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SimplyScripts Screenwriting Discussion Board    Unproduced Screenplay Discussion    Thriller Scripts  ›  Dead Enough (was Hit Yourself) Moderators: bert
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  Author    Dead Enough (was Hit Yourself)  (currently 2370 views)
Don
Posted: January 13th, 2015, 5:54am Report to Moderator
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So, what are you writing?

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Dead Enough (formerly Hit Yourself) by Phil Golub - Thriller, Dark Comedy - A retired hitman fights to survive when his former employer pays him a visit over a job stolen for personal revenge. - pdf, format

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-------------
You will miss 100% of the shots you don't take.
- Wayne Gretzky

Revision History (3 edits; 1 reasons shown)
Don  -  December 17th, 2017, 11:24am
revised draft and title change
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rendevous
Posted: January 13th, 2015, 6:35am Report to Moderator
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Phil,

I like a dark comedy. It's been quite some time since I read a good one. So here's hoping.

I see from your title page you're from Knutsford. So, off to a good start.

Not sure about the wisdom of plonking your full address on there. I'd say the email address would have sufficed. Still, I've been doing this quite a while and have yet to earn enough to replace the tyres on my shed of a car. They're balder than Patrick Stewart. Driving to the shops is very exciting these days. Oh dear. I do babble. Back to the script...

You'd have been better naming a street in the ghetto in your first header as you're doubling up the information from your super.

From your first few pages I can tell you can see this in your head clearly. Sometimes what you've written comes across well. Other times it loses me. It's a bit too directed when you should be focussing more on the story than on the shots. Maybe this would work well if you got it shot as you've written. But as it stands it's confusing to read. I'd say it'd work better if you centred attention on characters and lose all the 'we see' and other 'we' stuff.

That said, I'll read on. If you're around then post here. Once I know my words aren't falling on deaf ears I'll continue, if you like.

R



Out Of Character - updated


New Used Car

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Right Back

The Deuce - OWC - now on STS

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Xxoxia
Posted: January 15th, 2015, 8:37pm Report to Moderator
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Hey man, just found out this was live on the site.  I haven't been able to find it in the list of unproduced scripts.  After submitting this, I found quite a few mistakes that I've since changed and have resubmitted the new draft.  It should be live soon.  
I'm having a little trouble understanding what you find confusing.  If you could elaborate, that would be great!  I tried to keep things clear for the reader.  I know there are some things in the second half that could be left up to you, how you see it in your head, but I'd like to know what you thought was confusing.   Thanks for the input, man!  Oh, and the address thing, I was just filling out the title page how Final Draft has it set up.  I wasn't really sure what to put on there, as it's different in a lot of screenplays.


                        MARTY
    2015? You mean we're in the future?!
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Reef Dreamer
Posted: January 17th, 2015, 3:28pm Report to Moderator
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Quoted from Xxoxia
Hey man, just found out this was live on the site.  I haven't been able to find it in the list of unproduced scripts.  After submitting this, I found quite a few mistakes that I've since changed and have resubmitted the new draft.  It should be live soon.  
I'm having a little trouble understanding what you find confusing.  If you could elaborate, that would be great!  I tried to keep things clear for the reader.  I know there are some things in the second half that could be left up to you, how you see it in your head, but I'd like to know what you thought was confusing.   Thanks for the input, man!  Oh, and the address thing, I was just filling out the title page how Final Draft has it set up.  I wasn't really sure what to put on there, as it's different in a lot of screenplays.


just in case, use the portal button - top of the page. This shows everything thats active.

all the best


My scripts  HERE

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IMDb link... http://www.imdb.com/name/nm7062725/?ref_=tt_ov_wr
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rendevous
Posted: January 17th, 2015, 7:01pm Report to Moderator
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Xxoxia,

Good to hear from you.

I just noticed this. Yesterday I was very busy. I spent most of it looking for my car. I was sure I parked it on the fourth floor of this car park. But it wasn't there. Not even a little bit. There wasn't even the tell tale oil stain on the floor it leaves everywhere.

Eventually I realised I actually parked it in a very similar looking car park down the road. After six hours of searching this doppelganger car park I now find I'm coughing hard enough to cause a partial vacuum in my trousers. This isn't helping my love life at all... Sorry, I thought I was emailing my psychiatrist. You probably just want to know about your script, don't you?


Quoted from Xxoxia
I'm having a little trouble understanding what you find confusing.


I can't even remember where I parked my car, so this is understandable. cough

From what I remember I think it was some of the shots are a bit too specific, I was unsure what exactly was going on in the scene. Hmmm, that last sentence didn't make a whole lotta sense. Hang on, I'll quote your script...


Quoted from Hit Yourself
IN THE REAR-VIEW MIRROR
An epileptic nightmare. Cherries flash!


After reading it a few times I get it's a cop car. But the first time you read this it's not very likely. And that's alright. But it's a bit too stylized to make it enjoyable. Some of this stuff is great. But you tend to do it quite a bit early on, which makes reading it tough going at times. It was getting to be style over substance. This type of writing would be more at home in a novel. Reading on you lessen it, which is good.


Quoted from Xxoxia
If you could elaborate, that would be great!  I tried to keep things clear for the reader.  I know there are some things in the second half that could be left up to you, how you see it in your head, but I'd like to know what you thought was confusing.


Hopefully I did.  You do too. I've another script to read then I'll be back. Hopefully. As long as I don't bring my car out again. Hmm, must buy some more oil too.


Quoted from Xxoxia
Thanks for the input, man!  Oh, and the address thing, I was just filling out the title page how Final Draft has it set up.  I wasn't really sure what to put on there, as it's different in a lot of screenplays.


Stick to the email address. Putting anything more on there isn't likely to help. I doubt producers even know what a stamp is these days. As for reaching for the phone... we should be so lucky. It'll be that bloke from India again trying to tell me 'your windows isn't working'.

R


Out Of Character - updated


New Used Car

Green

Right Back

The Deuce - OWC - now on STS

Other scripts here

Revision History (1 edits)
rendevous  -  January 17th, 2015, 7:23pm
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Xxoxia
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Quoted from DS

I couldn't understand whether turning the witness into an accomplice had anything to do with his employers turning on him or not. If it does, it's unclear. If it doesn't, I believe the three different plotlines should be presented differently.


Hey DS, thanks for all the great input.  

SPOILERS**
This scene in particular, was kind of the inciting incident.  It was the first thing to happen that really started the downward spiral.  If you read to the end, you see that this guy just can't catch a break after this moment.  Basically, he feels guilty knowing that his boss would want him to kill this homeless guy.  While he technically didn't witness a murder at this point, he was about to, and he could have easily given Pidge's description to the police, which could also lead to his boss' arrest, and/or business being shut down.  
Instead, Pidge pays the guy to help him with the job, which makes him a part of the crime and less likely to tell anyone.  Pidge uses the homeless guy's need for cash as a way to avoid having to kill him.  However, his boss doesn't care about any of this.  Rules are rules.  
This situation starts to make him think twice about his career choice and he decides he wants no part of it any longer.  Quitting, however, would be against the rules as well.  All the info he has on his employer and the business, he knows too much to be "allowed" to quit.
Knowing that his boss probably isn't going to be happy and knowing how viscious and sadistic the guy is, he knows that being hunted by him isn't the way he wants to go.  If you continue into the next pages, you'll see that he visits some friends to try and find another way out.  An easier way out.  (That's where the title comes from, by the way)
So, by making that one decision, it sets everything into motion, which starts his fight. On top of this, he learns some things about his home life that are also messed up from that one decision.  

The energetic and ambitious description is of Pidge in that particular year.  It's tricky, but if you keep track of the time jumps, it makes more sense.  It starts out in 2012, he's still working, has a nice marriage (which we don't get to see at this point for a good reason), he jokes around with friends (you haven't read that far), he's a fun guy with a shit job.  
Then, it jumps to 2014 for the voice over monologue.  This is after he's woken up from a 2 year coma (he refers to that in the first line of the VO although we haven't yet seen that happen), he's miserable, his marriage sucks, he knows it's only a matter of time before his employer comes around to get him (and we learn why he hasn't come after him in the 2 years leading up to this, later in the script), and he is constantly haunted by his previous life as a hitman.  He stares at his gun case as he writes a book about his time in the gang.  The book plays a big part in the movie.  It's his initial form of revenge (for reasons he gives in the argument with his wife).
The third time period we see is 2010, before he joined the gang.  He was a hitman working for himself when he was approached by the gang.  I'm not sure you've read this far, so I won't say anything.  And of course, we get a glimpse of 9 year old Pidge, which is just a memory.
The cop car that Pidge blows up on page 2, is more about him completing the job at hand.  He sees his mark drive past and doesn't want to have to find him again later, but this cop is sitting there chatting on his radio, wasting a lot of time.  While he doesn't really like killing innocent people, he hates cops, and just wants to finish for the night.  Plus, it's a nice little unexpected incident.  Instead of getting this super loud, big explosion, it happens way in the background while we're in the mark's car, further ahead, watching him sing along with the radio, doing coke.  Then, Pidge comes speeding up behind him. That's why I wrote the line about it looking small from far away, like the Sun.  I was just trying to describe it with character, rather than just saying something like "it's far in the background".  I was trying to find a happy medium between being direct and doing things that way.  I'm still not really sure where to draw the line.  Maybe as I read more screenplays, I'll get a better sence of how to do it.  I tried to stay away from describing too many shots, but some of them I just had to in order to show what I was trying to show.  
Speaking of that scene, I wasn't sure how to go about labeling the scene.  I read something about how to format this kind of thing, and it gave an example showing to write SERIES OF SHOTS followed by what the scene is.  That's why I wrote "Pidge remembers his first kill"  While it does say what the scene is going to be about, it's still kind of a shocker to read that his first kill was actually his father.
As for the writing itself, I had a really long and hard time trying to figure out what to do and what not to do, and how to do it, etc.  A lot of what I wrote was inspired by the way I've seen things written in other screenplays.  Like the heavy use of "--".  I started using them for heavy action scenes where there are a lot of fragmented sentences because I saw it done in all the Bourne scripts.  Tony Gilroy uses them a LOT to break up action, and I found it to be my favorite way of doing it.  It allows you to see each fragment rather than a period or comma, which keep them closer together.  It really defines each set of words.  It gives them more impact (for me, at least).  
About the Cedar not being capitalized, I had a problem with that before this draft and must have forgotten to fix it.  There was a fully capped CEDAR when he first comes into the script.  Before that, I had his name shown when Pidge was looking at his photo before he ever came into the scene, and I originally had his name capped there.  I wasn't sure if that was what I was supposed to do, or not.  I had a hard time with that.  It's like another main character who comes in, in act 2.  When I first introduce her, we don't know who she is, so I introduce her as MYSTERIOUS BRUNETTE WOMAN first, then later, I cap her actual name when we learn who she is.  I wasn't sure what to do there.

Thanks again for all this.  I will definitely consider taking a look at some of these things and changing them.  I hope you continue on.  There's a lot to dive into when you get into act 2   Things will make sense by the end.


And Rendevous,
It's funny you bring up the "cherries flash" thing.  DS also mentioned that.  I honestly thought people would know what that meant.  I didn't realize it would be that confusing.  I thought it was a common term for police lights.  It just seemed like a nice way to describe someone getting pulled over, rather than just saying "police lights".  
And yes!  I get the same calls from those Indian guys.  Only, the calls I get are telling me that I've been in a car accident, or that my computer has a virus. Haha.


                        MARTY
    2015? You mean we're in the future?!

Revision History (2 edits; 1 reasons shown)
Xxoxia  -  January 18th, 2015, 6:31am
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Xxoxia
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Huh, just got the urge to make a few revisions to the latest draft of this script and came here to look at DS's suggestions, but his comment is gone.  Is he no longer on the forums, or did his comment get deleted for some reason?  Crazy!


                        MARTY
    2015? You mean we're in the future?!
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DS
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Hey Phil, I'm here. Funny story... or just a stupid one. I had some time and decided to crack open this script again to read forwards. Doing so, I ended up changing my mind on a few things I had commented on prior. So, I kicked open the edit button to copy a few things from my original comment to paste on the new comment. Pasted them... then hit the cancel edit button. Or, so I thought. It was the delete button... I didn't even bother to read the confirmation popup, which looks identical... without reading the text. Once I realized my error I just decided to give up on reading and maybe make a completely new comment about what I commented on earlier and also what follows, later.

I was going to read forwards anyways, so I'll do so soon and post my thoughts. Alright?
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Xxoxia
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Ahhh, I hate when things like that happen, hahaha.  But yeah, sounds good, man!  I just finished making a few edits.  Nothing major, and definitely nothing that takes away from the overall story.  However, I did change the very very last action line in the script.  It makes the ending a bit more creepy feeling, so if you get that far, let me know, and I'll give you the final action, haha.


                        MARTY
    2015? You mean we're in the future?!
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DS
Posted: March 15th, 2015, 12:07am Report to Moderator
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I saw a thread of yours up today and it triggered the memory of this thread. I had completely forgotten about it and I'm sorry. Not much else to do than attempt to rectify it. Some thoughts -- all completely subjective:

P6: I think the barrel in mouth scene is kind of overdone.

P6: Don't think assembling the revolver really requires a series of shots.

As I had mentioned earlier, I'm a big fan of this transition on page 10. A gunshot to black and then to the V.O. It's stylish.

P11: The second headline sounds a bit unrealistic that all the names would be presented in the headline. Perhaps it's a necessary device for exposition, but I'd think to see if there was another option.

P18: I felt that some of the dialogue and explanations in the scene with Devla/Pidge escalated unnaturally. I think you could replace that exchange with maybe one throw-away line about Loopy and keep it at that. Everything else has technically already been said.

P26:
Quoted Text
PIDGE (CONT�D)
(sotto)
Pitman? What the hell are you doing
down there? We don�t even have
any... Shit!


I think you could cut this down to:


Quoted Text
PIDGE
Pitman? What the he.. Shit!


P30: I think you did a good job with Billy, we got to know of Pidge's and Billy's relationship well through that one scene in the van, but at around page 30 I'm starting to think that you could do with a break from all the action. Before Billy's death, why not give a glimpse of his life and how he has to now leave it behind. There's a lot of action and no cooldown so far, take the pacing down a notch at this point maybe?


Quoted Text
Pidge stares at his reflection against the backdrop of the
rest of life. Suddenly, Billy becomes a part of that
backdrop. The gun is aimed. Pidge closes his eyes. It�s time.


Took me a while to understand this scene. It's the first time gun is referenced, yet it's still listed as "the" gun, which caused confusion for me at least.

P30:
Quoted Text
PIDGE (CONT�D)

P31: I get that this is meant to be a really ironic scene, but honestly -- what the hell could a priest do here enough for an entire crowd to chant it?

[quote]CROWD
Father! Father! Please help!


There's another really good stylish series of shots here that I'm liking a lot.

The script has a very distinctive style and overall feel to it that the writing style matches as well. The fact that it isn't told linearly also gives an interesting and unique edge to it. The weaknesses I'm seeing so far are in the plot. Two of your major events don't have strong reasoning behind them. It might just fit the mood and the dark comedy angle, but I really think they need strengthening.

The first thing is Loopy letting Pidge go because he enjoys the thrill of the chase. Well, just a few lines earlier he was saying what a terrible thing it was for him to get away with all of the information about him and his organisation.

The second is the entire shootout at the incredibly crowded venue outside the bank. Apparently there's even a St. Patrick's day parade going on there. It works from the van, but once they get out of it it's stretching my disbelief, certainly with the notion of a crowd being right there. Father Christy looked like an important figure in all of this. Would he really give it all up to visibly kill Pidge right there and then and would he even be the one assigned to do it?

The writing itself is fine, I take my previous comments about it back. It fits the style. I just think you could go over your first pages and fix them up a bit. A few confusing/broken sentences and action lines that give away what is about to happen that aren't just superfluous, but also take away the surprise moments from the reader instead of being able to feel those reveals as a movie. You could also lose the (CONT'D)s behind the dialogue where it's not literally continued.

Once again, really sorry that I forgot about this. I might read more later, but no promises this time around. Take care.
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DustinBowcot
Posted: March 15th, 2015, 3:35am Report to Moderator
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I read 6 pages and although I got a little confused about the cop car thing, the writing is pretty much fine. I do feel there are clarity issues and your tendency for asides can be annoying. Annoying because you're forcing a mood or style. Don't force it, just let it flow naturally. Some asides are deserved. If you feel that you are overdoing it, then you probably are. I haven't got time to read it all, particularly today... but an opinion on 6 pages may still have some value.
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Xxoxia
Posted: April 28th, 2015, 4:49pm Report to Moderator
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Thanks for the feedback, Dustin, DS, and everyone else who has taken the time.  I've been working on scripts a lot lately and haven't been on a lot, but I will get around to reading some of your stuff as well.  I'm currently working on two new scripts and have reopened the first one to rework act 1, as it was originally a bit shuffled and confusing.


                        MARTY
    2015? You mean we're in the future?!
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