LOGLINE: After feeling his wife has checked out mentally, a young father bonds with a widower in his neighborhood over a shared sense of loss.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/wucz7ni2ecm7stn/ARE%20YOU%20LOOKING%20AFTER%20YOURSELF_%20%20%283%29.pdf?dl=0

About 17 pgs. Very rough. I don't know that there's enough hook here - although I also think that I sometimes sway towards writing shorts with a "hook". Dialogue is normally bit more fun for me to write than this was so I was wondering about that. Also, is it too vague?

I've submitted it to S.S but I always do that with first short drafts and I'd love a first look.

P.S - Dog Corpse is 100% a working title. It just makes me laugh (it's not a comedy).

Hmm.

Okay - the writing itself is EXCELLENT. Really solid. a breeze to get through,

I don't get the story at all.

MAJOR SPOILERS

ASSUMING I GOT IT RIGHT
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Johnny has a dream about killing his family by driving the car into a river.

We learn his wife his a druggie or a drinker who has given up on everything - a bitter,d pressed one here.

Johnny takes his son swimming and runs into an old friend (Alex) who has his own son/boy. We learn that Alex's wife recently died and that John recently moved close to them. We also learn that Johnny might be gay.

Back at home that night - Annette is a wreck - has fucked up dinner leaving that chore to Johnny now. Alex and his son just happen to stroll by just in time to get some chow. THey talk about how Alex is handling the death of his wife

Johnny visit his surly Dad to borrow a book. BUT - out of nowhere they find the corpse of a dog in the shed.

On the way home, Johnny stops by Alex's house. Get high - and - yep - they are both gay.

Johnny eventually goes home and finds the wife in bed - wants to tell her about this dream he has been having.
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So - all of the scenes were really well-written. But they make no sense in terms of a story. It's as if you had a bunch of scenes in your mind from different stories and decided to mash them all in to this one.

My suggestions.

Lose Johnny's kid - not needed. Have Johnny at the pool because he is a community volunteer lifeguard.

At his Dad's house - have Johnny discover the dog - he goes into the house to retrieve the book and out the window he sees the dog hanging from a tree. He goes out to it - examines it just like he did in the shed. He goes back to the bastard father - what happened!???

Father - I hung him. Caught him dry humping BUCK (Note: Buck will be another make dog at the Father's during their visit feet).

Johnny: Why?

Father: I ain't going to have no faggot dog on my ranch.

Keep the romantic scene between JOhhny and Alex

Johnny goes home - wakens a sleeping wife - he wants to take her on a ride - to the river....

TITLE: MESSAGE FROM A HANGING DOG

Or anything else really - right now IMO you do not have a cogent story. You have a collection of very solid scenes.

Nit Issue:

Quoted Text JOHNNY (CONT.) (CONT’D) Hayward and I went swimming.

You have a couple of these double CONT"Ds

Quoted Text INT. BATHROOM EN-SUITE - DAY

Where am I??? A house - a hotel????


Don't like  JOHNNY as the lead character name especially when dealing with scripts that have kids in them as it sounds like a kids name and one can get confused - go with JOHN

Thanks Dave. You’ve definitely got the summary down. I don’t think Annette is using drugs or necessarily drinking all that much, she’s just resigned.

I guess I could strengthen a thematic through line to further link the scenes together. It’s not really supposed to be a conflict between any character being “gay” (and I don’t Bellerive Johnny or Alex are gay, just lonely) but a brief vignette of two people seeking any form of real touch or affection.

The dream Johnny has isn’t actually about wanting to murder his family but rather his regret. I would t want to imply an ending where he is going to follow through. Him telling Annette the at the end is about coming to terms with This.

Thank you so much mice reading this has been really helpful

My pleasure

Hey, I thought this was lovely. Personally I think it's got the perfect first-draft problem of having too much stuff in it. You do a good job visually/narratively of setting up the elements that draw Johnny and Alex (back) together, and I feel like there's resultantly far more dialogue than is necessary to tell the central story here.

I think you could pull way back on discussion of Alex's wife's death -- the important element here seems to me to be the food story and the idea that people don't really know how to give comfort.

I also think you could pull back on the initial meeting in the pool -- I think it might be nice if this essentially played as a failure in the sense that they try connect but don't really manage to, and it's the second chance encounter that really brings them together, enabled especially by Alex seeing this mirror image of his own family with dad and son BBQing without the mom. The latter image is stronger than two fathers with kids at the pool because in the yard, it's a moment when Annette *should* be there but isn't, and maybe that's what Alex really connects to at that point.

Finally, I think you could be generally ruthless in reducing page count here. The early scene with Annette on the couch could be a lot shorter and still have the punch -- the emotional centre there is reassuring the kid and sending him away anyway, so it's easy to leave that scene quickly after that. I also think there are things throughout with Alex and Johnny, especially the way that they often draw attention to the similarities between the two of them and their situations, that could easily be left out and still come through strongly in the story you've designed.

Anyway, really enjoyed reading this one. I think it'd hold a strong pull for the right director if the page count came down a bit. Great work.

Hey heretic

Really appreciate the feedback because my instincts were to actually increase the explanatory dialogue. Really helpful stuff.

Glad you liked the gist of it. I’ll share a carved down version.

If anybody's interested, I've done a new draft pulling from feedback here and on reddit (I tried to cut down on dialogue as much as possible and make the scenes fit together a bit better. Nothign drastic although I appreciate the plot suggestions Eldave)

https://www.dropbox.com/s/wucz7ni2ecm7stn/ARE%20YOU%20LOOKING%20AFTER%20YOURSELF_%20%20%283%29.pdf?dl=0