Guns, Guns, Guns by Roger Smith - Short, Western - Two robbers decide to clean out a gunshop... with comedic results. 15 pages - pdf, format 8)

Well, when I came back, this was the only one that didn’t have any comments yet so I thought I’d check it out.

Do they sell anti-tank weapons at gun shops? And grenades? It was implausible that a gun shop would have these items in the store window or in crates against the wall. If it were a hidden place, I could see it. But this shop had a display window.

Another script where someone pulls a shotgun from his pants - where are you guys finding these pants? It would take some special pair of cargo pants to carry a shotgun around in. I get it though. This was sort of a Naked-Gun-pull-a-shotgun-out-of-your-pants thing -- haha.

A rocket pings off a wall? Haha. A bullet penetrated the wall and hit a chef in the restaurant next door but a rocket from a grenade launcher ricochets off the wall -- hahaha.

Some of the jokes fell flat and some zinged. I think all of the scripts are probably going to have a few flat ones since they were all written in a week or less. Comedy is a lot harder than most people think.

This was more of a slapstick kind of comedy. About halfway through, I quit caring if it was plausible or not. Who cares? It was fun.

Breanne's observations are frightening, she's like an academic film theorist, she can read both the text and subtext of scripts and this scares me.. I thought I was the wacko around here.. hehe. Just kidding Breanne, you can kick me in the shin when you meet me... Lol..

Actually Breanne has made some fine comments regarding this script and I echo what she's said..

This script does come across like a slapstick, but it is funny in places and some of the dialolgue got a couple of chuckles out of me so it works in places..

I can see the story in my head, and the scene in the Gunshop is well thought out and the humour with "I've got a bigger dick than you'" kind of metaphor joke.. ha. Shame the ending petered out some but pretty good effort all the same..

Are you going to re-write this after the competition? I'd like to see this one developed a little further and see what you come up with.. Its a good idea..

Well done..

Very well done here. Constant comedic banter, and staying well within the theme as wel. Love the little sidebar stuff this group caused. I was a little worried at the beginning with the whol egroundhog conversation since that was going no where, but it turned out very, very nice.

That, my friend, was the best gun shop next to a Chinese restaurant story I've read all day. I liked how you opened with the groundhog story to just set the scene a little. I also enjoyed the slapstick spirit in which it was written. You had a few typos which I'm sure you'll pick up and when a characters dialogue is split by pages, I think you're supposed to write continued next to their name on the next page. However, I like your writing style and thought your descriptions and dialogue flowed well.
You might want to say the restaurant was Japanese not Chinese though, because a little later on you mention wasabe and the chef lets out a Bonsai scream, both of which are Japanese. Over all a great effort for something that was written in a week. 6/10.    

Hmm...I liked this one pretty much up until the part where Lester said the whole fuck face thing.  I think it kind of went downhill from there, just, I'm not sure, i guess I just found most everything after that to be distasteful.  Although I did like how you tied the bomb back in at the end.

I wasn't too into this one.  I felt the dialogue tried too hard to be funny and in the end the insults, one liners, stories, etc. just weren't that humorous.  There were times which had buildup where I thought that there would be some hilarious joke or at least some gag, but overall I just felt disappointed.  

Also, in the beginning you said it was a "defused bomb" hanging from the ceiling, but then at the end Lester says "that bomb isn't quite defused!"  or something along those lines.  Kind of a contradiction there.  But the very end where it blows up and destroys everything was a nice way to end it.  

Sorry, bud.

I'd like to see this script rewritten without the time and length restraints that the excercise gives us.  It was a cute script with some good jokes, but the pacing could use a little work.  Have everything build a little slower to the same wacky ending.


Phil

I give you props for going with the slap stick approach. I particularly loved that part when the animal activist and the lady in the fur were drenched in blood and guts, a very funny idea.

However I got the feeling you were trying way to hard to be funny. Particularly with the dialogue. I'm sick of the word, but I was 14 once too and I smell tarantino influence. I felt like you were attempting to emulate his whitty tough guy dailogue and blend it with silliness. None of it worked. I found almost no humor in it.
Maybe your not influenced by him, but that's just the feeling I got when reading.

I didn't think this was as bad as some of the others seem to think. I was a little confused in the beginning though because it said short/western so in my mind I was seeing things the wrong way in the beginning.

Love the name Chaz!

I have to agree a little with Breanne, how come all these guys are pulling such huge guns out of their pants and crotches? Just makes me wonder if I should read this on a deeper level.

I liked the gun store, I like guns. Few things make you feel better than grilling a steak (or Boca burger) drink beer and cleaning your gun. rrrrrrrrrr I'm purring over here.

I may like guns, but I don't like cruelty to animals, so I didn't care for the groundhog part. They're cute. I did however like the fur coat lady getting hers!

I think you did a pretty good job here, it just needs to be kicked up a notch or two.

:)

It seems I have a very different sense of humour than the other members of this community, because I loved this one; my favourite so far.

For a brief moment I had a little trouble trying to visualize this story, because the script defies nearly all the laws of physics. But then I started to picture it like a cartoon or, more exactly, like a live action film with "cartoon humor".

So, if Duffy Duck can pull a hammer bigger than him out of nowhere, surely the chef can pull a rocket launcher out of his crotch! haha! I nearly spit my coffee at the screen there.

'One... two... ten' was other of my favourites moments. Silly... yeah, but funny. Liked the opening conversation as well.

This one kept me chuckling all the way, good job.

I liked the first part of the script, I thought the dialog was funny, but it lost it's steam at about half way through, I loved the bomb at the end and the stuff with the animal right activists, that was great.  all in all a decent read.  good job.

Thanks to everyone who read this. Sorry not everyone enjoyed it but hey, can't win them all. Once again, I enjoyed stepping outside my box and challenging myself to write something new. With that said, this was quite a challenge to write. I use some humor in my other scripts but it's very dry, natural, and effortless and also comes mostly from the characters and not the situations. It was a challenge here to try and make something that was funny from start to finish. I also didn't want this to be pointless, comedic randomness so it was a challenge to make something funny while sustaining decent plot and characters. But most of all, it was a challenge to stay within fifteen pages and I think if the script suffers, it suffers most because of that. I'll probably come back to this and work on it outside the guidelines of the exercise.

This had some good laughs james, i think you did a good job:)

James

You've got a good little story there and if you develop it some more and do a couple of re-writes you'll end up with a pretty darn good script..

It's good now..

Well done bud..


Kev

Good job on this one!

I've read Abbatoir the short, I think I may read another one of yours now. Well, not now, I'm saving the horror stuff for September on, but I am gathering a list of bedtime reads.

8)

Hey James, good job. I think you’re a very talented young writer. It’s so good to see such talented writers for their ages at this site Good job.

Hey James.  I think this is the last one of these for me.  Been pretty busy, and slow getting to them.

I liked this one, and found it amusing, but I have a strange problem with this one.

I imagine that most of us, while reading scripts, try to "direct" them in our mind's eye, visualizing the action -- this one had plenty of scenes that were amusing as written on the page, but I simply could not picture how some of these actions would be filmed.

I realize this gun shop does not inhabit the "real" world, but things like the chef "pulling a rocket launcher from his crotch", or the kids snorting wasabi, or how a rocket can "ping" off a wall, then return following a 180-degree course change.

Do you get where I'm coming from?  Even if this were animated, I can't imagine how some of this stuff would look.  You are simply defying too many laws of physics here -- even "Roadrunner" physics wouldn't work for some of this stuff.  

I liked the set-up, situation, characters, and resolution with this one -- all of the right pieces were in place -- and there are plenty of things here that are good -- but if somebody told me to direct this one I would have no clue how to approach it.

Thanks for the read, Bert. Oh boy... a couple people have already said the stuff happening in this script defies the very laws of physics, which is cool. I was really aiming for Looney Toons humor in a few obvious scenes but if these scenes don't work even on Roadrunner terms, I think I'm in trouble. I'll have to come back to this one at some point. I gather from the mixed reviews that it's not my best work but I have no regrets. The One Week Challenge is supposed to be exactly that... a challenge and I think I got something out of it. Nevertheless, I think I can still fix this one up and make it better. Thanks again.