Shalom, Naziboy by 0 - Short, Thriller - The granddaughter of a Holocaust victim sends a quirky merc to the apartment of a German neo-Nazi, the grandson of her ancestor's murderer, to abduct him for a talk on a Jewish cemetery. 11 pages - pdf, format

Writer interested in feedback on this work

Hmmmmmm, peaks and troughs, hills and valleys, good bits and bad bits.

First up, the parameters are kinda met. The characters are less than four, its present, but given the twist, I'm not sure that they are in an unfamiliar situation. Sorry to say but that end section took a lot out of it, for myself anyway.

The beginning needs a bit of a tidy, some typos and formatting there which made it feel clunky. The dialogue was okay, and pulled me through a good chunk of it.

There's clearly some talent here, as it was creative, ambitious and some of the descriptions landed, but then there are also large parts which didn't work for me.

Good effort and well done for entering

Cam

Well, I had to come to this one for my first read -- that’s my last name in the title!

Starts clunky and overwritten, but at the same time, your cinematic vision is coming through, which is the most important part. Still, I would cut down the first two pages -- if a page is a minute of screen-time, we’re watching this guy sit around for a full minute, and Maurice creep up for most of another one. The first really great moment in this script is Maurice doing the cleaning, and I would try to get to that quickly.

I think Maurice is too talkative. It cuts down on the suspense/mystery of the moment.

I'd actually like to know more about Frederick before all this starts. All the first pages really establish is that he's a neo-Nazi who's let his house go to shit. What is he like? What are his quirks, his dreams?

SPOILERS

Well, the end addresses my last comment -- it also makes the script kinda pointless. The "gotcha" moment is fine, but only if we can still feel like we got something out of the preceding story, and in this case, it doesn't really feel like things come to a satisfying climax. For this to work, the section prior to the twist has to be more or less a complete story, or at least a story that's changed/added to by the final reveal.

There's something very weird and interesting and good about the idea, but this is not satisfying as a whole in its current form. It's not much of a thriller because Maurice is always in control and Frederick has no real character -- two things that are necessary for your story but also make it difficult to have any suspense.

It's certainly a unique idea. Glad I chose it for my first read.

Chris

The opening, while vivid, is a bit over done. Felt like I was getting hit over the head with the environment a bit.  Just a little too much.

Quoted Text As Frederick takes a sip from a beer bottle and clicks the computer mouth, silencing the sound-- A soft metallic CLACK resonates from the door on the other side of the one-room apartment

Computer mouse?

Quoted Text He bangs his head to a pure pulp of loudness, while behind him the door slowly swings open.

Should be a single action block.

Okay - going to stop with typos and grammar issues - there are many (sentences that don't start with a capital letter, etc.) - just that this needs a clean -up - nature of the OWC really.  Going to focus on the story/pace. etc.

The descriptive passages are too long and slowing this down - robbing the story of its tension, IMO.

Okay - done. As said before, there is a lot of clean-up needed.  In terms of the story, I liked the twist with the game set - but at the same time the virtual nature of it does stretch up against the  OWC parameters.

To me, this is still a work in progress with the potential to be much better.

The reveal could read better if you build up to it better, I think.
And the build up is not quite there for several reasons:
Elise comes too late into the story. I dont' see the reason for this.
I think there's quite a few blocks of unnecessary dialog that provide no value as it's a mere repetition of what already been said.
Maurice finally killing Frederick was out of character and not convincing.
The idea of it is very good, I think. It would make a very nice short IMO with some work.

I was expecting more humour from the title. The beginning was very slow, and then it got quirky, which I didn't expect. The dishes thing was great, until the ending kinda ruined that. It would have been a great character choice, but the QA testing robbed that away.

I feel this doesn't work, but it is a unique take on the challenge and competently written even with the pacing issues. The dialogue needs a lot of work too.

I didn't buy Elise's character, but I did like Maurice, even with the real motivations revealed. Good job with that.

Actually quite smart in that it reads as yet another boring left wing story that focuses on playing safe, but then at the end, it makes jokes about how poor and cliched the story is. Nice job... but many may switch off before getting to the reveal.

You definitely paid a lot of attention to some of the visuals. I don't like to say it was overwritten, but yes, it was. I did think the part where you had Maurice sneak up on Frederick and speak in his ear was good, but the tone here (I found out in the end) was wrong really, for what you had up your sleeve.

How do you film "the old propaganda speech"?

"All the graves within this almost untamed nature give an enchanted mystical atmosphere to this place" is an example of a lot of words, but not really much visual. "Mystical" is a vague word. There are all kinds of mystical.

I noted

-Even Fred looks around

Why the "even"?

I'm starting to realize that:

Actors don't always need to be instructed to:

Tilt there heads and furrow their brows.

That kind of thing turns readers off.

Page 7 - Maurice Calms? Not Freddy? I know you meant Maurice, but it confused me when I was reading.

Page 7 - that constantly flows - why not just flows

When Elise appears on page 8 it feels very random.

A head mounted display for virtual reality around his eyes. --

That had me sooo confused. How about VIRTUAL REALITY HEAD SET

When I learned that this was basically all a dream, I wasn't feeling too inspired.

I did feel I had to slog my way through it. Not a good sign because you know what the pros do when that happens.

Even still, you put a lot of work into the German stuff. Credit for that. And the title caught me.

As far as the Fish out of Water idea goes and Stranger in a Strange Land Theme--

BUZ goes the buzzer on that one I'm afraid.

Good effort though.

Sandra

If this was a contest on titles you'd win, hands down. lol

"The old propaganda speech, with intent hatred perceptible in each intonation, drones on and on without making a pause..." Change to "An old PROPAGANDA SPEECH..... if this is something we are going to hear in the background.

Fredrick is a neo nazi, we got it. Ditch the description of old tables and laundry and start with the Nazi memorabilia. Since there's so much of it apparently and it's what stands out.

Seriously, the way you've written it, why isn't Fredrick whacking off to all this Nazi stuff around him since his fetish is so bad.

"until his brown face is right behind Frederick's pale cheek,who still knows shit, ecstatically banging his head to the Nazi-sound." Hard to have your face right next to a headbanger. Ouch!

What????? Maurice cleans his apt after karate chopping his throat? I am lost. Breadcrumbs man. Something.

FREDERICK (V.O.)
This is kidnapping, asshole. My
lawyer is going to take care of you
later.

I think this has gotten way past lawyers by now lol.

Wait, it's all a virtual reality video game? About killing Nazis? Da fuq?

This is all over the place. I'm out.

On par with the better entries. I thought it was going to be your standard revenge on the ancestry tale, but I admit when Elise was on the toilet I was scratching my head for a second. After reading I was thinking who would want to play a video game that you kill nazis and then I thought of all the video games out there now that you can kill nazis and laughed.

Can't say that I was all in, but the story definitely had me wanting to know what happens next. I never got the vibe that they were in a game as I read, not sure if that's good or bad, but could be something to explore. Good job.

Was think immediately of Apt Pupil with the log so perhaps the writer was a fan of that novella.

Was a good premise here but a bit lost in translation (no pun intended). The writer was prolly rushed for time?

An error when Maurice says 'its time to meet your Fuehrer' to Frederick,  you have the dialogue char as Frederick. otherwise fair effort.

Writer,

Not a bad story idea at all. Was hoping there'd be some divine justice at the end, but what I got instead was out of left field, and not in a bad way. Not bad at all. Just felt kinda like a cheat in a sense that it was all virtual, though it was definitely original. Still, what's with your sentence writing style, separated by commas and on different lines?  Now that really threw me for a loop, and not in a good way. Overall, not shabby for the time allowed. Good effort.

Steve

IMO, it failed the stranger requirement.  

I didn't get it.  Was it about a

SPOILERS
video game?  Was any of it real?  

What was the point?  

It starts off as an action kidnapping for a wannabe Nazi.  Then it turns bizarre.  Then it goes off the rails.

Sorry
I can't really add anything that hasn't been said before.

Dan

I was mostly engaged in this with some minor weirdness here and there occurring. It was weird how Maurice shifted from calm to over the top throughout. The transition from apartment to wherever was abrupt and strange. The whole experience in the cemetery alternated between intense and sometimes even good to schizophrenic and bizarre.

I can't say he was a stranger or a fish, but I think I see where that idea played into your concept.

But the ending. Oh, that ending. And I say that in a bad way. When we shifted into the apartment at the end, I was removed from the story entirely. It wasn't ironic or clever. What it told me was that you had no larger explanation or meaning for what went on and couldn't figure out how to end it, so you copped out.

This one would need a lot of work to even be decent. I don't know. Some kind of eye-opener redemption story for a young white supremacist who is the grandson of a German official from WW2 might work. But what you have here is only the merest hint of something that might work.

Good script.

Frederick acts like a Nazi, but we don't see him doing anything Nazi-like except call people names. Sure, his character is limited by what his programmers have coded--and Elise acknowledges this, but the reader/viewer might prefer to see Frederick doing something evil before Maurice kills him. Like grandfather, like grandson.

And it looks like the game is giving Maurice his own Nazi-like tendencies, which you might want to emphasize. As for Elise, is she there only to speak for the Jews who died in the concentration camps? There's real passion in her lines and I'm guessing Maurice isn't interested in anything but the action. So I'm thinking there should be tension between them, because they have entirely different views on how the game should proceed.

Is this a role-playing game where you can hook up with strangers to play the different characters? Perhaps its a way to find out who plays the Nazi role with true conviction. And true Nazi hunters who track them down? Talk about entrapment!

I had high expectations from the title (awesome) but started to lose interest quickly. I don't get the whole apartment cleaning scene. Why? Just grab him and drag his ass where ever the graveyard is located (never identified). It seems the writing style of breaking up action narrative was just to get more pages as most was unnecessary.

I do like the concept and with more time and revisits, it could be something cool. Good effort.

Last script for me, so you know what that means, right?  Very detailed review...let's jump in!

Title - I don't like it at all, which is why it's my last read.

"lb" - "pound"

"no faintest idea" - very awkward

Strange how you've formatted and written this with single words on a line.  It's definitely padding the script, which may have been your intention, but it's not something you should do.

I don't like the asides here, either, but I'll press on.

lays/lies - please learn the difference and use properly

Series of Shots - not necessary at all, IMO.

Troposhere?

Many very awkwardly phrased lines.

Missing punctuation throughout, weird, stilted writing style that changes to much more detailed descriptive writing, meaning the flow here is definitely off.

The awkwardness continues and makes this tough to get through.

Not impressed with the "twist" at all.  Not impressed with the writing at all.  Not impressed with the "story" at all.

Bottom line, this ain't for me, and I once again do not see the stranger in a strange land or the fish out of water.

GRADE - **