Categories: Public
The Script
When dropped by her agent, a shy ?love story? author attends a horror movie workshop where a perverse guru makes screenwriters die like their characters?until only the best one survive.
This?seems to be ?close to Cube,?etc.
And again, it seems to be a story of a random act of heartless sadism. What is the guru's motivation for subjecting the writer's to such torture? And again, I point to "Saw" where Jigsaw's choice of victims and torture is more than a random act of heartless sadism.
And again, it seems to be a story of a random act of heartless sadism. What is the guru's motivation for subjecting the writer's to such torture? And again, I point to "Saw" where Jigsaw's choice of victims and torture is more than a random act of heartless sadism.
Hello, I certainly have a problem in explaining my idea.
I try!
guru's rules:
-you are my prisoners, there is no way to escape.
-you must write a scene where another guest dies. For exemple Mister white write a scene where Mister Brown (one o the writers) is drawned in the bathtub. Mister Brown write a scene where Mister White dies because all the chess pieces are inserted in his ass one by one.
-at the end of the day the guru read the scenes and choose the better one.
-Mister White is forced to have all the chess pieces up his ass until he dies.
-The writer who is alive at the end will be free to leave. To stay alive they must write the most original scenes.
When they are actually killed, they all 'play' their role better than any actor because it's real!
When the guru reads a scene, sometimes we "saw" the scene, so all the characters can virtually be killed many times.
'...then the guru kills the writer that stars in the best scripted scene...'
So the scenes have to be performed by all the writers -- certainly they've heard of improv? As in, isn't in an actors hands whether or not a scene is good or not? And what would constitute a 'good' scene?
It's got plausibility issues, but if it branched into whacky comedy cum horror it could be gold.
Best of luck.
I'll try a different angle to face or avoid all problems.
Sure, I understand what you mean. In reading a synospis of chuck palaniuk's novel I see some similarities and I see that he did it really good and surely better than what I can do- I'm still proud to have had some small ideas that palaniuk had :) of course I must differenciate from his work because now that I know it (thanks to your comment) I don't want to do the same. I think that there is still some place in this zone of survival plot with writers as characters.
I just want to point out that even in a 10 lines synopsis we don't know why the host kidnapped them, and we ignore what motivates the writers to join the workshop. Probably in the novel all this is clear but does-it belongs to a one sentence logline?
I'm gonna buy the novel immedialtely because this is just the kind of story that I love. And thanks again for your comment! And they're doing a movie from the book.
Logline structure and plot aside I think there are some fundamental problems with the concept.
1 - plausibility; to actually be able to threaten, torture and ultimately kill someone or a group of people the scenario needs to enable the mechanism that allows the bad guy to do this. As such you've added in the most recent drafts a generic description of the characters are being kept as prisoners. This is the same as in so many other movies that have a similar premise and as a result doesn't sound interesting. What is unique about their entrapment?
Just a quick thought; If you don't want to involve any super natural themes, could they have a movie contract at the end as in the surviving writer is guaranteed to sell their script? The antagonist can then use their career aspirations and greed against them.
2 - motivation; the antagonist seams ruthless for almost no reason, normally an antagonist's motivation can be omitted from loglines, but as the genre in this instance requires it, his motivations needs to be crystal clear, compelling and unique. It's his motivation that will determine how bad an antagonist he will be and therefor how interesting the characters fight to survive will be.
If these fundamental problems can be solved after several iterations of the logline then this could make for an interesting concept if not and after many re drafts the logline is still not working maybe it won't make for a good concept.
I don't want to sound mean or inappropriate just trying to be helpful in my (all to well known) direct way.
Also, if you need some reality to ground your premise in, Kim Jong-Il kidnapped a couple of South Korean movie names and forced them to make a pro-North Godzilla movie. Maybe your the guru is just a 'mis-understood' genius who aims to make the greatest horror movie ever.
It sounds like the framework for a bunch of short stories. Is that the idea?
It isn't a compliment; it sounds like you're using the same idea without giving your characters any reason for their actions. Not an insult either, just questioning what the creative forces are.
>> I can't add this kind of details in the logline
True. But I suggest that properly motivating the bad guy would be a plus factor in the story, given the genre. Consider Jigsaw in the original Saw. His victims are not randomly chosen, nor is he capriciously tormenting them for sheer sadistic glee. He is punishing his victims for their existential "sins", for frittering away their lives with foolish pursuits, or destructive vices like drug addiction, for lacking the necessary will to live, really live their lives to its fullest potential.
There's an intriguing theme being explored. There's a daemonic method to Jigsaw's "madness", more to the story than just some clever plotting.
