Jessie's Girl by Rick Springfield - Crime, Tape Measure, Actuary, Strip Club

While you definitely hit all the criteria, the actual story was drawn out and then ended abruptly with a "twist".

All the names sounded similar: Lexi, Sunny, Jessie.
Jessie should be Jesse if it's a guy.

I thought I had a bad combination with my criteria. You definitely made the best with what you were given.

Crime, actuary, measuring tape and strip club

That was a lot to pull off...not that they wear much !

At first I thought Jessie was a girl so that threw me

I think that was a decent effort, and a lot effort went into it. Glad I didn’t that have set of criteria.

It just felt too much, too busy etc for five pages.

A new girl arrives and is in with the son to rip off dad.

So a good stab, but could be a lot simpler and pull off the same punch IMO

Well done.

Hey writer.

Jessie's Girl. By Rick Springfield. You win.

So yeah, Nomad's right, a tough set of criteria here. Blondie, actuary is pretty evil. Not just accountant - it had to be actuary?

I wasn't a fan of how your items were used. We were sledge-hammered over the head with the actuarial stuff, and to be honest, I'm not sure what Jessie's talent for algorithms has to do with what he's doing. And I was confused on why the dancers had to pay him based on, what, their measurements? I didn't see any math taking place. The tape measure, I get, it can be sort of part and parcel for this world.

Parameters aside... I think there's only a basic story here. Strip club owner rips off his girls, and then his girls rip him off. I think where this suffers is that Sunny is a stripper for all of about 12 minutes before she decides that Max is a special kind of evil strip club owner. I'm not sure I buy the characters' motivations.

AJR

Quoted from ajr So yeah, Nomad's right, a tough set of criteria here. Blondie, actuary is pretty evil. Not just accountant - it had to be actuary?

Yes. It had to be actuary.

Quoted from Mr. Blonde Yes. It had to be actuary.

Geez, I had to look it up. I learned something today!

Again, I must've missed something because I never understood why people were paying off Jessie to begin with. I don't care how much you get paid, not many would pay for the opportunity to strip. A percentage off the take? Sure, but not arbitrary actuary assessments.

Yes, there was crime. Lots of money but a stretch to say the root of all evil. A tape measure in a strip club? That's an easy combination to contrive a story. An actuary is basically a risk analyst for an insurance company. Hmmm...I'm still confused.

Good work, writer.

Hi Writer,

God damn it, I just lost all my notes for this and can't be bothered re-quoting all the bits.

Long story short, too many ellipses and some that would be better served at em dashes when interrupting dialogue.

The rest of the writing is good, pretty easy read, but the story its self really struggled to hold my attention, by page three I was losing focus.

Congrats for getting an entry in.

All the best.

Meets all the criteria, though not sure that's really what an actuary does.

But it's well written, crime-comedy, so that's fine... theme - yep that too.

My only real problem is this is one of those that doesn't really work outside of the challenge, though with some tweaks it could.

Decent effort.

Yeah this wasn't bad. ticked all the boxes but It just sort of meandered along. More of a vignette show off the variables but, hey, this tourney is a tough gig and we're all dealing with it. I actuary thought there was gonna be some one on one action but I guess the writer ran out of time lol.

I've no idea what an Actuary is so I'll assume you covered this. All the other criteria seemed covered as well and this was a tough set of elements to include, so kudos for that.

Well written, easy to follow. Just not much meat. You spend most of the script showing us Max is leeching money and special favours from all the staff, which is pretty standard stuff. This could be a scene right out of Sopranos and that's the problem - it feels like just enough detail for a scene and not enough for a full story.

Even though the twist is right at the end, you just know it is coming as soon as his son asks him to put some cash into the safe, so no surprises there.

Nothing wrong with what you've written, it's just nothing we've not seen many times before.

Oh, and the name of the file is Prime Cups, which I think is a better name!

-Mark

Hmm
The first one I see that doesn't follow the chosen genre. How's this crime? Only because it's set in a strip club?

The measurement tape is in a scene - and really I couldn't understand what you showed it for. They measure themselves in a strip club. Perhaps. But how it helps the story?

And to talk about the story - so this is about them in a stip club focusing on the money each girl has to give to DJ and three others - twenty dollars that is. And the new girl doesn't have it on her first day.
See, the problem is so small that it doesn't hold me in.

I'm sorry. I'm blunt perhaps. Crime stories set in a club are never my thing, so don't take my comment close to heart.

Last page was the payoff. OK,I got it then. Why does Jessie always need to say 'actuary' in his dialog? It's always popping up! Maybe unintentionally funny, but funny none the less.

I was confused by Jessie's gender. Had to double back.

Never did understand the basic actions in the script. He's measuring, they're paying... none of it made sense to me.

And, the only one I feel any sympathy for is Sunny. Maybe it would have worked for me if she were the only one in on the heist. But, I didn't like Jessie, so I was dissapointed that he got a payoff at the end.

Sorry. I just didn't connect with this one.

An interesting story that has potential. First, though, the author puts Jessie’s age at 35. And he’s just now putting his actuarial knowledge to use? Or did his grudge against Max for the treatment of his mother preclude him from joining his father until now?

The business of measuring the strippers’ worth by using a measuring tape is something I would have expected from a creep like Max. Surely an actuary would use something more scientific?

I don’t know what an actuary does, but I know insurance companies live or die by their accuracy. So I think it would be fun if an insurance company sent an actuary to determine the worth of individual strippers for insurance policies the strip club wants to take out on them.

You did really well with the hand you were dealt. Tough elements. A strip club is just that, no double meaning available there. I don't think so, anyway...

The setting and characters were handled nicely, but the plot meandered a bit for me.

I had to look up actuary :
a person who compiles and analyses statistics and uses them to calculate insurance risks and premiums.
Apologies if someone's written that in already.

Nice inventive use of his occupation! I'm not sure I understood it but I went with it and it'd be an amusing visual.
Needs just a little bit more punch plot-wise.

Hi, I'm not sure I entirely get the story, do 'dancers' pay to dance? Never been in such an establishment so can't fully comment on this.
The crime element seemed a bit tacked on for me, why would he steal from his own dad? What's the motive for the crime?
It is certainly well written and would probably be better fleshed out and there is a lot to cover in five pages and you managed that but I just don't understand the entire concept.
Well done.

Well, I had to look up what an actuary was. Sean, I love you but geesh. Freakin actuary. LOLOL

I didn't understand the tape measure and why the girls had to hand over so much money to Max. Like one girl had to give 500 on top of the DJ, bartender...  

The twist at the end was abrupt because we never got any clue that Jesse hated his dad. Seemed liked they had a decent relationship.

I was entertained though. The writing itself was very good. Just think the story needed more clarity on motives and explain why the girls had to pay so much to dance.

Best of luck.

Thanks for the reads and reviews.

Somehow, this ended up with the very worst score of all entered scripts, which I find puzzling and very upsetting.  Oh well, what can one do?

Just to clear some things up...

Jessie was indeed an actuary in real life, but his "actuarial" skills in the strip club were a complete scam on both his father and everyone at the strip club.

Did Jessie hate his estranged father?  No, he didn't hate him, but his father completely screwed over his Mom in the divorce, left the family and Jessie, and Jessie decided a little turnabout is fair game.

The theme of money being the root of all evil is apparent in literally every scene here - how some/most didn't see that, I don't understand.  Everyone is scamming everyone, mostly for money, but when money isn't available, they use/accept sex.

Why did the bartender and DJ give money to Jessie?  Again, he scammed them in to believing they needed to pay him off, as they knew Jessie knew about the financial "deals" they had with the girls.

Is any of this realistic? Yes, it actually is.  The girls almost always have to "tip out" the DJ and bartender", although it's not a flat rate as stated here.  They also almost always have to pay a flat rate to the house to dance, and make their money.  Everything here has been taken over the top, as it's just a simple story of greed and abuse.

The twist was mean to be "abrupt" or a surprise, but I was pretty sure most would see it coming a mile away, just based on the title alone.

Best of luck to all and thank you all for those amazing scores of 1, 2, and 3.  Always appreciated.