Looney, Silly Day - OWC

Good attempt at misdirection and a decent ending are not nearly enough to save this script, sorry to say.

The writing is atrocious in just about every way conceivable. Punctuation, grammar, sentence structure, extremely awkward phrasing to the point of coming off like a pisser at times, passive writing, horrible Slugs, useless, deceiving SUPER, crazy amount of V.O., complete lack of apostrophes...oh man...that's probably enough already.

IMO, in no way is this one location - I think you could make it so that it is one location, but lots of changes would have to go down, especially with your extremely poorly written Slugs.

I was hating the read until the twist was revealed (which i enjoyed to a certain extent), but again, based on the incredibly poor execution on display, there's no saving grace here. Clean this baby up. Make it more realistic, more menacing, and you've got a decent script on your hands. It needs ALOT of work, though to get to that point.

Congrats on completing an OWC entry.

I wrote down every mistake I caught, and by the time I made it to page four I didn't want to read much further. It seemed to drag, in my opinion.

-JOHN (V.O)
Its just like the other cities!
Nothings left.

"It's" and "Nothing's"

-JOHN (V.O)
Oh my God, My life is over!

Either don't capitalize the "M" in "My," or use a period instead of a comma.

-Get rid of (CONTINUED) on the tops and bottoms of page. It's unnecessary..

-EXT. HOUSE
John stands in front of a house. It might have been a nice
house once, but its been reduced to nothing more than a
shack. He wearily scans it for a moment then enters.

Instead of that, why not just say “EXT. SHACK”?

Pg. 2

-EXT. OUTSIDE – NIGHT

Outside what? If you say "EXT." we know it's outside. Where are we?

-"But the memory is fuzzy and John cant make out what it is."

"Can't"

-John hears a disembodied voice saying Take it! Take it!

Do this:

DIMEMBODIED VOICE
Take it! Take it!

-JOHN (V.O)
Mutants! Or the military!

This seemed cheesy to me.

Pg. 3

-He picks up a piece of pipe that’s lying on the ground

If it's an inanimate object, say "laying" not "lying." It's also passive verbiage, anyway, so say "that lays on the ground" instead.

-Again John is standing with two other men.

Passive verbiage again. Use "Again John stands with two other men."

-Its like he wants John to take something from him.

"It's"

-It looks like the mans lips read "Take it!"

"man's."

Also, if you just see a character's lips move, I think there's a certain way you have to write it, although I can't remember it.

Must've been some good acid, man! Or dude. That's why I stick to shots and beers.

At the beginning, when you say we're looking at ruins, it would help if you say ruins of what. Don't assume we know it's a city.

There are major format violations everywhere. No big deal, just keep posting shorts here and working on that, you'll pick it up quick.

Would there be a super in what amounts to a dream sequence? Personally, I dream in colors, but not in supers. Not yet.

In that opening line I couldn't help seeing Charlton Heston and the torch from the statue of liberty.

He says LA burning and New York. I guess anything's possible since it's a dream, but at the time I was thinking how does he know both are burning. Did he see both? Long walk.

I thought the figures were odd, especially with their dialogue, which seemed cartoonish, but now that this turns out to have been an acid dream, I am completely confused. The shots with the figures seemed to happen from their perspective, without John being aware of them. How can this happen in John's dream?

Obviously this is early work for the writer. You have a good imagination, keep plugging away and participating on the boards, it'll come together for you.

I enjoyed the initial sci-fi aspect of this, even FIGURE #1 and FIGURE #2 didn’t bug me. Then it turned to the junkyard on October 31 (duh read the super) and I was disappointed the script ended on the dreaded... it was all an acid trip.

The writing was overdone in places. Sometimes a shack is a shack not “It might have been a nice house once, but its been reduced to nothing more than a shack.”

Must have been fun to write!

At first, I thought this script was a disaster.  Formatting, grammar errors abound.  Cheesy, unbelievable dialogue.  Standard post-apocalyptic smoldering ruins stuff.  Also didn't seem low budget to me at all.

But the acid was a funny twist.  The ridicuous dialogue:

JOHN (V.O)
Mutants! Or the military!

Now seems awesomely funny.  And the bizarre images make a strange kind of sense as they're being seen by a completely warped mind.

But when John "snapped out" of his trip, the acid could no longer explain this dialogue:

JOHN
You crazy fuckers! You did it
didn’t you? You ruined my life!
Damn you! My whole worlds burning!

And I'm not sure who called the cops.  So, the ending was a little disappointing, but the twist made this worth it.

A few thoughts;

# yeah, a crazy ride that's for sure, so well done for something a bit wacky
# I agree about the writing etc a bit to clean up
# junk yard, fancy dress, acid - humm. Maybe a bit much for me to buy into

You know what, it's a rough diamond but had something a bit different, even if I didn't fully get into it.

All the best.

Someone was watching too many Charlton Heston movies synched up to Pink Floyd.

It was pretty good, especially for a week.  But I thought you really stretched the one location limitation - too far IMHO.

There was one thing that really got on my nerves though.

The same man wants to give John something. He holds out his
hand to john. John takes something and brings it up to his
mouth.

We can see what he's doing - something isn't some thing it's some described thing.  Just say he's taking a pill.  We know that anyway.

I wasn't crazy about the ending but I suppose there really wasn't a lot of places you could go from the corner you put yourself in.

And you should have waited until the October OWC to submit this.

SUPERIMPOSE: OCTOBER 31, YEAR UNKNOWN

The October scripts are usually supposed to happen on Halloween.

Good work for a week.

This is the kind of thing that may make many readers upset. Why? Because it's kind of like a "Ha-ha, fooled you." Even the logline itself does not tell what the story is about; so you've tricked your readers into believing one thing and then at the end, tell them basically that you were joking. Not cool. Even if you didn't mean to do this, that's the way it comes off. Try and figure out a way to change it so that we learn earlier on what's going on.

Sandra

Smoldering suburban ruins don’t seem budget friendly to me.
I didn’t understand why the calendar elicited that emotion.
When you said “humongous” I was thinking much bigger.
Format and grammar issues hamper the read.
I think the critter quotient blew the budget here.
The reveal at the end helped give some context.
Ambitious for a week, I’d like to see a better draft.

Regards,
E.D.

While I was reading I must admit that I was bored. It seemed so old hat and cliche. Then when the reveal came I liked it much better. Good idea here that I liked, but you must fix what happens before the reveal. It drags and is not interesting.

What on earth does John mean in the slug? Slugs are meant to tell you if we are inside or outside and what location the scene takes place and what time. Night or Day.

Definitely not low budget.

All in all, good idea that needs better telling. Good luck.

I have to agree with Pia. Just not very interesting, and the end twist wasn't good enough to rescue it. It was like a really bad episode of The Twilight Zone!

If he had killed, say, his family - wife and kids - and then at the end it was revealed that he had been on a drug without his knowing it after a government experiment to see how people would react to an nuclear war, or something like that, then it would have worked much better -

as it was it felt like a wasted opportunity. And the end was so clearly nicked from PotA that, while it may have been intentional, it had the unfortunate affect of underlining this script's weakness.

This reads like an early draft but I think it could be hammered out into a good story. Could be visually interesting.

While I think the story is good, the execution left a lot to be desired.  It was a little confusing and overly-written.  Some things were underplayed.  The humongous spider should've been a humongous spider.

John's dialog was over-the-top and forced, IMHO.  Kevin mentioned Charlton Heston; it was an accurate (and humorous) comment.

The twist at the end was nice.

As far as the guidelines for the OWC, you missed the mark.  You have three locations (as opposed to one) and this piece is definitely not low budget.  I might go assofar as to suggest that this script was written prior to the OWC.

Phil

I had to read this a few times because I didn't know if I liked it. I still don't. I liked parts of it - the idea is great but the execution fails. Like others have said, your writing will only get better.
Some of the descriptions were good and atmospheric (though some trimming is required)
I didn't like the twist - guys in masks, Meh. The acid trip seemed too real rather than surreal, as if they knew what trip he was going to have before they took the drug. Their dialogue during the reveal feels rushed and unrealistic (the most difficult aspect of writing IMO).
Biggest problem - most definitely more than one location.
Daz

Just gonna echo what everybody else said. This story has potential. Definitely worthy of a re-write. And a re-write it seriously needs. Read some scipts and learn the craft a bit better. Would like to see this one cleaned up and more succinct...

James

I feel you.

Looney Silly Day. At least it's subtle, unlike Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds ;)

Without right grammar, 'John' sometimes is written as 'Johns'. And if I "hear" a "voice" say "take it, take it" is there something wrong with:

GHOST VOICE
Take it! Take it!

or

VAGRANT
Take it! Take it! (p3)

?

Quoted Text

The other man smiles and says "Good! Get ready for a fun
ride!"

Okay. That's just outright lazy. Stick to format. You are going to tick folks off with little stuff like that. Even if this was written under the gun with five minutes before deadline, it would have not been too much trouble to give MYSTERY MAN/VAGRANT the line.

I'm not into flashbacks all that much...some bits of past tense actions...

Now, all that aside, I didn't think this was a bad effort. Hey, even I get trippy sometimes. For some folks, they like, others...right over thier heads.

I didn't like it--but I didn't hate it.
Fair job on the OWC.

As I go:

Page 1:  Haha.  He should be looking up at the Statue of Liberty...

Page 2:  Another one with a buncha VO, huh.  I feel like there's some stuff in the VO that's superfluous.  Surely there's a way to show us some of this stuff.

Seriously pushing both the low budget and the location restrictions, here.

Page 5:  The dialogue of the Figures reads very comically for me.

----

I'm out.  Not trying to be a stickler, but this isn't low budget, it isn't one location, and there are more than four actors (ie, the bodies).

I know I read this and commented on it the other day, but my comments seem to be gone. Not sure why, but I've been having problems with my computer lately.

I'm not sure the guy would have acted like this since he knew he was going to be seeing things.

What if the other guys slipped him this stuff? I think it would make for a better ending when he kills them.

My two cents

Cindy

the ending was okay for me. its one step away from mimicking the old "it was all a dream" trick (which is VERY cheap IMO). would give you more feedback, but you violated the one location rule. since i have a lot of scripts to catch up on, im in a bit of a hurry. eh writing, eh ending, eh script. can't even grade this one if i wanted to (because of the guideline infraction)

Sorry I have to say I wasn't a huge fan of this one. The biggest problem for me was that I couldn't really get a clear sense of the tone. Also, I'm not sure about the creepy voices talking to each other - wouldn't they have only been creepy if he was listening to them?

Good effort, tho:)

I read this a few nights ago and forgot to comment.

I think the "apocalyptic" scenes need some work. Some of the stuff...actually, all of the stuff that John says is pretty funny, so to set up the twist at the end I think what he says needs to be a little more serious. "You crazy fuckers! You finally did it! Damn you!" That just sounds funny to me.

The ending will definitely receive mixed views but I liked it. I thought it was a good spin on things.

Nice job for a week.

Greg

Like a few of the others this has potential. The writing needs to be tuned up a bit but I thought overall the story was pretty good.

Usually I don't see twists, if you class this as a twist, coming. But here I did. I think it was in the first flashback where someone is saying 'take it, take it' that gave it away for me. I think I may have to give you credit for getting me there though as it was the 'trippy' lead up that led me to that conclusion. It also managed to make me think of The Simpsons episode where Homer eats a load of chillis and starts seeing crazy things happen, though I assumed this guy wasn't taking chillis. Was worried that it was going to end in the 'it was all just a dream' vein, but it actually happened, from a certain perspective of course. Basically I didn't feel ripped off at the end.

Not sure it sticks to the challenge rules with locations and budget though.

Arty.

I want to thank everyone for taking a look at this! I really appreciate it.

And please although I think I got everyones entry, if by chance I missed one or some let me know.

I do apologize for the various problems with the grammar and structure. I'm working on improving that right now. And I hope to do a much better job in the near future. I want to make reading one of my scripts an easy experience, not a choir!

And some people said they could see the great Charlton Heston ghost somewhere in the story, well to be honest I could to!, Dunno why he popped into my head while writting this down. lol

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