Blood for Posterity by Count Ravioli - Western: Pool Cue, Photographer, Restroom

That was a very ambitious 5 pages. I had to read it twice because there was so much going on...several locations and time jumps, lots of characters, some with 2 names/aliases. Just a lot to squeeze into 5 pages.

Interesting spin on BTK...I had never heard he may have survived. I think this is worth expanding a bit. This is a pretty big story and needs more room to do it justice.

Nice work, writer. Best of luck.

Yep, another less than straight forward narrative (that's not a criticism btw) that is somewhat to be expected with the variables given. Some nice touches of humour in this, wording that made me chuckle, nice dialogue. You got the flavour of Western down pat.

Hold my turn  -  goin’ to the privy.  ;D

Elements were there. As was the theme. Coupla typos.
A little confusing at times, but nice job!

Quoted Text Henry McCarty, a/k/a William Antrim, a/k/a William H. Bonney, a/k/a BILLY THE KID, stands before Mathew Brady, forlorn.

Maybe THE MAN should just be called WILLIAM. This is  a five page script, and related historical characters such as photographer Matthew Brady and Pat Garrett., with references to Charlie Bowdre and Tom O'Folliard.  

I don't think The last bolded factoid wasn't really needed, This setting already establishes a scenario in which William Bonney may have survived, and you could still leave an open ended question of mistaken identity if you wanted to.

Okay. Restroom. There are several. No need to see someone taking a squat though  :-/


Overall, this isn't too bad of an effort.
Nice job.

Hi,

The photographer was certainly shoe-horned into the script but everything else fitted in well.
I'm familiar with the story of BTK and the possibility he survived so I enjoyed this story and I thought some of the dialogue was very good.
Had a little bit of trouble following the timeline but that's a minor quibble.

Well done.

Western: Pool Cue, Photographer, Restroom

that's a feature film, not a five pager  :D

seems like a lot of work went into this, and perhaps could have been the historical genre (already done that one?).

as a short I struggled with all the details and moving around but I applaud the effort

After reading so many crime, mystery and thriller entries, I needed an western. This could very well have ticked the box for historical too.

Very cool story. A bit jumpy in places but with a second read, it all makes more sense. I think it's the transition from scene and location that I found a little confusing.

All requisites met. Blood theme met as comrades in arms, rather than kin.

Good work, writer.

Nice evocative writing, criteria hit and I actually like the photographer as sort of the framing device.

Always a fan of BTK and his mythology, so this was a nice suprise.

Need a few more pages to smooth this out as it's a little jumpy, but great otherwise.

Love the Westerns especially when they’re done well like this.

I don’t think the variables were shoehorned in at all, especially the photographer. I recall watching an episode on the Discovery channel where they had found a second photo of BTK and were trying to establish if it was authentic - fascinating stuff.

This could have been used as historical too but I’m guessing the writer /team was saving it lol. Really good work and in my top 3

Bit too much going in different times with too many characters made this a head-scratchin' hootin' tootin' read for me, which is why you needed the big SUPER at the end to explain it all.

Hugely ambitious that ticks all the criteria boxes and a valiant effort. It just needs more pages, about 85 lol to do this justice.

-Mark

This made me think - in a good way. I like stories with time lapses and all.

Good western vibe and dialog.

A bit jumpy I would say, and you may want to expand it for better impact.

a lot of 'you know' on p1 btw. Just saying
Man and Matthew - might confuse some starting with "Ma" and all. Just saying again.

Good luck!

Very good. All the elements were well used and Atrim’s sacrifice was a great example of blood being thicker than water. The one quibble I have is that Brady nowhere takes a picture. One way to handle that would’ve been to have Brady take a “street” photograph and unintentionally capture Billy in the background. So Billy pays a midnight visit to Brady to demand the picture and negative, and has to trade his backstory in exchange.

Tough one for me.

I was completely and utterly lost on the first read. And, not in a good way, either. No idea who was who, how it all fit together. Nothing.

Second read, awesome.

So, how do I score it? As a short, I think it failed for me. As an idea, it's fantastic, and the writing was great.

Chalk me down as another vote for a feature. I'll ponder for a bit as to my score.

I'm not going to mention the things I don't like about the style, I'm almost sure I would have mentioned it or your week 1 script.

The writing otherwise is good and the dialogue feels natural and authentic.

I'm just not your audience.

Hey everyone, thanks for the comments.

As for the jumpiness - I included the SUPER's to let everyone know we were going back in time 10 years. And we go from saloon to outhouse to the Maxwell ranch, then back to present day. I think it would be pretty clear on screen where we are. In hindsight, maybe sub slugs for the outhouse would have been effective.

For those who don't know the BTK legend, there were two people who claimed to be him. One, John Miller, died before he could tell his story and the other is the narrator in YOUNG GUNS II, Brushy Blll Roberts. This script may require a bit of googling if you don't know who Mathew Brady is (a famous Civil War photographer) or that one of BTK's aliases was William Antrim. He had a brother named Joseph who was pretty much historically insignificant in the New Mexico territory, so I thought it was a cool way to bring the blood and water thing home.

The other cool thing? If this actually DID happen? The DNA would match. There was some effort recently to exhume the body of BTK's mother Catherine Antrim. If his brother is buried there instead of him, we'd never know.

I called BTK "Man" because I didn't want to out him until the ending. The SUPER wasn't meant to explain what was going on, but to supplement for those who didn't know the legend. In my story, "Joseph Antrim" then uses other aliases and then eventually becomes Brushy Bill Roberts.

I rewrote this right up to the deadline because I kept coming up with logic problems. One, Antrim and Garrett would know each other. Two, Garrett would know that Antrim is a problem. Three, Antrim has to get the jump on Garrett and Poe in an inventive way while using the criteria (pool cue). And four, it has to be believable that Antrim is still at the Maxwell ranch, without Billy, when Garrett arrives. In fact, I added the witnesses (farmhands) because I figured someone would say "if Antrim is dead, how does Billy know what he's telling to Brady really happened that night?"

This was meticulously researched, down to the town in New Mexico where the saloon is - Acme is about 8 miles from the Maxwell Ranch, easily reachable by horse in a half day. In actuality, Garrett and Poe rode out of Roswell NM on July 10 and reached Fort Sumner on July 13. Billy was taunting them in a way, staying West of Fort Sumner in an area called White Oaks - but White Oaks is well over a day from Sumner, so I couldn't place Garrett there.

Billy and Mathew's meeting also originally took place in NY, where Brady's studio was, but I moved the location to west of the Mississippi, to avoid the "that's not a Western" comments. BTK was also rumored to be born in NY so I thought it would be plausible for him to head back east, BUT, if you believe the Brushy Bill legend, Bill says he was born in Texas.

The reason Brady didn't take an actual photograph is because you couldn't just whip out a Polaroid in an alley in 1891. It was an elaborate setup, and one that I really didn't want to research and then take up valuable page length with.

Yeah, a bit overboard, but we've got Western fans here, so I wanted to be accurate... (0:

And I doubled-down on the restroom criterium, and yes, Poe had to be pinching a load in order to get trapped in the outhouse.... the two outhouses is a big middle finger to you, Blondie. (0:

Thanks again all - this will NOT be a feature, I'm going to let this fall harmlessly to the ground like a snowflake. There's plenty of BTK material out there and little ol' me doesn't really have anything new to contribute. Plus that research thing is a lot of work.

AJR

Bravo with the details. I could tell you did your homework. Surprised you didn't enter this as historical but I guess the requirements fit to get a western out of the way?

Wow. That's amazing detail.

For the record, I ended up giving this my top score (along with a few others.)

Too bad it won't be a feature. Could be a good one. But, I get it. To write a feature, you've got to be all in.

Nice work!

thanks PK, and congrats on taking the week. Best use of a prop so far!

Something I forgot to mention - I left a nugget for real Western aficionados that no one picked up on. Brady says to BTK, after telling him he had done some work in Kansas City, "Frank Dalton says hello."

Frank Dalton claimed to be the real Jesse James. And James was connected to Kansas City. Though "Jesse James" died in 1882, Frank Dalton died in 1951. And James and the Kid were rumored to be friends.

AJR