The Garden by Sandra L. Felder - Comedy, Drama - Paradise, a magnificent vacation spot for God and man to chew the fat.  His paradise complete with four sparking clear blue rives, free flowing waterfalls, large beautiful aromatic scented flowers, delicious mouth watering naturally sweeten fruits, nuts and herbs.  No manner of disease or pain, a prehistoric health spa! No charges or fees a place only imaginable in your fulfilling dreams. 68 pages - doc, format

First off, is this really meant for the comedy section?


Okay, there are a few problems here:

First off you have a suggested cast list. This is generally frowned upon. Why? Because actors often have commitments years in advance and there’s no way to guarantee any of your choices can be in the picture. Except in your case, I can guarantee you that Bernie Mac won’t be in this picture.

You also include a business plan, which is fine for a pitch to a studio but unnecessary here at this site.

You also have a lot of other unnecessary material.

As for the script:

I felt as though I’d already read a great deal of it - when I read the bible. You borrow heavily from the bible. This script comes off more as a sermon than a screenplay.

It’s extremely repetitive. Your description of the garden - we get it already. It’s a wonderful place where everything is perfect. (Note: later we see the actual garden, complete with unicorns and flying horses!)

There’s too much redundancy here. Too many times characters reinforce their goals. Too many times, characters recount the story of “the great I Am and his garden” to other characters who already know all about it.

Now as far as the premise:

It’s actually not a bad idea, the idea of someone looking for the Garden of Eden. It’s obviously very much in the vein of The DaVinci Code although your story is clearly biased toward absolute acceptance of biblical stories. But that’s where part of its problem comes from. I have no more problem with a biblical story than I have with Harry Potter or Alice in Wonderland, but I do have a problem with lack of dramatic tension.

Your characters are all clear cut black and white, no gray area. The only characters who question the validity of the "Garden of the Great I Am" are clearly demonic villains out to undermine our godly hero. Abdullah, for example, literally turns into a talking serpent!

Ultimately, I’m not sure what audience you’re trying to reach. The Joseph character swears, so this wasn’t meant to be directed at strictly the Christian crowd or children. And it’s too biblically literal to be aimed at the average moviegoer. I’m not sure what you’re trying to achieve here.

The format needs to be in courier font. When I converted the script only - minus the extraneous materials - to courier font, the script was 70 pages, extremely thick in dialogue.

You need to reformat this and add dramatic tension - the kind the average person can relate to. The hero, for example, is determined by Abdullah to be “the one” because he resisted a beautiful woman while being bathed and showed no emotion whatsoever. How exactly is a man spiritually superior simply because he doesn’t like women sexually? If that’s the case, then all the religious leaders in the world should be homosexual. Oh wait…most of them are. Never mind.

No, seriously, how about a little internal struggling from our hero? I mean, for crying out loud, the guy’s perfect. He loves his mama. He prays. He reads the bible. He’s off on a noble quest. He resists temptation. He succeeds against all those ungodly baddies with little or no problem.

Needs work. Sorry.


Breanne