Workhorse by James McClung - Short, Comedy - Everyone seems to push Howard around but one cup of coffee is about to change the life of this office workhorse. <15 pages - pdf, format 8)

I enjoyed this one, and I think you did a nice job of incorporating the theme into it through the use of dream sequences.

All of the humor here lies in the dialogue, and that's definitely ok.  I do think that it was a bit chunky in parts though, and could have been broken up with a little bit of action in between or perhaps some responses.

I liked the Priapas (sp?) bit.  Probably my favorite exchange in the script.

Good job.

A nice comedy with a moral message.  The location/setup was a great idea, though you didn't follow it through to the end.  Kept wanting Howard to come up with a clever solution to selling a viagra knock-off thus finishing that story arc.  The dialogue was great, but could be more compact.  The priapus bit was very nice. This was a really entertaining script.

Dethan

Hey, it was nice to see some vulgar humor in one of these.  Haha I've just gotta mention the first thing I thought was that it'd be much funnier if Sizemore just said "Viagra is f***ing us in the a**."  But anyway, all the humor worked great here and the story played out nicely.  The theme kind of developed more through the second half, I suppose, and to be honest I think we might've taken a little long getting to our protagonist, but this was so enjoyable along the way that it didn't necessarily matter as much as it might have otherwise.

Some great humorous exchanges and a fairly cohesive story...this is probably my favorite so far.

This was definitely my favorite so far. (Too bad this is only my second.)

Anyway, the interesting thing about this short is that each character has their own distinct type of humor. The jokes defined each character. Sizemore is a vulgar, dirty old man and Howard is the cynical guy that always gets kicked around. This had great characters, awesome dialogue and some first-class descriptions (dream sequence).

You get a gold star.  


edit: The Seth character. Did anyone else think of Justin Long (The guy from the Mac ads)?

This was pretty good I thought. Story wise it was fine as well as the telling of it.

I think however that you had a few too many characters for such a short script. It took a little while to figure out who the protagonist was going to be.

The humor itself was okay, but could have been a lot better with snappier dialogue. The jokes are there, they just needed sharper delivery IMHO.

Good job! :-)

I thought this was funny. The boss made me think of J.K. Simmon's Mr. Jamison from Spiderman. Vulgar, no-bullshit kinda guy. He was a delight.

Seth came into his own fine too. I liked the last line especially. With the right kinda actors this could be really funny.

I'm not sure about the dream sequences though. Some of them were funny but I think the joke of his wife's personality could've been presented better.

And the meta-joke about the OWC was just a little too cute for my tastes.

But a funny short, for sure.

There were plenty of made-me-chuckle bits to keep me entertained all the way to the end (“Working hard or hardly working?” -- “Dude you’ve got some major sand on your vagina.” -- The tall cellmate touching Howard -- Howard and Seth’s exchange about suicide -- “I need your balls”, etc) This one didn’t fall short on comedy.

Yet the story didn’t fully work for me as a whole, since it came off to me as a little bit unfocused. Too many angles with quite different natures were covered: competition against Viagra, getting the coffee, Howard’s relationship with Seth, with his boss, Howard learning to make other respect him, the danger of being fired, a sudden promotion, etc.

As the story progressed it went wider, not deeper, and of all the aspects covered it was the OWC theme that got the most shallow treatment, since “telling your spouse you lost your job” got only a couple of scenes in fantasy land. Furthermore, this angle was quickly dropped for its opposite since Howard wasn’t fired and got a promotion.

Then again, considering this was written in only a week, it’s pretty clear that it qualifies as one of the good ones. Good job.

This was a good, funny screenplay.

I laughed at the joke about Don Imus and cuckled at the mention of the OWC.

What I didn't like was the fact that I knew he was going to get his job back and a promotion when he started to insult his boss and say all that stuff. It was predictable.

And I'm glad about what happened to Seth at the end. He was a bitch. Haha.

Sean

I got a couple of chuckles from this script.  Not many though - I could see the jokes but quite a few of them didn't work for me.  Not to say that you didn't write an interesting script, I liked the script, but it didn't seem all that amusing to me.  Maybe I have no sense of humour.    

Well, it took three tries but it appears I finally got the comedy right this time. I took what I've learned from the last two and tried to write something I considered funny even though I don't have the skills to match either my favorite comedians (George Carlin, Dennis Leary, Ron White) or comedies (Bad Santa, Office Space, Clerks). Thanks for the reads, guys.

James-
It was good.  I definetely think that you should start out with Howard rather than the businessmen in the conference room, that way we know he's our main guy from the start and we can connect with him before Seth starts shitting on him.

Otherwise, ithink it went pretty well. A minor thing is taht people probably won't make the connection that sizemore is eating seths gum, but it's still funny when his hand is stuck to the desk, so I'd keep it.
The dream sequence was also a little confusing simply because it seemed like their were two completely different sequences, the fight and her sending him off, so just pick one.

-Tyler

Thanks for the read, Tyler. I can see where you're coming from in saying that the script should start with Howard. I thought it'd be better to start with the boardroom to kick off the comedy as well as lead into the coffee. I suppose the two of them are interchangeable though. I also see where you're coming from in regards to the dream sequence. You're actually right though. It is two seperate dream sequences. The first is Seth's idea of "what's the worst that could happen." The second is Howard's idea of what will more likely happen. I thought it'd be more interesting if Howard's wife was a sort of an intimidating passive-aggresive force than a full blown nutcase. What was supposed to happen in between the two is that the first one would rewind onscreen and then the second would start. It's hard to explain on paper, I think.

Anyway, thanks again for the read. I'm glad you enjoyed it.

Late in coming, no pun intended, to the party here, but that was hilarious. laughed to tears. Especially the ending. there were some type-o's (that's for the review gods, wink, wink, nudge, nudge), but I loved the humor.

Hey James,

Very good work here. The dialogue was priceless, there were so many great one-liners here. I don't really have any beefs with this one, maybe some of the board guys seemed a little alike, but the dialogue saved it. Nice job.

Cheers
Rob

Thanks for the reads, guys. I kinda thought this one would be collecting dust for a while. Glad you liked it.