Joe Cinque’s Consolation
jamesmichaelPenpusher
In early 1997, Anu Singh, a young law student at the Australian National University, began to tell many people she was planning to kill herself. As her mental and emotional state disintegrated, her plans grew more bizarre and macabre, concerning her boyfriend Joe Cinque. In October she knocked Joe out with Rohypnol and then injected him with a lethal dose of heroin. Nobody tried to stop her.
Share
Jack, did you see THE DINNER PARTY or something else? This logline above is for a new script, still in development with Screen Australia funding. We never received funding for TDP because the project officers were nervous about litigation at the time (2008).
This isn’t a logline and I had to read it and re-read it a few times to understand exactly what story, and whose, is being told. It does seem an interesting story but it loses punch and impact from the details. As a story, it seems quite dark and I’m guessing the main character would be Anu – watching an unempathetic character for 2 hours being macabre and bizarre and then kill someone wouldn’t be an enjoyable experience.
There also isn’t a clear goal in Anu’s story. I could imagine the story being very dark and thought-provoking, until the murder. It would not be interesting to follow somebody go mad. Also, the problem with watching a character go mad on screen is that you can’t trust them and as a viewer you can’t trust what you’re watching which stops you caring about the story.
Point of view would be a problem and Patrockable gives a good suggestion about creating another character, it would certainly need a character for the audience to follow and empathise and distance the disintegrating mental state from the viewer enough.
Thematically it sounds interesting though.
Dave (judge)
Your subject matter is intriguing. It could be a good psychological thriller. Her passive friends remind me of the Bystander effect, where a person in a group is less likely to help someone in danger because the responsibility is shared.
However, I agree with the others: there is no active protagonist who we empathise with. Perhaps create a fictional character who tries to stop her?
I have seen the filmand it is very good. Unfortunately the logline is not. How about “When a disturbed young law student tells her friends she plans to kill herself and her boyfriend she choses the perfect setting ? a dinner party”?
Disclaimer: I’m credited as a co-producer on THE DINNER PARTY, the first Australian film inspired by these very events.
From this synopsis, the film will be very similar and potentially have the same story issue The Dinner Party may have had with its audience reception: no clear POV.
The story is centered around a strong antagonist but we don’t know anything about any character we could possibly empathise with.
Another problem is that if nobody does anything, we have characters who lack purpose, which makes for poor drama.
I also agree with Paul that the synopsis is burdened with detail that has no dramatic relevance.
This reads more like a very short synopsis than a logline. Way too many unnecessary details clutter the read.
But most importantly, I still don’t have a good idea of the story. Does the story end with the injection, or is that just the beginning of the journey? Whichever it is you’re either telling us too much or too little.
It doesn’t sound like much of a logline, as it is missing many of the important elements. It sounds as if Anu may be the protag, as someone with a mental disorder of some type, but she went from wanting to commit suicide to murder? Lost me there. There is no conflict or character arc displayed. Much too wordy as well, but once you learn what the elements are in a logline (you can research how to write a logline right here on this site), Im sure you could cut this down to under thirty words.
The logline tells us too much about Anu’s desperation (including her fate). In the process the reader is left to think we have an unstable protagonist in this story (similar to the girl character in “Sommersault”). This is a bad impression to leave!! A better approach is to make Anu easier to sympathise with. She should be described as a sensitive and intelligent girl who feels deeply for her new boyfriend despite the fact that being involved with him is becoming more and more toxic. And leave it at that. Much easier to care about Anu that way.
Steven Fernandez (Judge)