Cosmic Pinball

[arroway]

Twin brothers...

A busted pinball machine...

And the kind of secret that should never be revealed...

[alex whitmer]

This will be a great read!

[Russell Moore]

Hey Ian, this sounds intriguing to me. I'm looking forward to reading it.

[arroway]

Hey Ian, this sounds intriguing to me. I'm looking forward to reading it.

I just hope it's more "Hard R" than "NC-17"...

:engel017:

[Judgement]

A better read would be twin sister ...
busted pinball machine and some whip cream

[arroway]

you're absolutely right.

...just not for THIS contest.

[Noel Evans]

Loved it Ian. Some great set ups in there. I think xxxxxxxxxxxx maybe a little too much, but hey, the rest is gold.

[arroway]

gak!

can you edit out what specifically you think is "too much"?

i want it to remain a shock...


(and thank you for the kind words)

[Noel Evans]

Done

[arroway]

thanks!

:beer:

[Captain Pierce]

(Note to self, I really need to not read Alex's review before posting my own. :) )

The first thing I'll say is that the last element of Jason's confession feels completely unnecessary and just thrown in for shock value. At that point, I think he's already said enough without going into that kind of graphic detail.

Other than that, I think it flows pretty nicely. You pretty much know from the title and the opening that sooner or later we're going to be seeing planets as pinballs; what's going to happen does become pretty obvious during the news woman's big speech, but I'm not sure there's any way to avoid that, or even that you'd want to.

It definitely would have been nice to see what the Latin meant, even if it was just a line from "Pinball Wizard." :D

[nitramlehcar]

You were hard on me, Ian...but then you went and pee'd in the butt, and that's pretty damned funny! Great stuff!

I apologize in advance for how this sounds to anyone who has not yet read Cosmic Pinball!

[Russell Moore]

I thought this was paced well and found it entertaining.

I liked a lot of the twins dialogue, but there was a little too much info from the newswoman, this needs to be condensed somewhat.

I wasn't really surprised with the outcome, the pinball machine being connected to the asteroids. But I was at the confession, however I wasn't offended. I imagine the one particular line will be polarizing.
Overall I thought it was a fun read.

[krestofre]

I was with the script until the confession. That felt like it was added to be Tarantino-esq or something and didn't really feel like part of the same script. I think being true to your story would have made this a stronger piece instead of going for shock value.

[ghalied]

I loved this. The pacing and dramatic points just came through at all the right times (especially the butt pee line). The two things I thought needed work was the intro (but Alex covered that) and also the initial reaction to the news story was all wrong for me. Jason's reaction is too strong, it doesn't seem logical for me at that point -- a "wait-a-minute-could-it-be-the-pinball-machine?" reaction might be better.

Anyway, loved. Its definitely been the highlight of the scripts I've read so far. I wasn't going to do any comments till my second run through of each of them but just I had to comment on yours.

[mjjason]

The confession at the end changed the tone. The brothers had an easy banter between them early on but the confession was different. I liked it and found it funny but it didn't feel like it was connected to the story in any way. It just came out of left field.

I echo the comments about the pinball being predictable. Looking back on it it felt like your main goal was the confession as opposed to the pinball game/destruction of the world. The pinball game was used to set-up the confession which I don't think was strong enough to make for a truly great story. It was funny in a sick sort of way but not enough for a short.

Overall I did enjoy reading it. I like the brothers and the dialog between them was great but the story needed another angle there to make it great.

[MiataFilmSomething]

Very neat concept, and a great idea that could be expanded. There's opportunity for a lot of good fantasy elements in here.

I'm not too keen on the dialog at the end either, it's just a little confusing. I didn't know if the turn was supposed to be funny, quirky, sincere, etc.

But certainly an entertaining read!

[preston]

thank you for writing and sharing your script! the technical stuff has been covered.... no need for me to go there. i'm not even close to knowing how to write a properly formatted script anyway...

forget about why for a minute, and let's just say the world is going to end very, very soon. the brothers are obviously close, inseparable at times. the brother with a dirty secret might fess up, ask for forgiveness, but would he want to hurt his twin with sordid details? i doubt it. he might not even tell the secret at all, let alone in such a way as to cause even more hurt.

as for the pinball machine being some sort of jumanji-type game that spells the end of our galaxy... ? it is a SCI-FI script-fest, i'll give you that, but i would have rather seen the world coming to an end some other way, and for the game to just be a symbolic reflection of what was about to take place.

good work.

preston

[jamiejay]

Pretty much everything I have to say has been said I think. This feels like Jumanji meets Clerks to me... which is definitely a unique and interesting mix. I like the twins. Some good humor there. I agree, however, that the pee line was distracting and unnecessary. Both the news woman monologue and the confession at the end could be condensed.

[pauly_the_hitman]

You had up until the confession and then out the window for me. I was waiting for the pinball end of the world payoff and then you go pull something like this. Would have been a better use of time to have him just kick his brother in the balls and while on the ground tell him he actually peed in her ass. I don't know. I still kind of liked it for some reason anyway.

[Horncastle]

You had a nice idea and you kept me reading, so that's the main thing. You did have quite a lot of format/language problems but these have been covered by others already. The only thing I would add is that the confession at the end sounded to me as though Jason was telling a tall story to get Mason's attention away from the pinball machine. I thought the "pee in the butt" bit was to get Mason so mad that the world would be saved. So no, it didn't sound like a twin brother's genuine confession.
Jason

[thartley]

You had a really great story and then you threw it away, in my opinion with the ending. Nothing a slight re-write can't fix, though.