Et Tu by Antonio Gangemi (tony gangemi) (Just Bill)  Short, Romantic Dramedy w/ music - A struggling songwriter lags at his day job until he encounters a muse right under his nose. - pdf, format 8)

Never mind the OWC, this is the best screenplay I've read on Simply Scripts. Mind you I haven't read that many... but of the ones I have, this is the best. It has a professional feel to it and everything works, from the dialogue to the action lines to the story itself. My only complaint is the end, which is a little cliche. I say this because I've seen it before. Still this is a very good script.

EXCELLENT!

A+

great job...love the style...easy read...only complaint would be "down the hall trent trudges."...that reads awkwardly...better, "trent trudges down the hall."...i know it's not very artistic that way, but it doesn't put the reader on the defensive either...anyway...everything else is terrific...great job...my favorite so far...

Good story...
Has all the elements required.
The only thing I can pick on is not capitalizing the names on intro - Raquel (31, robust) and Tanya (39).
The ending could have been a more twisted but I enjoyed the read. :)
Thanks

This one was very well written and fit the challenge.  Trent was a thought out character which made it easy to follow him through this story even though he was someone who lives a mediocre life, but i think most of us do which makes it easy to identify with.  Very well done.  Good work :)

Your script was easy enough to read. I liked the lyrics.

There was romance, but I didn't see the comedy in it...

Good for the OWC.

Cindy

I think you did an excellent job with the logline. It's intriguing and brief the way it should be.

I'm having a hard time knowing where to start with this one. It's obviously well written, but I feel confused by it. I actually went back and read it again, but I still feel this way.

I didn't get the relationship between Ellie and Trent. I really missed the dialogue cue in the beginning pointing out that she was his boss. I think that needs to be made more clear.

It felt to me like this piece isn't really meant to be a short.

Lots of questions for me on this one. Like:

Why the choice to start with Trent in the bathroom with Mr. Williams?

It felt like a really good scene to me, but not the right choice for this piece. I think it would have been better to write in a Jacked 'n Pumped 'hoorah'! early morning sales cheer among the guys. Something like that.

Here:

>She HUMS a few bars in unison as she trails down the hall.
Trent turns back before disappearing into an adjoining room.

I would have liked to see a reactionary shot from Trent THE MINUTE he hears her humming it.

I'm wondering:

Was Trent giving Raquel and Tanya the eye at the pond? Is that why Ellie was upset? If this is the case, I had really missed that.

I can't shake the feeling that I'm completely missing something.

To me, the relationship between Trent and Ellie just was not made clear.

The comedy is not here at all.

A solid piece of work though, I think. I just need it explained to me.

Sandra

I liked it. For a OWC it was very good.

The writing had a pro feel to it. Clean and crisp. Fast and easy read. I do have a couple of gripes however.

I didn't really get any real feel of romance between Trent and Ellie so I was a little surprised by the ending.

I also didn't really see the purpose for the beach scene. Or the need for those two other women.

Other than that, I think this is my favorite so far, but I've only read 5 (I think)

Great job dude/dudette!!  :)

ET TU

Pros – Title fit well with ending.  Foreshadowing with Mr. Williams advising Trent to work harder was good. Also, I appreciated the initial flirting in the hallway between Trent and Ellie.

Cons – The beginning could have been more into the story. I thought the story was just gaining some traction when it ended. I wanted to read the story of Trent and Ellie after the ending scene.  Also, some characters didn’t add much to the story:  Tanya, Raquel and Bill.

Comedy – A little light. More office hijinx? I am not sure.

Romance – A little light. The interest between Ellie and Trent could’ve been stepped up a bit.  I like the way you had Ellie get a listen on Trent’s earphones.

Lyrics – Nicely integrated into story. His life changed for the better once he finished the song.  

Writer – Maybe a sequel? Life after Jacked and Pumped?

Criteria – Met with improvement needed in comedy and romantic elements.

Gary

I like that one. Very well paced in the dialogs. Probably the best I read too. Had a few smile, but laughs.

But I feel a bit stupid. It's the second script I read mentionning Death Cab For Cutie I never heard of before. Sorry, but they are not known 'yet?) in France. And I didn't get the title too.


Michel 8)

I'm sorry, I don't think I like this. I think the story is quite thin, i.e. nothing much is going on. I can't connect from one scene to another, so the story feels choppy so well. I don't see the romance and the comedy either.

There are too many characters, some of them are not necessary. The action description, sometimes, are a bit too detailed.

But you met the criteria of getting the song within the script.

I agree that this is Very well written and you certainly know what you’re doing. I just couldn’t find much comedy(romance too for that matter).

I just think that this should be expanded more and not be written as a short. Because what needs to be clearer, for me anyway, was the romantic relationship between Trent and Ellie.

Oh, and of course…I loved how you incorporated your lyrics in the story.

Again, I say great job! Easiest read yet!

I liked the end and the song. Romance is in there.

However, I did not care that much about your characters. It was hard for me to understand the importance of the song. The scene with Tanya and the other lady doesn't leave any impact - a distraction from the story for me. I'm thinking - to show Trent being disenchanted with his work shouldn't take as long as almost ten pages. Maybe it's just me.

Very very well written. Very neat.

Look, i understand what the writer was trying to do here, and the formatting and actual writing was good. But the hip feel of it, even as a parody of the advertising world, eventually became rather tiresome.
It was a bit disjointed and jumped around too. Other reviewers have pointed out the lack of comedy which I agree. But then I've never found any rom-coms funny at all, and admittedly I've only seen a coouple. Any film with hugh grant in it, I never watch.

A good try but didn't do it for me.

This was very well written and it's clear the writer has a solid understanding of the craft. Technically, it was very good.

In the end I think the story suffered by trying to be too big. There are too many scene changes and too many characters. We don't really get a chance to settle in and explore the characters with any depth, it feels very stop-start and glossed over.

In terms of the song, I think the lyrics were good but they are too long to just be shown written on screen. Because we don't hear them they could potentially lose their impact. It would mean having to look at a note book on screen for 30 seconds so the audience would be able to read all the words. Not very effective.

I didn't get any sense that comedy was attempted here. There was nothing that I personally found funny. Nor was any romance hinted at until the end, which really seemed to come out of the blue.

I get the sense that the writer is really out of their comfort zone in this genre but much more proficient in drama. There were some nice visuals and the scenes and characters were well painted.

One of the best in terms of quality of the writing, but only about average in terms of story and meeting the criteria for the challenge.

Cheers,
Tim.

This was a decent entry. The best was that you really get a feel for Trent's character. He's very intense and his feelings are pretty palpable. Always important in a screenplay but if you can accomplish it in a short, all the better. The ending seemed a little strange. The romance was kept quite on the down-low, if evidenced at all. I'm not sure all that happens would lead up to such a conclusion. The humor also seems nonexistent. Overall, a pretty good script as is. A story about a pretty serious and dedicated musician. Within the confines of the OWC, it's not as strong but still quite good.

Sorry, but I just didn't get much from this.  Didn't see much of a story, no romantic comedy, little humor, and...well, just not much of anything.

The writing is so tight and sparse, that it's hard to get much of a feel here.  Guess it's just not my style.  There are a bunch of issues, but I'm not going to go into detail here.  Many of the run-ons didn't work for me, nor did the missing punctuation.

The lyrics were not well integrated at all, and the way you chose to write them out didn't work for me at all.

Looks like I'm in the minority here, as most seem to really like this.  Wish I could join the group and play, but it just didn't do anything for me at all, and after 10 minutes of reading it, I already have forgotten the characters, the story, and...pretty much everything.

Sorry.

I seem to be developing a habit of following Dreamscale around and then saying the same thing!

I too didn't really get this one. It felt slow and cumbersome to me and I was struggling to find a thread to follow. It wasn't till the end that my interest began with the "Jerry Maguire" moment.

Writers prevaricate a lot about writing and so that idea tends to come up a lot in fiction. The problem with it is that someone trying to get over a mental block can result in them sitting around doing nothing a lot. That was a problem here. Just lying down and trying to think isn't terribly exciting cinematically.

An easy read, bright and breezy, which while not actually funny, has a light, pleasant tone. But I had a number of problems with it, mostly with regard to clarifying what was going on.

We meet Mr Williams, clearly a douchebag, okay, that's important. Then Trent passes Ellie in the passage and she hears his brand-new tune and hums it. Why doesn't she stop and say Gee that's a nice tune. She's supposed to be his muse, according to the logline, but she is never shown inspiring him. Presumably she's been his boss for four years but he's meant nothing to her until she hears the tune. To motivate this, you need to establish that she loves music and/or musicians, then build on it by her showing an interest by asking to hear more. It also helps build the relationship.

I'd like a sense of escalation in their relationship. Their next meeting is a company picnic where he's mostly fast asleep, and their next, she fires him, then she finally throws herself at him in the parking lot. It's very jumpy. I think we need more of a build up.

Presumably the purpose of the picnic is to show she has no one in her life. I think there are better and shorter ways to do it, maybe just a snide comment from a colleague at work like the horrible Mr Williams.

When she fires Trent she needs to be much more apologetic, particularly if she likes him. Maybe show Mr Williams ordering her to fire Trent, then her telling Trent I hate to do this, but I have to... blah blah. Then it gives the two of them a common enemy in Mr Williams and motivates their joining forces at the end.

Couple of other points. Give Ellie a title, Deputy Sales Manager or something. It's hard to figure out her position in the company since Williams treats her like dirt but she's senior enough to fire Trent. And I couldn't make the lyrics fit the tune or the story, but maybe that's just me.

Cindy!!!!!

Busted, finally gotten to this piece. Amazed by your writing skills again. But, not by your story. Obviously you needed some more pages to flesh this out a bit. Couldn't feel any romance between Trent and Ellie, though i did like them as characters....

i know, impossible task for 12 pages... mine suffered greatly also.

I think their are a few unnecessary scenes in here. Could've been cropped down to give you more time to build on the story. i know it rushes it, but it was the reuiqrement to get drama, comdey, and romance in there IMO.

Then again... my opinion can be of great debate.

I thought the poem was great... Maybe too long for that 56 second piece we're working with? Didn't listen at the same time. I'm sure you did. Could have been incorporated into the script better though...

All in all, your dialogue was great. Descriptions fantastic. Just wasn't a good story...

Did love the plant smashing and twist at the end...  kudos on that..

Just realized i haven't sworn yet in this review....

Nice fuckin' entry....        james

Dammit, I know now... i was duped... Sorry, not Cindy

I'm just happy to be confused for Cindy.