Fifteen Minutes by Lenny Mancusi (lenman) and Anthony Russo (ajrscreenworks) - Short, Drama - Two men discuss life's little annoyances on the way to meet a friend. 6 pages - pdf, format

Oof. Phil's gonna be pissed. This is like "seven-minute abs". Heading off to write "14 minutes" before anyone else does.


Review shortly...

Imagine my suprise when we submitted this last Sunday and then saw Phil's script.  Thank God his guy lives an extra minute...

Hey Russo! Hey  Mancusi!

First of all, congrats on the collaboration! I liked it.

Questions and Comments:

Cool idea: 15 minutes in the life of two hit men as they head to a hit.

This reminded me of the scene in Pulp Fiction where Travolta and S. Jackson chit-chat while going to and doing the hit.

I thought the paintball gun was a great idea but might have been funny if they actually used one. The paintball assassins.

Should the page count be about 15 pages to equal 15 minutes of screen time?

Is there any connection between the 15 minutes to fix the garage door and the title?

Should Tom say "it won't happen again Mister Madigan?  This would better communicate Tom’s deference to his boss. A quibble.

The pace was fast on this.

It was more of a scene from a longer script than a contained story.

Gary

D'oh!

Needless to say, I had to read this piece.  And I thought it was a good one.  The characterization was realistic and very believable.  Dialog was too; I've often had the paintball gun conversation in my car.

If anything, this seems like part of a feature.  Maybe it's because you don't explain Frank at all.  Maybe it's because I wanted to read more.

Good job.


Phil

Gary,

Thanks for the read - glad you liked it.

Actually the title comes from the fact that Kenny thinks everything takes 15 minutes to do. And yeah, we thought about going with "Mr." there, but it seemed overly deferential. In our minds, these were low level guys reporting to a mid-level guy...

And yeah, we were going for a "Pulp" vibe while trying not to stray too close as to draw comparisons.

Phil - awesome that you dug it that much. Thanks for checking it out.

Anthony

AJ... Mancusi, huh! don't recognize your name... sorry

Your logline was great, because you didn't give nothing away, and if you had, wouldn't have been the same effect.  Well, atleast for me.  But this worked, so good on the both of you.

Not much to add, well written, quick read and a very good story.  Could definitely be expanded.

So again, good job to you both.

Ghostwriter

Thanks as always ghost - really appreciate your reads.

We have this up on Circalit as well and so far, so good...

Hey, Russo.

I enjoyed this one, too -- though I am at a loss as to who your collaborator might be.  Is that somebody we know?

Funny about the paintball thing.  Like Phil, I have also had similar discussions.  Weird.  In my version, if a cop spots somebody with 3, the driver gets a ticket on principle alone.

This does indeed feel like something plucked from a larger work -- given the Madigan character who is only mentioned and never seen on-screen -- and the lack of any apparent motive for what Tom ends up doing.  There is clearly more story surrounding this little episode.

We can fill in any necessary blanks in the story ourselves, of course -- it is not hard to conceive a scenario on our own -- and any further discussion of Frank might very well give away what you are doing with the end.

Given that, I would advise against adding too much.  I mean, it does stand alone just fine.  But some subtle foreshadowing might add a little extra edge to this, if you can come up with something appropriate.

Hey Bert,

Thanks for the read - it always makes me feel good when you chime in.

As for my co-writer, he's a friend of mine who was bitten by the bug, and who told me he had this idea for a story a while back. So we knocked it around a while and got it on paper. Hopefully you'll hear from him soon with his own stuff, though we plan to write two features together...

As for the story, yeah, this is just a snapshot in the lives, so to speak, and we wanted the audience to fill in their own blanks, which as you said is not very hard to do...

Thanks again - "Russo"

For what it's worth, my script is better...by a whole minute!


Phil

Hi Lenny/AJR.

Really funny, hip dialogue. A breeze a 7 or so pages- this (IMO) is like a tiny sneak preview for what would be a great feature.

If anyone could craft a feature length, AJR’s the man.

My only downside (apart from it being over too soon) is with the descriptions- Frank was overlooked in my opinion.


Good stuff guys


Craig

Craig,

Thanks for the read and I'm glad you enjoyed it - appreciate it as always,

Anthony

KENNY
What, Tom? I know you saw that. He
changed lanes without signaling.
TOM
So do a lot of people. Gonna give
yourself a stroke one day, Kenny.

Again with the names in the dialogue. You could just cast them as driver and passenger. Especially in a short.  Do you talk to people you've known for years like this??? feels off to me. Just sounds more pro to me if you leave them out. Rarely do we use each other's names when talking. Especially back to back like that.

Used to keep eggs in my car. Somebody cut me off, I'd pull in front of em and lob one backwards on their windshield. Became a pretty good shot over the years.

Darn good. realistic characters and dialogue. Feels like the start of a feature. Or an outake of one. Like the rant about gelatin ball guns.

Good solid work here. Impressed again...

James

James,

Thanks for the read - glad you dug it.

As for the names, yeah, I would agree that it's not something that would happen in real life; but in a short, I think you have to force-feed it a bit in order to make your characters seem real. The feedback we're getting on Circalit is that people can "identify" with these guys (don't know if that's a good thing) and I think that's probably because they know them as Kenny and Tom...

Thanks again - Anthony