I...Win

I just thought of the other movie that this reminded me of, 'Septien', in regards to the brothers taking on their parents personalities (there's an element of this in Bad Boy Bubby too, if it's piqued your interest then definitely get it. It is a harrowing experience, you many feel traumatised for days afterwards but it is worth it. Consider watching it with headphones at least once, it was recorded with binaural sound with microphones hidden in the protagonist's hair so you hear what he hears, pulls you right into his disturbing world). Septien is a good attempt at a movie but tries just a little too hard to be indie-weird but as a filmmaker there is certainly some value to be found in it and some of the performances are interesting. Short at just over 70 min.
 
This was probably the one i wanted to read most, lets see...

minor issue but your page height seems high - touches the top of each page. Just saying

p1 - interesting idea, transference of pain
Nick - Nathan - i can't totally understand where you are coming from with the names, both starting with the same letter, but for some reason i am finding it more difficult to follow
Mother - Father thing, nice idea, which child relates to which etc
Nick:Mae - wasn't sure about this initial interchange, suspicion yes, but outright in your face?

Great work.

Simple, effective, lovely use of transference and the issues with affecting another.

Possibly the mother;father angle was over played and lost a little meaning. Not sure why he has to explain to his mother, yes he can be like her, more attached to her, but anymore?

well done.
 
Hi Russel,

I read your work for Betrayal fest - very nice work. Never commented there, so dont' want to miss the opportunity here.

This one is very interesting too. And well done at that.
I really liked how you played the twin thing - one gets sore, the other feels brother's pain. A myth, huh, but you can easily use it in the movies - very believable. And maybe it's believable because of the way it's written - so nice job.
Mae's reaction to Nick at first was off for me. I expect her to reject him but do it nicer sort of. Maybe, crush him with words, say something specific but not just "you disgust me" right from the start. I'd like it more if she really angered him, not just drove away. --up to you, of course.
I don't care for the little scene on p2 where Nick slaps himself and looks at the picture of his father. Kind of couldn't understand very well what it was for. Returned to it at the end and still don't know.
I like the fact that Mae is older - adds some texture to the story.
You could let them leave perhaps - that's another way to end it - either way is a personal preference.
Overall, I liked this a lot. Well played dramatic piece.
 
As far as technical levels go, The space margins on top of the pages are off, so the entire script reads crammed. A little white space never hurt anyone. The next thing I noticed about the piece is there are a lot of things that I can't 'visually' see'. Such as 'cold'. How do I see cold? "Sparse" works just fine. Lack of punctuation in places was also off-putting to me.

"Nick reaches down and grabs his crotch" should be an action, not a wrylie.

For some reason I was having flashbacks in my mind to David Cronenberg's "Dead Ringers' Wonder why...:)

I liked it less than others, and I guess I missed the game, but it was am okay character study.
 
I liked this one a lot. Creepy. yeah, it's been done before, but the competition angle really works well in this case.

I had a bit of a problem with the names Nick and Nathan being so close (twins or not), but I'm a left-handed dyslectic so what do I know?

I liked that you didn't lay everything out and left the reader/viewer to figure some of the characters' motivations and problems for themselves.

I have to think about the ending. I came to the assumption that when Nick cuts himself, he can't feel the pain but Nathan does and vice versa apropos the flogging scene. If this was the case, when Nick is raping Mae, wouldn't Nathan feel the sex?

You have Nathan castrating himself, Nick feeling it, then Nathan having a heart attack and Nick dies because of it. It might be more fun, and more in the spirit of the "game" if Nathan castrates himself and survives (it's possible, ask Mr. Bobbit) and leaves Nick with the awful knowledge that Nathan will always feel his (Nick's) sex while he'll never feel sex again due to Nathan's actions. just a thought.

Well written, spooky and entertaining.

It looks like you're formatting is off in Screenwriter (top and bottom margins).
 
I appreciate everybody for taking the time to read and give feedback. I want to address some points brought up in the critiques.

I'm just focusing on getting the other scripts read and giving feedback on those first. Thanks again.
 
taylormade said:
You have Nathan castrating himself, Nick feeling it, then Nathan having a heart attack and Nick dies because of it. It might be more fun, and more in the spirit of the "game" if Nathan castrates himself and survives (it's possible, ask Mr. Bobbit) and leaves Nick with the awful knowledge that Nathan will always feel his (Nick's) sex while he'll never feel sex again due to Nathan's actions. just a thought.
Click to expand...

It may or may not be a fudge of the internal logic to have one only get the pain and not the damage but I like it. That sets up Nathan as the classic tragic hero.
 
I'm going to try and cover some of the points from the feedback.

First I gotta fix my page format.

Nick and Nathan...I struggled with the names, knowing that it's wise to try and keep the different to avoid confusion. It's fairly common for people to name their twins names that begin with the same letter, so I'd hoped that Nick and Nathan would be different enough to avoid confusion, it appears I should've went in another direction. I thought about following the same premise, but having one's nickname a different letter e.g. Robert and Richard would be Robert and Dick (okay maybe not Dick, that may be a little too much foreshadowing) but something like that.

I wanted to leave a lot of things open to reader interpretation...i.e. the hand over the face reflected in the mirror....does he see his brother looking back at him? Does he see himself and hates what he sees? Something else? You decide.

I questioned the F bomb, but left it in...I thought it was appropriate dialogue and knowing what else was going to transpire in the script, I figured the F bomb would probably be fairly inoffensive in comparison.

Mae's age?

Mae and Nick's confrontation. I hoped to show that Nathan and Mae had conversations about Nick and the brother's relationship. She was stern and would none of his games. How does Nick take this brush off? Does it remind him of his Mother? Make him feel like less of a man? Not more of a screw up than Nathan?

In my mind when writing this...The brother's shared the same identical pain transference, but Nick was the more cruel brother and was willing to cause himself pain just to hurt his brother. While Nathan was never able to really pull the trigger and do what it took to hurt his brother. Was he just afraid of the pain? Did he not want to hurt his brother? even though his brother hurt him?

Hmm.. I was afraid the end might cause confusion, I struggled figuring out how best to write some the action throughout. Nathan dies from blood loss. Nick dies from a heart attack, caused by a weak heart(I tried to foreshadow with the pills/end up like that Father conversation) and the pain he felt when Nathan cuts off his penis.

Nathan doesn't feel like he "wins" in the end.



Big thank you to everyone that read and took the time to give me feedback. It all helps, even if it didn't connect with you, I learn from that as well.
I sincerely appreciate it.
 
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This is an interesting idea and I appreciate that you thought enough about it to come up with what could also be a somewhat fitting ending. Thanks :beer:
 
Hahaha, this is pretty messed up. I like it! Pretty good take on the genre and a nice short that would be relatively easy to shoot, even without twins. Good job.

Notes:
- I can tell NICK and NATHAN are males, no need to say so. It just takes up space.
- Pretty messed up from the start. :)
- Mae doesn't sound 50, unless she's lived in a convent for the last 40 years.
 
Thanks Chris, I know you tend to wade through some "pretty messed up:Drogar-Love(DBG):" material of your own, so I'm glad you appreciated my take on it.

I tried to make a conscience effort to write the film so that a creative film maker could make this without having to use twins. So I tried to avoid any direct contact between the two, grabbing each other, fighting each other etc.

Hmm...I'll have to revisit Mae's dialogue.


oops...I just noticed two posts up I spelled penis wrong, well that's just embarrassing. It's bad enough I used the word at all, could of went with tool or junk or anything else. :P

Okay that was ADHD.

Thanks for taking the time to read and give me the feedback.
 
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