Fight by Anthony Hudson (alffy) - Short, Comedy - The workplace can be a dangerous place, especially when you're forced in to a contest against the reigning champion. 5 pages - pdf, format 8)

Hey Alffy,

I don't have much to say which is a good thing, I liked it. It was entertaining little short and you did a good job deceiving me here...

Spoilers:

When the conkers came out, I had to giggle. I remember playing this as a lad in school and all those memories came flooding back.

Not many issues with the writing, it flowed nicely and except for one instance "Jeff reveals a head." I was never tripped up. Might want to clarify that line "Jeff reveals the coin, its heads"

Also thought your parentheses with the ages looked compact, not too sure why but there was no breathing space.

On the whole, a fun piece which I'm guessing is exactly what you're going for.

Good job. :)

Steve

Hey Alffy,

Good to see some new work from you. Tightly written and well paced... As to be expected from a vet.

I had to look up what a conker was and read about this game which is inherently British. For that reason, much of the joke was lost on me. I've never heard nor seen this game in action. Had I been more familiar with it, I may have enjoyed this more.

The battle seemed a bit lengthy without a whole lot of payoff. I think this would work better if you continually build up Duncan's anxiety and fear of facing the champion. Then send it off when both of them reveal their conkers and get ready to do battle. I think this needs to end on some type of punchline to be more effective.

I think your UK friends will enjoy this more than I did. Btw, where is your Prometheus pisstake? I was looking forward to that having not been much a fan of the film myself...

James

Steve, glad you liked it.  I wasn't sure if only us Brit's played Conkers?  I wrote this having witnessed two kids playing one day and the memories came back.

I never thought about the 'head' confusion lol.  I'll look into that.

I love the Avavtar by the way; Bazinga!



James, you hit the nail when you said you never heard of Conkers, this is something I was worried about before posting.  It's basically a school boy game, so the men playing has it's own comedic image.

You're right about the length of the fight too but I think this is the essence of the story and would be quicker on film.

As far as my Prometheus spoof, well I posted it the same day as this so I guess it'll be up soon.  It's called 'Proposterous' by the way.


Thanks for the reads guys and if you want me to read anything of yours, you just have to say.

I love history, and I've spent a fair amount of time studying British history. Plus, my sister in law is English! And she's taught us many British traditions, particularly those related to the holidays.  Still, I learned something totally new here. Thank the gods for Google!

Ok, I will be very surprised if this is not filmed and filmed soon. It's a clever short and would be very easy to produce.

The part that instantly captured me was the passing of the post it saying "fight". Man, it's like grade school, only in the office, which is why it's so cool. And the post it is the perfect evolution from the note paper that would have been used in grade school. So I was hooked.

And I knew it was probably not going to be a real fight. I mean, I'm a writer, or try to be, so I know there'll be a twist. I'm eager to find out what it will be. I'm thinking something office related, maybe. And then there's shoelace on fingers...and a conker. I'm like what the heck is that? So I looked it up, went back to the story.

Conkers is a kids game. People can Google if they want.

And that's a perfect little twist. It suggests how we take on the trappings of adulthood, but deep down we're still just children at the school yard.

By the way, this concept could easily be Americanized for an American producer. Just use a different game. For example, flippsies, where you flip baseball cards. I'm sure there are plenty of games, depending on what audience you're targeting.

The writing itself is flawless, no need to comment on it beyond that.

Get this one on Inktip so someone can pick it up and film it!

Very kind words, Kev.  Thank you.

You pretty much grasped everything I was aiming for; 'there's a kid in all of us'.

I also thank google too.

Hey Alffy,

As you know I think this is a lovely script.

I particualry  love the "no pulling, no pulling" line, captures the ridiculous element of the scene

All the best

Cheers, Bill.

Hi Alffy, first post on here for me for a while. Glad to see you still writing.

I enjoyed this - thought it was a nice twist. I thought you were going to make it a back-to-school, fight with a huddle of people watching, sort of thing but I thought where you took it was funnier.

Well written and funny mate.

Ste

Ste, glad to see you, so to speak.

Thanks for the read and I'm glad you enjoyed it.  

When you mentioned 'the huddle' I was transported back to school for a split second, remembering the ring of baying observers chanting 'fight, fight, fight, as two nervous school kids took wild swings at each other, desperate not to lose and having the piss taken out of them for the rest of the year lol.

Anthony

This was ok, felt like something that just came in a flash of inspiration and you got it down on paper. For a humorous 4 pager is works fine when treating it more as a skit or sketch you could see on a TV show or advertisement.

I did laugh at the terse, straight to-the-point note that Peter passes to Duncan that simply reads “fight”

It was obvious it wasn’t going to be a confrontation in the traditional fisticuffs manner and funnily enough a conker fight crossed my mind, no jokes. Maybe I’ve seen it done somewhere else; it’s certainly up there with one of the more childish, old fashioned games you could drop into this modern work environment full of supposed adults.

Treating the contestants as boxers with the lovely Jenny parading around the champion and the plume of dust obscuring the two men when Duncan delivers that final blow was amusing.

I thought there might be a twist at the end, I’m not sure what but Peter worming his way through the crowd to snap a photo felt a bit anti-climactic. Again I see this being used allegorically in an advertisement as they try to correlate the most disparate things together nowadays in order to sell a product (just watch today’s commercials for proof, some crazy stuff out there) so the conker fight could be used to represent and energy drink or pep pill to get one through their daily grind at the office. Sounds mad I know but again I refer you to those absurd 30 second slots you see between TV shows every day.

Anyway, not bad for what it is.

Col.

Hey Anthony!

It's good to have something new from your brain to read!
Heck, it's just plain nifty in general for SS alum to post scripts.
So, here goes...

P. 1
If this were to be produced...
I can totally see using the post-it note for the title reveal!
And like an ominous Inceptionesque percussion gong!  ;D

P. 2
This line reads wonky to me...
Their chitter chatter volume increases.

I'd just go for something like...
Their chatter intensifies.

P. 2
Word removal needed here...
The walls lined with portrait
photographs beneath a the heading;

P. 2
Jenny needs a properly ALL CAPS character intro here.

P. 3
The words "receive encouragement" feel inappropriately dry given the situation.

I'm ashamed to say that I had to look up what Conkers is.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conkers

Us colonists types are a tad ignorant to such amusements. :P
I liked the crowd and Jenny's strut, but the game itself was lost on me.

Regards,
E.D.

Cheers, Col and E.D.

Col, you guessed it was going to be a conker fight?  Great minds...
Using it as a advert, never thought about it but I guess it could easily be changed to promote a number of things.  Good idea that.

E.D. cheers for your views, they're much appreciated.  Sorry you don't know the game, it's very popular here...or was, before the invention of the Playstation and Xbox.  Showing my age now lol.

Thanks guys.

Hi alffy,

Great to see some work from a member who appears to be everywhere, nowadays.

Haven't got much to add, really other than I enjoyed. That image of adults playing conkers is something that will stick for a while. Quite amusing.

I think it was on page 2, when you have the description "Narrow and claustrophobic." - I see what you were trying to get at, here, but "claustrophobic" to describe a setting? Not too sure about that TBH.

Otherwise, some great writing. Will definitely take a look at some of your other work in the near future.

Daniel

Quoted from alffy I wasn't sure if only us Brit's played Conkers?

Yep, pretty sure it's only Brit's because I've never seen a conker here in Perth - NEVER! The kids here are deprived of such wonders. ;D

Quoted from CoopBazinga Yep, pretty sure it's only Brit's because I've never seen a conker here in Perth - NEVER! The kids here are deprived of such wonders. ;D

Perth's an amazing city, especially that water park place you have there! I remember that place more than any other. So many things to do there! I couldn't imagine a more awesome place to grow up in, but then again, I was born in South Africa and I'm now living in a small town, so my expectations aren't exactly high.

I've gone off topic, again. Great script alffy :)

Cheers, Dan.

It feels pretty good that this script is receiving positive feedback considering it's a very British theme and many readers have no idea what a conker fight is.

Glad you enjoyed it and if I can repay the favour you need only ask, same goes for any one else who has taken the time to read this.

Hey Anthony.

I plan on checking out 'Pub Lunch' in the next couple of days, so I thought I'd check out one of your newer shorts while I had a couple of minutes.

Yeah, I'm American, so I had to look up what a conker was.  Gotta say, I had a pretty good image of all these grownups standing around playing a children's game.  I laughed.

Then I laughed because it made me realize how violent Americans are.  When I was a kid, our game was 'Pencils'.  Two people took turns cracking the pencil against the other person's knuckle.  The first person to bleed, loses.  Ahh... memories.

Anyway, it was an amusing short, or skit.  Not sure which you wrote it as.  But the ending did feel kind of anti-climactic.  It just, ended with nothing spectacular.  Maybe I was just expecting one of them to get hit in the nut or something, though.  (No pun intended.)

I remember reading 'My Fifteen Minutes' before and liking it, and seeing how clean and direct and thorough this one was written, I look forward to reading 'Pub Lunch'.

I'd write a little more, but my early on-set arthritis is bothering me real bad and I just can't type anymore.  I just don't understand why this is happening to me at such an early age.

Anyway, I'll be talking to you in a little bit.

- Mark

Cheers for checking this out, Mark.

I did this for a bit of fun after seeing two kids playing conkers and remembering how good it was playing at school.  We also had a game called 'wraps' which was played by wrapping knuckles with a deck of cards until you couldn't take any more.  Funny how we played stupid games as kids.  Lick a battery was worse!

Anyway, cheers for reading and liking it, despite the anti-climax lol.

Also, thanks in advance for checking out 'Pub Lunch', I hope you like it.

pm me if you want me to check out anything in return.

Hey alffy,
I as well had to look up what conkers was. Funny little story, though. Great writing makes it very entertaining.  Not too much to add here that hasn't already been said, but here it goes:
Pg. 2: The crowd cheer; The crowd cheers.
Pg. 3: I was a little confused at what was happening, as I never heard or have seen conkers played. Perhaps with greater detail describe when they play. I didn't know what "The target" was, until I read the rules and saw it was the other persons conker. at first I thought they just had to break their own first by slamming it on a table or something. Perhaps I just misread it, but that's what I thought at first.

BCurt, cheers for checking this out.  I thought this might struggle with the oversea's readers but, even though most haven't heard of conkers, its done okay.
I can't imagine never having played conkers, you guys don't know what you missed.  I guess now though kids play games on their phone in the playground.

apart from like a couple of sentence constructions... and even then it's more a matter of personal style...

...not much more to say than lol.

short, to the point, does what it says on the tin.

edit: thought i'd add, yeah i got the conkers thing straight away and for a brit it was a good twist. You can't quite believe they'll have a proper fight but they seem to be about to... and the conkers is a neat punch-line. Plus it is actually the sort of thing UK office staff would do if the boss was out for the day.

not just saying it to suck up, looked at what i put originally and it seemed a bit useless. Unlike, of course, a tin of ronseal.

Marriot, you seem to be checking out a lot of scripts, have you any posted?

Cheers for reading this and I'm glad you enjoyed it.

It gets the 'Ronseal' approval then lol.

i've just submitted my first short to bert, hopefully it'll be up soon. thought i'd go around and make at least a little effort first.

plus, i'm trying to discipline myself to read more scripts and try and absorb a better style for my own writing.

hope it's useful feedback is all.

:)

edit - thanks for keeping an eye out for my short. i'll chuck in an apology here if it gets put up in the next 24 hours because I won't be able to respond to feedback until Monday. I'm off visiting my grandma. :P

All feedback is greatly appreciated.  One reviewer might spot something no one else has.  
I'll keep an eye for your script and give it a read.

Hi alffy,
A few observations!
An intersting idea.
Think you have too many unecessary characters and too many locations (OFFICE SPACE, CONFERENCE ROOM, CORRIDOR) which could prove costly if filmed. Think you should set it in a single location.
The action line 'intakes a large lung of air' on page 1 is overwritten and reads a little awkward.
I think the story would pack more of a punch if you cranked up the tension between Duncan and Mathew - making us believe they're about to trade punches then end with Duncan shattering Mathew's conker with a single strike rather than a blow by blow account!
Good luck with it!

rolo, thanks for the feedback.

I thought about having only one strike of the conkers but decided it would be more of a farce to have a few hits and the dreaded tangles strings.

As for only using one location; guess you're right but I don't think using 3 basic INT locations is a massive problem.  Same goes with the characters, too few and the office team might feel a little sparse.

Cheers for reading.

Hey alffy,

Thought I'd read a script from someone familiar.

I liked it.  Here's me thinking fight club in the office, but it turns out to be conkers.

It certainly is an unusual activity to hold in the office.  Nonetheless, it was a good read and I liked it!  Very easy to read too.

Easily film-able.

All the best,


Javier

Javier, good to see you around.

Cheers for the read, and yes I think this would be easy to film too.  Any producers out there lol.

Cheers, mate.

Hey Allfy, Loved the overall flow of the script. I got lost once the game Conkers was introduced. Wasn't familar with that game. Googled it. A fun kids game. Once I knew what Conkers was I went back and read the script again, enjoyed it that much more. Great job. It's good to bring the kid out of all of us. Best of luck with future scripts- Dirk

Dirk (DV44)

Cheers for the read.  A lot of foreigners have had to google 'Conkers' lol.

Glad you enjoyed it, and yes, it is good to keep the kid in us alive.

Thanks again, much appreciated.

Hi Alffy,
Just read this script and the first thing that springs to mind is that I enjoyed your writing. You’re a tight to the point writer that enables the reader to “view” the scene quickly. As a newbie I would like to try and emulate your style as it is very much they way I would like to write. Many thanks.

Hi Anthony,

Enjoyed the screenplay even though I didn't initially know what playing Conkers was (have now Googled). The fact that the workers are focused on something entirely outside of work, passionate about it and bonded over it, made me chuckle because it was relatable.

IMO it was a solid piece of writing, and enjoyed especially the last 2 lines:

Jenny smacks a lip stick souvenir on Duncan’s cheek and hangs on his arm.
Peter pushes through the ecstatic crowd and snaps a photograph of a triumphant Duncan.

The fact that Jenny switched sides and Peter has some sort of newfound respect for Duncan makes the ending interesting on another level - and so much is executed in so little.

Hey John, thanks for the read and glad you liked it.  I notice a link in your sig, I'll give it a read when i get chance...probs in the next few days.

Angela, 'Conkers' baffled a few non-Brits I think lol, got to love Google.  I'm glad you enjoyed this little script.  I wanted it to be a bit ridiculous; workers having passion for a childrens game.  Glad you enjoyed the writing too.  If I can repay the read just let me know.