Sucking Infinity by Allison - Short, Comedy - Weird things happen to Carlton.  His friend Toby’s a jerk.  So why does Karen stay with him? <12 pages - doc, format 8)

I didn't really like this one. It wasn't really that funny, and things were just happening once after another. Toby and Carlton were going of on their own rants while Karen was talking to them, it seemed they weren't listening and just mumbling to themselves. They kept repeating that everyone sucks more than them and it just got bad. I couldn't finish it. Sorry. This just got way to confusing and random.

Sean

The concept of Carlton being cursed supernaturally (from the gypsy's dog getting sucked into the quasi-dimensional abscess-or abyss?) was good, but it took way too long to get started.

Could have started right away with the super hero battle and have the kids trying to understand what was going on, revealing the Curse of Carlton as the fight raged around them.

The South Park reference was good.

For a single guys crash pad, having a plant counts as decoration. Agree with him on that.

The sucking towards infinity gag got old quick, although it was amusing that he got Deimos sucked into the argument.

Pretty pathetic zombie. He doesn't deserve to be in the unholy ranks of the undead with that kind of attitude! Toughen up buttercup and get in there and eat'm some brains!

I have a feeling this wasn't written for short tempered old bats like me.

I didn't really understand what was going on most of the time and I think there were a lot of references to other shows/films or such which are completely missed by me.

The you suck thing was something that I knew what it was, but I didn't think it worked.

There isn't really much story here and even banter intended as comedy has to drive the story forward otherwise people just lose interest in it.

The writing itself and format was fine though.

Personally I didn't get this one at all.  It was a bit weird and I didn't find it funny.  The infinty plus one thing ran too long and became boring.  Sorry but I didn't like this one.

The short was a little bit of a difficult read.  The piece seems a little unfocused/disjointed.  It takes until the end of page three to find out that weird things happen to Carlton and then it takes another page and a quarter to get to Karen explaining what is really going on in the short.  It’s just a huge waste of page count in something that is already only twelve pages.  The writer could benefit by compressing the first five or so pages into one or two.

The idea of Cursed Carlton is good and it seems a shame to waste it on something that kind of just leads to a superhero battle for no other reason than the writer thinks it should.  The world that Carlton lives in that would allow zombies or giants or whatever needs to be better created without using only exposition to allow the reader to believe that a lamp can save the world.

I just didn't find the conceit of the project that compelling; the idea of sucking infinity plus one, or otherwise.  I think there are too many characters to follow, and not one in particular to invest in.  While the situation itself was pretty comical - and some of the banter between the characters - the premise didn't offer much in terms of actual story.

Yeah, I really didn't get this, there were a lot of weird things going on and none of them were really grounded in a solid coherent story, and wasn't helped by the fact that the characters basically all sounded the same (there were all just like names on a page).

This script was also an extreme case of blink-and-you'll-miss-the-pumpkin, it really didn't feature at all and seemed like it was thrown in as an attempt to make something totally unrelated to the challenge pass the challenge requirements. However, I appreciate that you attempted comedy, there are quite a few entries that, while good, really weren't even trying to be funny. This one was trying, and managed to be on occasion-- I agree with those who say the infinity thing got old (mainly because it was the basis of the whole script and not that original, definitely been done before but I can't recall where)), but I did laugh at:

CARLTON
Don’t you get the concept of infinity?

TOBY
Don’t you get the concept that you suck?

Some of the banter did work, kind of, well I liked that bit anyway (and the Jersey joke lol). Perhaps your dialog would be more successful in a different story, as opposed to BEING the story.

This one has some good ideas in it, but it needs to eliminate the chatter and develop a clean sense of plot and point.

Carlton is a tall drink of water?

I didn't understand

Karen says, "Look the knives have little pumpkins on the handle."

The fact that she shows interest in this is revealing of her character.  It's a small but good exposition.  The way it should be.  And because it's implied it's more interesting than Karen saying: "I like cute things."

I'm not sure about Carlton's reply though.

There's too much senseless chat going on in this and too many blocky paragraphs.
When you read some of the really good scripts in this challenge, you'll see that they are often sparse.  And that's one thing you have to look at.  You don't have to read a single word, just look at the amount of white space that's on a page and that tells you a lot.

You've got some good ideas: the owner of the apartment, although it's not stated right in the beginning as it should be, is into health living.  Try and get this across in as few words as possible.

Keep working at it.  It's not as easy as it looks.

The last line of the zombie saying, "Words hurt" is excellent.

Sandra

Not much of an excuse, but I had been off the board for a couple of days to relax, and didn't find out until the Wednesday before the scripts were due, which meant I had one day to come up with the idea and time for just one re-write.  Stupid job.

I think I liked the "infinity plus one" joke too much, and it blotted out the actual story, which was about Karen coming to terms with the fact that she stays with someone who brings chaos wherever he goes because it's an exciting and different life.  After all, I went to pumpkin carving at an apartment like that one, and I wished some fantastic battle that caused no casualties would have passed through.

Thanks to all who commented.  I will keep working on chopping blocks of text and not burying my lead.

I thought this script lacked cohesion.  It was like one person wrote a line or two and then another person and another and so on.  I wasn't very focussed.

The infinity plus one joke is pretty old, though it nice to bring a demon into it.

You overlooked the real story, here, and that's Carlton and Karen's relationship.  With all the crazy shit happening to him, they would have a lot of interesting dates.  Write those stories.


Phil

I agree.  I needed another couple drafts, since I usually catch a lot of problems with the third or fourth draft.

Roll on to Houseboy once the copyright comes back.

Some people do rewrite their OWC scripts.  You should consider this.


Phil

This definetely had it's funny moments, and I love the idea of a "jinx" kind of like the hellmouht on buffy but an actaul person.

Other than that, while you had jack-o-lantern carving, it wasn't a big art of this script while it easily could have been, just make the pumpkin the evil thing.