread and continue on....

Hey Ayham, I just checked this one out.

I liked how you used the empty knife holder to build tension from the first page; the conflict is quickly introduced here.

I also liked how pizza girl switched off her cellphone instead of having the classic scene where it rings and betrays her position to the killer. Clichés are an awsome source of inspiration; all you have to do is go the opposite way and there you have it, something that feels fresh.

I hate to tell you that I was also confused by the ending. After reading you posts I understand now that it was all a joke. But I’m still not sure what to make out of the TV reporter speech and the pizza girl’s last scream. I advice not being soo ambiguos here.

I second bert’s suggestion about going with the “joke gone wrong” angle. I think it’s got more dramatic potential than the plain hide and seek in which slashers usually rely. You could even explore the dangers of “playing with fire” as theme.

It would be quite interesting if you get earlier to the “it was all a joke” reveal and see where you can take it from there. There’s usually much in our stories than we initially think; turning the ending into the mid-point forces you to dig deeper and who knows what you could find?

Best of luck with this.

Thanks alot for cheching this one out, Mr. Z (the guy who will play INTRUDER is also nicknamed Z by the way)

I will go into more details about the confusing ending. The original version actually ended when Pizza Girl, or lets call her Laura (god, I really suck at names!)..ended when Laura was pulled back into the Bar Room, and then we switch to the reporter... Then I decided to extend it a bit, did a Fade Out and took the action back to the Bar, then I decided to add the twist with Pizza Guy (John?)... Then I went back and added a piece of dialouge when John tells Laura: "Are you still dating that jerk??"...This line kind of gives us the impression that there is some jealoucy invloved here... and a motive for John to kill Laura... atleast that's what I was hoping for.

Another reeason that I left it open-ended is because I was thinking in the back of my mind to actually turn it into a feature, a very low budget feature that takes place in the restaurant and maybe a couple more locations.

The "big joke" theme was suggested to me by a friend who read it before I post it here, but I don't think I'm going with it.

Thank alot for the read and the insight, let me know if you like me to read anything of yours, a short if possible.

Laura sounds better than pizza girl  

There's a short linked in my sig if you want to read something, but no pressure.

Take care.

Hey Ayham,

Just took a look at the script and I have a couple comments about it.  I'll try and avoid anything that Bert or Z have already mentioned, though I'm afraid I might have to repeat a couple of their comments.

All right.  First off, it's not a bad quick little slasher short at all.  It's just that a lot of the action needs tightened up very considerably.  It was a little confusing as to where everybody was in relation to other people.

For instance, in one scene, the intruder was only inches away from Brian, who I assumed was outside.  Then, the intruder just walks into the dining room.  Wouldn't Brian have heard the door open and click closed if he was that close?  And if not, when Brian tries to get into the restaurant, why doesn't he just use that door?  I just think the floor plan needs laid out a lot better than it was.  It might work on film, but in the script, it was very confusing and took a lot out of the story for me, not being able to follow very well.

Also, a lot of the confusion can probably be avoided by wording your sentences better, like Bert had suggested.

Quoted from bert I also noticed your confusion (on the other thread) when somebody brought up the use of present tense.

There were a lot of instances that using past tense verbs was a problem.  Here are a few:

Pg. 1:

-  'The green neon OPEN sign just went dark... It’s closing time.'  - This is how a novel or short story starts, not a screenplay.  'Went' is past tense.  For this line to work, you need to say 'Green neon OPEN sign shuts off.'  There's no need to say it's closing time, because those three words can't be filmed.  Plus, one can already assume that it's closed.  And now 'Shuts' makes the sentence present tense.

-  'LARGE KNIFE being pulled slowly out of a knife holder.'  -  This would read better as 'A hand pulls a large knife out of its holder.'  See how 'pulled' is past tense and 'pulls' is present tense?

-  'THE DOOR IS SLOWLY CLOSING.'  Couple problems with this one.  'IS SLOWLY CLOSING' is passive action.  'The door slowly closes' is present.  Bert is right.  Try to change as many of the '-ing' words as you can.  The final result will be a MUCH smoother read.  Also, why is every letter capitalized in the sentence?  Too much capitalization takes away from the read.  If everybody capitalized the exciting moments in their screenplay, you'd have writers type their whole script in caps.

Pg. 6

- 'Brian just put out his cigarette and turned to look inside the restaurant...'  -  This whole sentence is written in past tense.  Would read better as 'Brian stubs his cigarette out and gazes through the restaurant windows.'  And once again, this was confusing because if he's looking into the restaurant, shouldn't he notice that there's something amiss the first time?  We need to understand the floor pan a little better.

- 'Pizza Girl just finished pushing...'  -  Once again, past tense sentence and also passive action.  'Pizza Girl pushes...' reads a lot more crisp.

Pg. 8

- 'Pizza Girl is on the floor.  Every bone in her body has the word FEAR written all over it.'  This can't be filmed.  Unless the intruder slices open her skin, digs through her muscle and cartilage and literally writes the word 'fear' with a magic marker on the hundreds of seperate bones in her body, this line can be totally omitted.  Simply saying 'Pizza Girl trembles on the floor.' gets across the same exact point and can be filmed.  Plus, you cut what took you 19 words to say down to 6 words.

- 'The blood in her veins just dried up'  -  This line is past tense and can't be filmed, unless you do a CSI-type shot and actually show her veins and the blood evaporating, which doesn't fit with the rest of the piece.



These are just a few of the 'past tense' and 'passive' phrases that I pointed out throughout the script.  There are many more.  I just wanted you to hopefully get the idea of what Bert was trying to stress to you to make this a smoother and more enjoyable read.

All right, the formatting part is out of the way.  Let's move on to the story, some of which has already been pointed out.  Like I said, it was a pretty neat teenage slasher story, but there were also some problems.

Giving the characters names has already been stressed and you stated you were going to change that, so that's good.  It just seems kind of awkward to name a secondary character whom we hardly care about (Brian) and not the two interesting main characters.

Now the ending.  I have to admit...  The ending is definately missing a whole heck of a lot.

I don't mean any offense to you, but whenever I see a story where the reader has to make their own ending up, I naturally assume that the writer got extremely lazy and couldn't think of a good ending.  Or, he didn't give a shit about his story and gave up.  It's your story, not the readers.  You tell us what happens.  You make the ending great for us.  We don't make the ending great for you.

Here's what I came up for my version of the ending to your story:

"First of all, I'm not in the mood for pizza, I'm in the mood for fried green beans, so I'm going to change the setting to a TGI Fridays.  If you don't care what we think about the ending, why should you care where it takes place?  In my ending, everybody was in on the whole joke and the camera pans back to reveal it is actually a porno shoot, and Pizza Guy, intruder, and Brian all gang up on Pizza Girl and have their bloody way with her.  But, the twist is actually that all this is just a dream.  One of the Care Bears wakes up and wonders what he ate before going to bed lastnight."

Okay, okay, I know, I might be rambling a little bit there, :-), but I'm sure that's not the direction you want the story to go.  I'm just trying to stretch the fact that you don't want readers to make up their own ending.

What if 'The Sixth Sense' just ended with Bruce Willis getting shot and the writer let us assume what happened from there?

What if 'A Beautiful Mind' ended with Russel Crow being detained by the Russian spies?

What if 'Planet of the Apes' only ended with Charlton Heston breaking out of the apes' prison cell.

In all three of those scenarios, if the writer gave up on the story and let the viewer decide, we'd be deprived of some of the most surprising twists in movie history.

So, once again, just to stretch the point... Tell me how the story ends.  You don't want me thinking of it on my own.  (Although I have to admit, I haven't seen a slasher hardcore porn spawned by a Care Bear in almost a year, so I'm about due to go rent one.)

Sorry, I know I kind of went on a little bit, there, but I hope some of this helps if not with the story line, then to help make the format a little bit easier not only for the reader to understand, but also for you to write.

Like I said before, it wasn't a bad slasher story at all, it just needs ironed out and things neatly tied up at the end.

- Mark

Fried green beans instead of pizza?? no way in hell!! haha

Excellent notes, Mark, thank you very much. For sure I care about the ending of the story and I never got lazy, that's why I posted the story, screaming for feedback... The (ings) will be removed as you and Bert have suggested and I will make the action in present tense. Those are basic rules of screen writing and I've missed them, don't know why.

The physical location, or the way this restaurant is divided is very confusing, I agree. And I should've explained it better. Brian is standing outside the restaurant, smoking in the patio, looking out at Sunset Blvd, separated from the Intruder by a wall of glass. Pizza Girl switched off the light in the kitchen, that's why Brian couldn't see what's going on in there when he first came to pick her up...

There are two entry ways from the patio to the main dining room. Both were initially locked by the workers. I need to show that, I know.

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=246692&id=6243629541

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=246693&id=6243629541

These 2 pictures show the front of the restaurant and the outside patio where Brian is supposedly standing smoking and looking out at the street. Hope they help a little.

OK, so I'm gonna try to be very careful with what I say here because I know somehow it will come back against me and I will regret what I said later ... This is a short slasher where two restaurant workers are being chased and one is supposedly killed by an intruder. Pizza Girl (Laura) have no clue what the hell is going on and it turns out in the end that her colleague is in on it. Why is he in on it? Well, I gave a hint that he complained about Brian and called him a jerk, which might lead us to think that he did it out of jealousy. Of course this might not justify his action and the fact that he conspired to kill her, but that's what I was going for.

In the " Halloween " or " Friday The 13th " movies practically everyone gets killed and I still don't know why, the same goes for " I know what you did last summer "... But, of course, this does NOT justify a bad ending, which I believe I have at this point, which is exactly why I posted this story looking for feedback.

Thanks alot for your points, Mark.

Mark, in the front view picture that I posted, you can clearly see the front patio which has a door on each side to the main dining room. Also, if you look to the right of the picture you can see another section, barely. But this section is the side patio which leads into the Bar Room. This side patio has folding metal security bars which they close and lock when they close the restaurant. The intruder stood in the dining room gripping on his knife, looking at Brian, he then turns and walks into that same side patio. The side patio has a roll-up metal gate which leads into the Bar Room (its actually a Hookah Lounge, cool one)..The gate was down, they close it when they close the restaurant. In the final scene, Laura was behind the gate trying to roll it up. Brian was trying to break those metal bars to go inside the side patio... and, uh...wait I'm lost!... lol

Hope the pictures solve some of the mystery

Wassup? I'm Raymond, kinda new to the site, kinda not. But I took the time out to read the story and I've got to say, it's pretty cool. It was confusing on some areas (like description of scene location as you mentioned earlier on this board).

I don't think John and Laura are good names, John is plain, like a man in his early 30s. Try Johnny, sounds younger, and has an edge to it. I could believe a man named Johnny wants to kill the girl for choosing Brian. As for her, it depends on what you're shooting for in looks. If you use the name Johnny, then a "Johnny" should choose a hot chick, so your girl needs a hot enough name that would make a "Johnny" interested. Laura sounds like a girl from the 50s or 60s, and maybe 70s. What if you chose something like Terri? Or Veronica? Just some thoughts for you.

Lastly, the ending is weird. I mean, it just kicks us right off to the next scene that ends it all, like one of those GEICKO commercials. You might think about using the transition (the FADE OUT/FADE IN part) here, instead of when she gets snatched back inside by the intruder  

I see what kind of effect you're shooting for, leaving it up to the imagination of the reader. Overall, I think it'll always keep the the reader wanting to turn the page, and that's always good.

Quoted from Uhmazon8 Wassup? I'm Raymond, kinda new to the site, kinda not. But I took the time out to read the story and I've got to say, it's pretty cool. It was confusing on some areas (like description of scene location as you mentioned earlier on this board). I don't think John and Laura are good names, John is plain, like a man in his early 30s. Try Johnny, sounds younger, and has an edge to it. I could believe a man named Johnny wants to kill the girl for choosing Brian. As for her, it depends on what you're shooting for in looks. If you use the name Johnny, then a "Johnny" should choose a hot chick, so your girl needs a hot enough name that would make a "Johnny" interested. Laura sounds like a girl from the 50s or 60s, and maybe 70s. What if you chose something like Terri? Or Veronica? Just some thoughts for you. Lastly, the ending is weird. I mean, it just kicks us right off to the next scene that ends it all, like one of those GEICKO commercials. You might think about using the transition (the FADE OUT/FADE IN part) here, instead of when she gets snatched back inside by the intruder   I see what kind of effect you're shooting for, leaving it up to the imagination of the reader. Overall, I think it'll always keep the the reader wanting to turn the page, and that's always good.

Hey there Raymond, thanks for checking this story out. Filming had started two nights ago and it looks good so far... Pizza Guy is Zack and pizza girl is Megan..sounds OK?

I've got some great feedback from members on this site regarding the ending and I was going with different scenarios on how to change it... but the people involved in it decided they liked how it finished off so we ended up keeping it... so, yeah, like you said, let the reader turn the page...

I'm happy watching this story being made. the intruder looks really scary holding the knife and walking through the dark kitchen into the lit dining room, the lighting effect works perfectly. Pizza girl is great as well, she added her own touch to the story ( she took off her shirt at some point, I'm still trying to figure out why she did it ) she's a great actress... we all love her and want to see MORE of her... Pizza guy (Zack) is so so. The director is a jerk, he kicked me off the set a couple times but ended up letting me back in..because I'm the only one who has the key to the restaurant... so its been great so far.

Thanks for your comments

This one was pretty cool. I liked the ending. It leaves it open ended. Did he kill her? Is he keeping her captive somewhere? It's nice to let the viewer's/reader's mind wander. My biggest problem with this was the character's names which has already been addresses. Nice job!

OK, I've read the script as well as the feedback.

First off, I have to agree with others that this is odd.  The ending definitely does not work as written, and even with your comments about what is supposed to be taking place, I still don't think it works or makes much sense.

You've used multiple tenses, as other have commented on, but for me, the main problem is the use of past tense, which doesn't work at all.  Whether or not you use passive or non passive verbage, you need to decide which you're going to use...not both.  Especially in such a short piece, where it is painfully obvious.

Also, your sentence structure is off at times, and the lines stand out like a sore thumb.  I think you've rewritten this since some have commented, but now you have names at times, and other times, "Pizza Girl" or "Pizza Guy".  It needs another edit for sure.

As for the structure, there's way too much description, again, especially for such a short script.  I understand that you are trying to lay out the "layout" of this place, but there's just too much.  It really drags, and makes the read rather difficult.

The story itself doesn't really offer much in terms of anything.  There's no background whatsoever, and because of that, not much interest or concern for the characters, from the reader's point of view.  I don't see any motivation at all for whoever the killer actually is, to kill like he does.  The ending is so ambiguous, that even aftrer reading your comments, I have no clue what or why?

Don't mean to be harsh, but this doesn't work for me in the form it's in.  I'd suggest a rewrite with some continuity in terms of verb useage, motivations of characters, and a much more detailed explanation as to what all took place...and why.

Hope this helps...