HELL FOLLOWED WITH HIM by Ian Arroway

arroway

arroway

Well-known member
Logline: In the wild old west, a sheriff apprehends a known bandit who swears that if he's not released, something will come and kill every last soul in town by dawn.

I found out about this contest on the 28th. I like how the script came out, I just wish I had more time to develop it...

good luck everyone!
 
Very ambitious work for such a short amount of time to write it in if you only found out about the contest two days before scripts were due. Nice job!

It's a well paced read and the keen visual writing helped sell it to me. Some descriptive moments though get a bit too flowery such as, "the sun sinks toward it's mountain grave," but over all it works more than it doesn't.

It's also probably due to a lack of adequate time to rewrite but the structural use of "continues" from page to page is inconsistent. Quite frankly, it's distracting and unneccesary to use those anymore, and if you wrote it in Final Draft you can turn this feature off.

Lastly, in the great tradition of dark heroes in iconic westerns such as the movies Clint Eastwood made famous, I humbly offer that you totally eliminate about 90% of Winslow's dialogue. Particulary all of what he has to say up to when he is incarcerated. I offer this suggestion simply because what he says feels out of step with both his demeanor and the story's overall tone.

I prefer to remain enveloped in Winslow's aura of mystery and I feel if you were to go back and consider it you'd see it has much more dread built up with the story when we have no idea of the motivation behind his actions.

In other words, what Winslow does throughout already sells the character to us sufficiently at the start, and all his dialogue does for him up until the poker game is serve to make what he says somewhat expositional at best and melodramatic at worst. His words don't carry either the weight or the realization of the severity of his actions to be realistic enough to me anyway. All things being equal that is. ;)

All the best and please keep up the stellar work ethic!
 
Good script! I really enjoyed the tale.
My only gripe would be the ending. I'm not sure if I liked the way that Winslow went out. Just a minor gripe though.

Nice pacing as well. The time just flew by.

Mike
 
I like a good western tale and I was happy to go along for Winslow's ride.
You kept the action moving with short crisp descriptions.

The end where he cuts his throat seemed out of character for me, because I saw him as more of a bad ass type, who wouldn't go down without a fight.
I wouldn't mind him cutting his own throat, I like the idea actually, but in that case I thought it would work better if earlier in the script he came off more like a weasley coward type.

But overall I enjoyed this tale, I liked that you mixed two genres, western and horror. Good job.
 
I read the throat cutting as a final f-you to the creature. Winslow says "He wants me." and then takes that opportunity away from the creature. I kind of liked it.

My critique would be that your title gives away too much. When he woke up in the cell I knew that the town was in trouble. Also the use of "hell followed with him" as the last line of dialog sounds a little contrived and not very true to character.

Good script. I love westerns and glad to see a couple appear in this fest.
 
In hindsight after reading your post krestofre, I may have to re-read, I think I like your take as an f-you to the creature.
 
Ian,
As much as I enjoyed the pacing of this story, I am curious if you might want to consider playing with the structure. This is a very basic story, a beast pursues a man to a small town. The only problem is that for the first six pages we have no idea what is chasing him. He kills two horses, four men, and almost dies of dehydration on this journey. Then he spends the rest of the film in a jail cell explaining to people what happens. Maybe you could consider using flashbacks or a non linear structure to tell this story. Or you could even start with the Wilson finding the black box in the small town, some kind of mystery to keep us wondering what is going on. You play with supernatural a lot in this and I feel that in order for it to work it needs to be introduced in the beginning of the script. Things need to be a little off from page one.

Also I think you could cut a page or two of Wilson aimlessly making his way through the desert. Keep in mind the one page = one minute rule of filmmaking. Right now there is six minutes of a man walking across the desert, that's more than half of your running time. Just a suggestion, maybe try and start the action quicker.

I don't know how I feel about Conrad getting shot and then pistol whipped. Shooting him, especially in those times, seems like it would probably just kill him. Maybe just the pistol whip.

I don't have too big a problem with the ending except that it almost feels anticlimactic. This man has run for days, yet all he has to do is kill himself? Why does he care about this people and this town enough to slit his own throat? I think if you gave Wilson a reason to slit his own throat then I would buy it a little more. Otherwise it just seems like a bada$$ instantly reforming to help the people who want to hang him. Maybe he should use the distraction of the beast to try and escape? Keep things going? Anyway just a suggestion.

Otherwise I thought it was well written and enjoyable.
 
Interesting combination of western and the supernatural.

But yeah, it is odd that he's suddenly so concerned about the life of the townspeople after the body count he's already racked up just in the time we've seen him, let alone the rest of the time he's been on the run. It seems more likely to me that he's just using the potential loss of life as leverage against the sheriff in order to save his own skin.

The idea of Wilson killing himself to deprive the creature of the pleasure works on a certain level, but it does seem a bit too easy. If this is some sort of supernatural creature, who's to say it couldn't still have some influence on him after death?
 
Great script with powerful visuals and two nice action set pieces (four if you count the horse death scenes).

I'd love to see this made into a short film.
 
Ian I liked your idea and overall story. Some of the components as he goes through the desert were great. I could feel exactly what he was.

There are some faux pars so to speak and I hope you dont mind that I have pointed some out. Some are just points for consideration. These are the main ones I saw, but there were a few more.

Notes - Winslow has no description, he could be dressed in a dress for all we know. Thats being silly of course, but the character descriptions overall need some more.

Instead of picking up the gold he dropped - serves no purpose. He steps over the gold... I really wanted to point that one out because rules were 5-10 pages and you went over which essentially disqualifies you. But this could easily be made to fit.

He grins for no visible reason. - He grins.

He doesnt even notice the town, looming high on the horizon. - He doesnt even notice the town that looms high on the horizon. Unless you actually meant Winslow is looming high on the horizon.

Stops to take a long drink from a horse trough before continuing on. - Stops to take a long drink from a horse trough before he continues on.

No sooner does Winslow undo the tether, and throw his leg
over the saddle then Sherzer steps up and casually pistol
whips him right off. Grammer is a bit weird here.

consciousness slipping away - when you use the ing form here you are using it as a continuous form. The action happens now so it should not be continuous - simply - His consciousness slips away. Theres a few examples of this. Another one is "Winslow stares through the bars at Sherzer, his eyes pleading." His eyes plead.

Again I enjoyed reading it. Would love to see some polish on it. And I agree totally with btangoman.
 
It's also probably due to a lack of adequate time to rewrite but the structural use of "continues" from page to page is inconsistent. Quite frankly, it's distracting and unneccesary to use those anymore, and if you wrote it in Final Draft you can turn this feature off.
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yeah, they're also the reason my script went over the page limit. i don't know what i pressed to make them appear, or if it happened in the pdf conversion, but originally they weren't there and i didn't notice them until it was too late...

Lastly, in the great tradition of dark heroes in iconic westerns such as the movies Clint Eastwood made famous, I humbly offer that you totally eliminate about 90% of Winslow's dialogue.
Click to expand...

good advice. i agree.

Maybe you could consider using flashbacks or a non linear structure to tell this story.
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also good advice.

I don't know how I feel about Conrad getting shot and then pistol whipped. Shooting him, especially in those times, seems like it would probably just kill him. Maybe just the pistol whip.
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very true.


Notes - Winslow has no description, he could be dressed in a dress for all we know. Thats being silly of course, but the character descriptions overall need some more.
Click to expand...

indeed.




thanks for reading everyone! i appreciate it. i hope there's more script contests in the near future.
 
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