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critique Criticism much needed
- Thread starter willtryit
- Start date
Well to be honest? It was a difficult read for me because of the all the typos and incorrect script formatting. Too many to count but I guess since you're shooting this yourself and I assume directing it as well, that shouldn't be a problem.
As for the story... First off? I'm not buying Tucker killing the Tesla driver for blocking him. I get that this is a short so you need to get to it quickly, but it just feels like Tucker's a nut-job to me -- which of course, he is but? I feel like a little MORE interaction between him and the Tesla driver needs to happen before he decides to take him out.
Harley on the other hand... Glad Tucker decided to get rid of him since he an obvious racist. But killing Harley doesn't justify Tucker killing the Tesla driver and because he gets away with it in the end? The story doesn't feel that satisfying to me. I walk away from it just thinking there were two nut-jobs out there and there's still one left.
You got Some of the Marine stuff wrong. Trust me, I know. I was in the Navy for 21 years and a lot of it was spent with Marines. He would NOT have gotten what you're calling a "regular military discharge" for what he did -- but? Maybe's lying to Harley. Who knows. There are several kinds of discharges from the Military and a veteran would use the correct terminology.
I'm guessing Harley also has a bit of dementia... LOL.
Finally? I think some of the dialogue is overwritten and there's a bit too much of the "talking heads" syndrome going on without any direction happening during the dialogue which can make for a boring scene.
Good luck with it!
As for the story... First off? I'm not buying Tucker killing the Tesla driver for blocking him. I get that this is a short so you need to get to it quickly, but it just feels like Tucker's a nut-job to me -- which of course, he is but? I feel like a little MORE interaction between him and the Tesla driver needs to happen before he decides to take him out.
Harley on the other hand... Glad Tucker decided to get rid of him since he an obvious racist. But killing Harley doesn't justify Tucker killing the Tesla driver and because he gets away with it in the end? The story doesn't feel that satisfying to me. I walk away from it just thinking there were two nut-jobs out there and there's still one left.
You got Some of the Marine stuff wrong. Trust me, I know. I was in the Navy for 21 years and a lot of it was spent with Marines. He would NOT have gotten what you're calling a "regular military discharge" for what he did -- but? Maybe's lying to Harley. Who knows. There are several kinds of discharges from the Military and a veteran would use the correct terminology.
I'm guessing Harley also has a bit of dementia... LOL.
Finally? I think some of the dialogue is overwritten and there's a bit too much of the "talking heads" syndrome going on without any direction happening during the dialogue which can make for a boring scene.
Good luck with it!
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I'll second what @Unknown Screenwriter said re typos and formatting - it's really a tough read.
I also agree that a bit more interaction with the Tesla driver was needed to make the killing feel even a bit earned.
When Harley comes back with the bobcat and says he can't get dirty because he's got church in the morning, I thought maybe he was going to kill Tucker and wanted him to dig his own grave because he (Tucker) is an ass. Certainly if you were to go that route, I'd cut the racism part and just play it for dark humor. Just a thought....
Beyond that, I think you can trim this to under 10 pages. The back and forth between Tucker and Harley goes on for rather too long, in my opinion.
Good luck!
I also agree that a bit more interaction with the Tesla driver was needed to make the killing feel even a bit earned.
When Harley comes back with the bobcat and says he can't get dirty because he's got church in the morning, I thought maybe he was going to kill Tucker and wanted him to dig his own grave because he (Tucker) is an ass. Certainly if you were to go that route, I'd cut the racism part and just play it for dark humor. Just a thought....
Beyond that, I think you can trim this to under 10 pages. The back and forth between Tucker and Harley goes on for rather too long, in my opinion.
Good luck!
As the others have said, it's a struggle to read.
Unlike @Unknown Screenwriter , I wasn't (initially) bothered by the killing of the Tesla driver as I gave Tucker/you the benefit of the doubt and thought we'd get an explanation later on. But we didn't.
And like @mlesemann , I was pretty sure Harley was going to wallop Tucker into the grave with the bobcat, as some kind of vigilante evangelist payback. But he didn't.
After that, it was a rapid sequence of "huh?" moments - like was Tucker taking the Tesla to the same guy Harley had in mind, and if so, how did he know of him. And why did he kill him? And why bother with the fake flashback talking to Harley if you're going to give us a revised version later ... ?
Overall, it feels more like an excerpt from a psychopath's video diary than an actual story. There's combat veteran PTSD potential there, but it's all wasted.
Unlike @Unknown Screenwriter , I wasn't (initially) bothered by the killing of the Tesla driver as I gave Tucker/you the benefit of the doubt and thought we'd get an explanation later on. But we didn't.
And like @mlesemann , I was pretty sure Harley was going to wallop Tucker into the grave with the bobcat, as some kind of vigilante evangelist payback. But he didn't.
After that, it was a rapid sequence of "huh?" moments - like was Tucker taking the Tesla to the same guy Harley had in mind, and if so, how did he know of him. And why did he kill him? And why bother with the fake flashback talking to Harley if you're going to give us a revised version later ... ?
Overall, it feels more like an excerpt from a psychopath's video diary than an actual story. There's combat veteran PTSD potential there, but it's all wasted.
The Tesla interaction was pretty rushed I agree, I was based on that group of people that hate teslas and Tesla owners. I saw it in the news. They key'em, puncture the tires, etc. I guess I should show that he hates teslas, like a bumper sticker... or something.
on Harley's murder, his death wasn't meant to justify a teslas murder, it was meant to demonstrate how crazy, and hypocritical Tucker is. He doesn't think logically, and he's a liar.
why do you think Harley has dementia?
yeah, i know now the flashbacks are tough to decipher. The last sequence of flashbacks is what really happened, the first flashbacks are a lie. that was to show how much of a loon tucker is.
those are a lot of unanswered questions... ill get on it.
How can i do flashbacks better lol?
I got that, but a flashback is something "internal" to the person having it, and in such a short work it doesn't make sense to create a whole false flashback sequence when neither the false one nor the real version has any particular relevance to Tucker's conversation with Harley.
If it does have some relevance, you haven't shown it (for a moment, I thought we were going to find out that the "bumper" guy was driving the Tesla, but no ... ) There's nothing in the script to explain why Tucker would bother lying about what happened, and by the time we find out "the truth" we already know that he doesn't need any excuse to kill random strangers - so it makes no difference whether that guy back then bumped into Tucker or his girlfriend, or didn't bump into either of them at all.
Remember that a flashback is a memory, personal to the person having it. We're not that person, so for us it's a scene like any other and needs to be scripted as such. How exactly you make the transition from "now" to "back then" is probably a creative choice best left to the director as preparations are being made for filming.
It might be worth your while watching something like Memento to get some idea of how one person's memories can be distorted, and how a memory of the same event can be shown to change over time.
Because in the middle of Tucker digging the hole, Harley asks him outright why he's digging a hole. The exchange didn't really come off like Harley was joking with him -- at least not to me.
If you want to present Tucker hating Teslas and Tesla drivers? It might be best to simply have him portray that with his dialogue in the beginning. He's obviously a psycho so this could actually be a fun way to get that across.
One last thing... It occurred to me reading it the other day that the script says they are out in the middle of nowhere pretty much but then Harley says something about the his GUY being only two blocks away. You're giving me two different visuals here. One that's in the middle of nowhere and another that seems to be in probably some small town. It's not unusual to see fairly large wrecking yards in the middle of nowhere so if it were me? I'd change that dialogue to reflect them being out in the boonies. Just come up with some kind of landmark that would enable Tucker to find his way to the guy with the Tesla. Maybe some kind of wrecked car or truck at some corner on some dirt road that Harley points to.
And? If you can better establish early on that Tucker is a psycho? Then his flashbacks do not have to be memories. We'll get that he's just a fragmented thinker because he's a pyscho and maybe he's just remembering something OR maybe he's daydreaming something OR maybe he's just wishful thinking.
Really depends on how well you can bring it all together.
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Advice copy pasted from other post, because same advice.
Just a quick word of very general advice. If your script has a lot of technical errors you can fix it very quickly and easily, and in fact, you can just do this for all your scripts or writing going forward.
Get a ChatGPT account, it's 20 bucks a month. You can use the free account if you're willing to doublecheck the work.
Now copy paste your script into the chat window of ChatGPT. and add " ---- please fix all spelling and format errors in the preceeding script, studio standard script formatting please"
Then it will just instantly fix everything in 10 seconds, and you'll never have to worry about format and polish as obstacles to success again.
GPT 4, the 20 dollar paid version is superior in most ways, but the free one will definitely at least fix all spelling and punctuation errors.
Hope this is helpful.
------ extra note in your case, I tried to just paste your script into the paid version to fix it for you, so you didn't have to pay the 20 bucks to fix one script, but it refused to fix it, because it contained too much racist language. You could likely get around this by just changing a few words, using the above process, and then changing the words back. I didn't want to spend that much time on it, but you can easily do it yourself for free in a half hour, and you'll probably get better feedback, minus the basic errors people are mentioning.
Just a quick word of very general advice. If your script has a lot of technical errors you can fix it very quickly and easily, and in fact, you can just do this for all your scripts or writing going forward.
Get a ChatGPT account, it's 20 bucks a month. You can use the free account if you're willing to doublecheck the work.
Now copy paste your script into the chat window of ChatGPT. and add " ---- please fix all spelling and format errors in the preceeding script, studio standard script formatting please"
Then it will just instantly fix everything in 10 seconds, and you'll never have to worry about format and polish as obstacles to success again.
GPT 4, the 20 dollar paid version is superior in most ways, but the free one will definitely at least fix all spelling and punctuation errors.
Hope this is helpful.
------ extra note in your case, I tried to just paste your script into the paid version to fix it for you, so you didn't have to pay the 20 bucks to fix one script, but it refused to fix it, because it contained too much racist language. You could likely get around this by just changing a few words, using the above process, and then changing the words back. I didn't want to spend that much time on it, but you can easily do it yourself for free in a half hour, and you'll probably get better feedback, minus the basic errors people are mentioning.
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Do you mean The Usual Suspects ?
In any case, the story as written portrays Tucker as a brutal, cold-blooded murderer from the outset, so we have no reason to care whether he's a liar or not. I'd have assumed he was untrustworthy in every respect, so (again) that makes it pointless to have two flashbacks with only minor differences between.