Sex, War, and Rock n'...er, Nevermind
A very quick and enjoyable read. I thought the basic premise and the over-all execution were solid, but I had a couple problems with the characters.
My experience with the military (friends and family enlisted) made it hard to suspend disbelief with regards to Rock's character. I can believe that the Army would go to ridiculous lengths to protect their butts--but I couldn't believe that someone who has made it up through officer ranks would not have more concern at the outset over the possible repercussions of doing a porn flick. The Army is fairly strict about image--especially when it comes to officers. The General recently demoted for sexual conduct would have had the conduct excused--except that there was publicity. "Thou shalt not create bad PR" is the eleventh commandment for the military, so I had trouble with suspending disbelief. I think that problem would have been easily solved for me, if Rock had been more hesitant and had had some more compelling reason, other than being a fan of porn, to participate. I also found it unbelievable that he would find out about the porn shoot and not do something immediately. Sure, he might like porn, but his expectation would have to be that he was going to get canned over this. If he knew about it in some way other than being in the balcony--which means he knows they are using his material in the flick--then I could more easily buy that he would let it slide. If he thinks it's a side gig that would be more believable to me.
I also had trouble with Dana's character. She was hard for me to like. Her inconsistencies made her seem very manipulative. One moment she's sobbing the next she's talking like a Marine. If the boo-hooing is genuine, then the harder 'I will rip off your head and shit in the hole' stuff seems out of place. If the latter is the real Dana then the crying jags seem purely manipulative (and they may be, given she tries to manipulate with sex and hiring an actor to play an INS agent) but that sort of manipulation does nothing to make me sympathetic to her. The lack of sympathy would be okay, if she was supposed to be an antagonist, but you seemed to want us to root for Jack to keep his relationship with her solid and I found myself wondering if he wouldn't be better off dumping her. Her manipulations are even less appealing given how easily she goes from "I will kill to prevent this:" to "I'm okay with this". The rapid transition there was both unbelievable and made her former manipulations seem like tantrums, rather than motivated by deeply held concerns.
Jack, too, seemed to drop supposed concerns without much of a fight and to flip his motives around a hundred and eighty degrees. I was left wondering what the initial fuss over makinng porn was about, when suddenly everyone was okay with it.
Julianna's character seemed somewhat inconsistent as well. Her statement that she is only charging Walter because she wants to keep her heart from being broken, if her mother doesn't approve of him, doesn't seem enough to justify her behavior there. And while I realize that people are inconsistent, it was hard to buy that she would want Walter to be legit when she wasn't. It seemed more likely that she was playing him. I'm not sure I can put my finger on why, but even her sceens with Dana didn't give enough of a sense that her desire for a 'normal' life were all-consuming and genuine. And she didn't come off as someone smart--who spoke seven languages etc. To give her that background it seems you have to work harder to explain the inconsistency with wanting Walter to be legit. If she is motivated by a desire to keep her future children free of the taint of the biz that would, for instance, make more sense than being motivated by her mother's opinion of Walter. (An opinion which could easily be manipulated, if the mother doesn't even know Julianne is a prostitute.) And Julianne is a woman who will do pretty much anything for money, so I needed more explanation of why she would want Walter to give up a major source of cash flow.
I thought Walter was the most consitent character and thought it plausible that he would assert himself and his idenity as a porn king at the end--but I would have liked to have seen him a little more torn over the repercussions for Jack. They are supposedly friends and his actions substantially threaten Jack.
Those criticisms aside, I did find the piece enjoyable, The comedic elements are there. I think you could hieghten the drama a bit--have Jack more conflicted and in more of a pickle (no pun intended--well, maybe a little). Jack seems to get into the spirit of things in the end and that tansition loses some of the drama. If he stays terrified of being caught (I don't think, for instance, that he should tell Dana--he should be worried about her catching him) that adds more of an element of drama to the comedy and gives the audience the oppertunity to wonder how Jack is going to get oiut of this one.
I thought both Jack and Rock's potential for comedy would have been served by more tension about what the Army is going to think, if they find out.
Nice job over-all, however, and good luck. This has the makings of a hilarous farce.
Other Reviews by Kristy Sumner
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I don't normally comment on grammar, spelling, or punctuation, as there will be a million other reviewers willing to detail those with page and line numbers, but you have such a consistent problem with using "'s" when you should be using just "s" that you need to pay close attention to that error throughout the script.
As for the weightier points of this review: I don't feel...
I don't normally comment on grammar, spelling, or punctuation, as there will be a million other reviewers willing to detail those with page and line numbers, but you have such a consistent problem with using "'s" when you should be using just "s" that you need to pay close attention to that error throughout the script.
As for the weightier points of this review: I don't feel that this particular story has made it onto the screen yet.
By that I mean that the story of what happened with Jon and Sarah, or it's effect on Aiden aren't on the screen.
In the case of the first interaction, the screenplay leaps over the actual event, and doesn't even give the audience a clear picture of what actually happened. Sarah jumps up and leaves, but Jon only has his shirt off, so it's not clear that she and Jon had sex. In the case of the second event, we never get a confrontation between Jon and Aiden, or even much of one between Sarah and Aiden. Aiden storms out over the coat and then we are told in an epilogue that Sarah and Aiden made up and are happily married. The audience doesn't get to see any of the meaningful interactions within the story. We don't get to see Sarah and Aiden make up or see Aiden give Jon the boot. We don't get to see how he feels about doing either.
Perhaps that is because the characters are not yet fully formed.
Sarah is inconsistent in the first few scenes. At first, she comes off like the good girl being dragged along to the party then suddenly she is more worried about her missing phone than she is about having slept with a random stranger. There's no discussion with her best friend, or her parents, about her sleeping with Jon. The audience has no idea how she feels about having done that--or even if she remembers having done it.
The reactions of the parents to what was going on seemed odd as well. One minute they are talking to Aiden and Sarah as if they are young children and the next they are giving them encouraging tips about sex. (18 is way too old for a parent to be explaining sex for the first time, btw.) But then, none of these characters seemed to be the ages their descriptions said. 18 year olds are legally adults in the US and few parents would try to ground a "child" that age. Aiden seems much younger than 20-something. He and Jon seem more like High School, or even Junior High, students.
Before this story can be told, you need to get a clearer picture of the characters on the page. The audience needs to know who Sarah and Aiden are, outside of romantic leads. They need to like them and want them to be together. And they either need to hate Jon, or they need to be rooting for him to resolve his relationship with Aiden. It's okay for Veronica to be in the background as a sort of stock friend character, since she isn't part of the actual drama of the piece, but you should try to make her a bit more distinctive as well.
Once you have your characters fleshed out a little more, then you need to bring the drama onto the screen. We need to see more of what happens with Sarah and Jon. I'm not saying you have to show them having sex, but you have to let the audience know that they did and the audience has to see how Sarah felt about it.
In the beginning scenes, you portray Sarah as someone who's never had a boyfriend and who is cautious about engaging in drinking etc. Did Jon take advantage of her, while she was drunk? (This would certainly make him a less sympathetic character and more of a villain.) Was Sarah a virgin before she slept with him? The audience needs to have a sense of who Sarah is. If she doesn't do this sort of thing all the time, and has never done it before, why did she do it now? And did Veronica encourage her to do it? Or was Veronica passed out and unable to help? All of these questions need to be answered on screen. Again: you don't have to be graphic, but you do have to let the audience know what the actual situation was.
You also have to let the audience understand why Jon wouldn't have told Aiden that he'd slept with Sarah. It seems likely that he would have told him even before the whole phone incident, unless it was a date rape, and so he is ashamed of it and wants to hide it instead of brag about it. And if he and Sarah just hooked up, then why is Aiden so upset when he finds out? He didn't even know Sarah at this point, so Jon hasn't betrayed him. Aiden's reaction to Jon seems excessive, in that case. He could just be mad about Sarah and Jon trying to hide this from him, but again: the audience doesn't get the answers to these questions, so it's hard to empathize or get drawn into the story. You have a lot of potential for drama in the story you want to tell, but for some reason, you've left it off the page.
By the time the reader is fifty pages into your script, all that has happened on screen is that your characters have come home late from a party and had their parents be mildly annoyed. And Aiden has found Sarah's cell phone and for some reason they both have had pages of angst over getting it back to her. All of the potentially dramatic scenes, Sarah sleeping with Jon, for instance, happen off screen. We are told about them by other characters, and not even in very dramatic ways. (The whole cell phone drama didn't play well, as teens lose them every day and just call and ask the person who has the phone to return it. I didn't understand why Sarah would be afraid to get her phone back.)
The audience doesn't need to see how either Sarah or Aiden got to the party (unless there is more revealed about their respective characters than that they are both reluctant to come--you can reveal that in a few sentences, while they are at the party.
Your dialogue needs work. You do a good job of capturing actual conversations, but right now, it's like a tape-recording. By that I mean that you are not editing those conversations in order to make them dramatic. Just because a character 'would' say something doesn't mean that they 'should' say it on screen. And idle chit-chat is only dramatic when there is a bomb under the table. I would suggest that you look at your dialogue and cut out all sections that do not move the story forward in some way or that do not reveal how a character feels, or what they want. In the case of the latter, however, I would cut out any sentence that actually says, "I feel," or "I want". People rarely make such statements in real life. If they did, marriage counselors would have far less clientele. Most of the time, people only make these sorts of declarations when they are lying. Otherwise, they generally try to hide what they feel.
None of the characters seem to learn much or be affected by the dramatic events that connect them and my impression is that the reason they aren't is because of what I have already stated: all of the drama happens off screen. We need it brought onto the screen. The pregnancy gets treated as a prop device, when it should be central to the action of the screenplay. If the parents are going to be in the piece at all (and right now I don't think they need to be, they have nothing to do with the action) then we need to see their reactions as well. We need to see Veronica's reaction--how her relationship with Sarah is impacted. And how Jon's is.
Jon is the father of Sarah's baby, but he just gets neatly erased, even though reality is that he will be in the baby's life forever, either as an active participant, or as an absent father. And how does Aiden feel about the baby? How does he feel about Sarah? We are told that he forgave her, but how has that reality impacted their relationship? Until these and other dilemmas make it to the page, your story hasn't been told yet.
I do think you have a story here waiting to be told. But you have kept it off screen for some reason. You haven't let the guts of it spill out onto the page. Once you are ready to get the raw emotion that is currently off-screen onto the page, I think you have a potentially gripping story here. But you have to bring the drama on screen before the audience can get into the story.
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You really drew me in to the world of the script with your opening scenes and the dialogue in those scenes was great. I thought your characters were interesting and I was intrigued by the the story. I think you have a nice solid piece of work here.
I found a few places where the dialogue seemed off for the period. "Like" would not have been a synonym for "as if" during...
You really drew me in to the world of the script with your opening scenes and the dialogue in those scenes was great. I thought your characters were interesting and I was intrigued by the the story. I think you have a nice solid piece of work here.
I found a few places where the dialogue seemed off for the period. "Like" would not have been a synonym for "as if" during that era, for instance. And it is unlikely that young women would be addressed by their first names, when they had just met. (Even husbands and wives tended to refer to each other as "Mr. Smith" and "Mrs. Smith" back then and it was a sign of disrespect or lack of breeding to use first names too quickly). But other than a few minor quibbles such as those the dialogue rang true. I do question whether May would have mentioned (at least so explicitly) the sexual overtones she witnessed between Alice and her father. Such things were not mentioned back then. And they were so beyond belief (to most people's way of thinking) that even Freud, when faced with numerous patients claiming to have been abused by their fathers, came up with the Electra Complex, rather than accepting that such abuse could have happened. So it would ring more true to the period if May hesitated to divulge this information and if she hinted at it instead of coming out and saying it.
The other criticisms I have are few, but a couple may be worth considering.
I wanted to see more of the root cause of the reverend's abuse of his daughter and I wanted to be more clear about what the sexual abuse entailed--not for prurient reasons, but because the attack on May would make more sense, if the reverend's sexual abuse of Alice was just an extension of his general brutality. It muddied the waters for me to have May talking about him lusting after Alice, because rape is not a crime of lust, but rather of power. And sexual abuse often has very different roots than rape (most men who abuse children do not think of themselves as rapists, for instance.) So, if he is lusting after his daughter that puts him in a different category than if he is raping her in order to exert power over her. Even if the sexual abuse 'only' entails him doing things like forcing her to allow him to watch her bathe, he is still exerting a kind of force and taking pleasure in the humiliation he imposes, rather than being sexually gratified by the act. If the attack on May is triggered by sexual feelings, rather than rage, then I think you have to show the reverend battling those feelings much earlier in the piece. If he is attracted to Alice, but angry about the attraction he feels, then May could become a surrogate for the release of that rage, when he sees her bathing and is aroused. As it is, the rape came out of left field for me. I gathered from the scene that he was upset with himself for being aroused by a "Mick" and blaming her for the fact, but without some set up, it didn't make sense that he would sexually assault her, rather than just beat her to death.
You might also make it more clear that Alice's desire to be a doctor is feigned and that her true goal is still to marry Simon. During that part of the screenplay, I was wondering if I had missed something and if Alice hadn't really been after Simon after all. Her ruse was too convincing in the script, imo. I realize that the actress will be able to cue the audience into the pathos, but I thought the script needed to do a little more to keep the reader on the right track there. I was starting to root for her to get herself into medical school and forget Simon.
I also was never quite sure what was going on with the tea. At first, I thought that Alice was poisoning her father, but then it seemed at the end that she had been giving him some substance that would make him appear mad. The latter scenario is problematic for me, because that raises the question of how culpable he is. And it also raises the question of how culpable Alice is. I think Alice's intentions need to be a little more clear, as do the effects of whatever she's giving her father.
I was not sure what to make of the ending. I wasn't sure if the title was supposed to be ironic or straight. Sometimes an ambiguous ending can be perfect, but I don't feel that this one is quite there yet. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to be horrified that Alice was marrying Simon, or happy about it. There was nothing in the screenplay that led me to believe that Simon had any romantic feelings for Alice whatsoever and the audience has more or less been rooting for him to get together with May. As the first character we meet (that doesn't immediately die) May has our sympathies and her character keeps those sympathies focused on her right up until her death. And Simon has been an affable fellow, likable enough, (except for his failure to make a decision that ends up costing lives). It's a blow when May dies and they can't be together, and so even though Alice has turned out to be a person who would save May's life, in spite of wanting Simon, it still doesn't feel satisfying to have her end up with Simon--not unless we get some hints along the way that Simon has feelings for her, too. But even then, I think that the best you can have is a bitter sweet ending, where she gets what she wants--but not really, because Simon preferred someone else. I'm not clear on why Simon would marry Alice at all, though. The fact that he has lost May and has let Violet go doesn't seem like reason enough to marry a woman he doesn't love.
That said, I think this is one of the better scripts I've read here on Triggerstreet and that it is a movie that I would go to see. You are a talented writer and hopefully your wounds (as per your bio) will be fewer and further between with each passing day!
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I've been a fan of Westerns ever since I used to watch them with my dad when I was a kid, so this was an enjoyable read. I really liked the premise: a marshal prevents a lynching, only to have the men he saved murder his family, after they escape justice. I thought that was a nice twist on the standard motifs on the genre.
Before I get into any deeper analysis, I did find...
I've been a fan of Westerns ever since I used to watch them with my dad when I was a kid, so this was an enjoyable read. I really liked the premise: a marshal prevents a lynching, only to have the men he saved murder his family, after they escape justice. I thought that was a nice twist on the standard motifs on the genre.
Before I get into any deeper analysis, I did find some minor issues:
Pg.12 Katharine says "trails" when I think she should be saying "trials."
Pg. 20 You say that the bad guys are heading east to California. If the bad guys are anywhere in the US, they can only be heading west, or south into California.
Pg. 22 you describe a Colt and a Smith & Wesson as rifles. These companies didn't make rifles back then. Henry and Winchester were the most common rifles, along with Browning. (Picky, I know, but Western fans are going to jump on it.)
Pg. 24 you have Joy where the speaker should be Kathrine, I believe.
Pg. 52 Another picky one: Levi-Strauss didn't start making jeans until almost the 1920s and they only started manufacturing denim overalls in the 1870s--so most cowboys wore regular trousers during this period. There were no blue jeans before then.
Pg. 92 I was confused by the spurs jangling, because Walt had just told the cowboys to take their boots off.
Pg. 93-94 There are at least 8 shots fired before Walt reloads. Six shooters were around, but not common during this time, however, even if Walt had one, he's fired off too many bullets from a single gun. (But this probably isn't a big deal, as one of my dad's and my favorite pass times was to count the number of bullets fired before a reload in some pretty famous Westerns.)
Pg. 98 The description of Walt being so covered in mud etc. that he is unrecognizable should come before the "Do I know you line" otherwise the audience may be wondering how these guys could fail to recognize someone they'd "killed" earlier.
Enough picky stuff.
I think this script has huge potential, but some of it isn't yet realized. I think it would help if the audience got to see more of Walt's inner struggle. Does he intend to be a vigilante when he sets out to get the men who killed his family, or does he initially mean to bring them in for trial? Has he decided one way or the other? And is he torn along the way? I wasn't sure. When you have Walt strung up later, I wanted to know how that impacted his decision to become a vigilante. I think you are wise to steer away from him doing some sort of monologue on the subject, but I also think you need to find a way to show how his experiences impact his resolve. You might be able to get away with a little pseudo-monologue if you have Walt have a 'conversation' with Sarah. Since she can't respond, he can be debating himself and making up responses for her ("Oh, so you think...")to demonstrate the diametrically opposed positions that compromise his inner struggle. I don't know. I just felt that I needed to see more of the evolution and more of how he felt about his final decision. He throws away his badge, but I wasn't sure if that was the act of a man who was discarding law in favor of vigilantism, or if he was disgusted with himself for not holding on to his ideals, or if he was just plain tired and riding off into the sunset with Sarah.
I think that you can pair down a lot of the interaction with Walt's family at the beginning, since they aren't going to factor into the rest of the story (not as characters, anyway). We can meet them in much briefer vignettes.
I was confused about why we got introduced to the idea that Walt had taught Joy to shoot and then didn't see the attack, or hear why she hadn't tried to defend herself, or had failed when she attempted it. Walt's interaction with Henry had the same problem for me: they disagree about whether the women should be informed about what's going on, but the audience doesn't get to see how either view held up (or fell apart) when the women were killed. Henry has told them what's going on and that didn't save them, but we don't see enough 'blissful ignorance' before the deaths to get a sense of which view was better. (Or if they both fell apart when reality hit.) But the bottom line on all the family interaction scenes is that I feel that they need to show us something about Walt's dilemma, or they need to be cut. If all we need to know is that he loves his wife and daughter, we can get that message in much less space.
I think you need to have the confrontation with Pa Hanlin before Quint dies. Having much more than a brief denouement after Quint's death derails the piece a bit and takes the focus off the central conflict.
The main story here is about Walt and his evolution from upholder of the law to vigilante, and I think you will have a tighter story if you trim off parts that don't relate directly to this core. I think the central tensions set up by the premise relate to the heart of Westerns in general and that this film could be an effective commentary on the genre as a whole. Westerns all have the inevitable tension between rule of law and vigilante justice. There's also the tension between the moral individual standing alone against social injustice and the potential for anarchy. Your premise really cuts to the heart of all that makes a Western a Western. I don't think you have to resolve the questions, but I do think they have to be more visible throughout.
Good luck! I'd love to see this film someday.
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