Surprise!
A frazzled man's secret lives are set to collide when he discovers his wife has invited everyone he knows to his surprise 40th birthday.
Share
Have an account? Sign In Now
Lost your password? Please enter your email address. You will receive a link and will create a new password via email.
Please briefly explain why you feel this question should be reported.
Please briefly explain why you feel this answer should be reported.
Please briefly explain why you feel this user should be reported.
I’m torn over this one. I like it, but something feels like it’s missing or could be cleaned up a tad to make it flow faster. I considered removing a few words from your logline to read the following: “A frazzled man’s secret lives collide when his wife has invited everyone he knows to his surprise 40th birthday.”
May I ask what secret lives he’s been living? Having an affair? Is he a spy?
And the title feels on-the-nose … how about, “Over the Hill”?
The implication is that this middle-aged man has a mistress. Which is far from an original premise. If the man’s secret (or secrets, plural) is something else entirely, then that would very much be worth telling. And would instantly elevate interest in the story concept. That is what this logline and story needs at a minimum: A non-mistress secret that is told.
Improving this story concept further, it would be better that the the man’s “secret lives” came into collision due to something more dramatic than just the wife’s party plans. After all, presumably the wife does not know critical persons in the man’s other lives. In fact, the wife could still be innocently planning a surprise party for him when she is, say, abducted by criminals who are rivals to the man. Thus forcing a revelation of what secret things he has been up to.
Steven Fernandez (Judge)
An interesting idea. Could be a good start. But the real hook is what the different lives are, and how they are incompatible. It should be something we haven’t seen before, hopefully dripping with irony.
Also, I don’t like ‘frazzled’. That’s a very temporary emotion rather than a characteristic. He would be frazzled because of the impeding chaos at the party. But that doesn’t define who he is. Give us something better.
Paul Clarke (judge)
First off, I take issue with Screenwriters Anonymous suggesting 40 is over the hill! 😉 On a more serious note, I see a conundrum here. If he has secret lives then presumably his wife wouldn’t know the people involved or, if she does, then they would be in on the secret and not give anything away. So maybe the story is that the wife has found out and that the surprise?
Superficially this story smacks of a Woody Allen-esque comedy of errors, but I sense an insidious quality to this logline. Is this your intention? Has the wife discovered this secret lives and this is her way of unravelling his world in a very public, embarrassing fashion? Why is he frazzled? This feels like only half the story – half a logline. We need to know more. Is it a black comedy? Is it a thriller? A lot of the language you’re using, ‘frazzled’, ‘secret’, ‘collide’ all set different tones.
The promise of this movie is based on a secret we are not let in on. This never works.
What we do know is that this man finds out he gets a surprise party. Big deal.
What should the viewer expect to see in Act 2? Is this a comedy? Then what is our hero’s main problem during Act 2? What does he try to achieve or prevent?
We need to know more.
Cautious flag: You would also need to justify the motivation of the party goers, to make it seem plausible and have an audience feeling the unbearable pain of watching him suffer.
It may seem thin if they are just their to serve his story.
Someone who knows they shouldn’t be there, like a mistress, probably wouldn’t go, unless you write it in a way that can make feel viable.
An example of it working would be the mistress of the chilean miner, who turned up to the vigil whilst he was trapped. The stakes need to be high.
could be hilarious.