"Twas' the dawn of a new day when the scripts were all done. Not a word could be altered, not even a pun. The scriptwriters were sleeping all snug in their beds. In hopes that Saint Rogers would soothe their poor heads."
Don't ask me where on earth that came from. My head is literally attempting right now to explode into a thousand tiny fragments. The reason for its delirium is due to the fact that in the past 4 hours I have read 20 scripts, drunk 4 cups of tea and eaten 5 Tim Tams. Who knew script reading could be so detrimental to your health??! Needless to say, I have finally finished reading my share of the TV1 script batches and unfortunately, I have to say, I was severely disappointed.
Out of the 20 I read, only 8 really jumped out at me as having potential and even then, there are probably only 2 I would honestly consider making. These two were William Loh's "Cake" and Eric Dittloff's "Under Control". Here are my reasons why.
William's script for a start attempted to address the inner conflicts all of us women battles constantly everyday. Yes, you all know what I am talking about ladies. It that little voice inside you that stops you from keeping up your celery stick vigil and makes you reach for the cookie jar instead. That little fat person deep within our psyche who secretly wants you to look just like her. In "Cake", William fabulously illustrates this inner struggle in the form of Nicole, an overweight woman attempting to shed the kilos for a blind date she is due to meet in two weeks time. Throughout the film, the conflict arising occurs when Nicole attempts to ignore the decadent, gooey chocolate cake her sister has deviously left in the fridge from the night before. Nicole knows the cake is in that fridge. We all know the cake is in that fridge. And unfortunately for Nicole, her stomach also knows it too. In the final act, Nicole gives into her "greed" and devours the cake just as her blind date arrives at the door. Mortified at her appearance and shocked at the fact that her date is two weeks early, Nicole assumes the worst but not before a beautifully naive moment when her knight in shining armour expresses his love of her "curves" and they live happily ever after.
Ahh, bless you William. For honestly thinking that men have the good grace about them not to turn away in disgust when we are elbows deep in chocolate pudding. Unfortunately, this was one of the tiny faults I found in the script. As a body-conscious young girl heavily influenced by popular culture and the Size 0 phenomenon, I just can not believe that a guy would go for this. I was really rooting for them, don't get me wrong. But at the end of the day, I think it was just a little too Disney for my liking this ending. An alternative that probably would have made it more interesting would have been if her date was possibly a personal trainer who immediately instructed her on giving him ten pushups or perhaps a lap-band surgeon. A little more thought into his character could have made it very interesting. All in all though, I really enjoyed the image of Nicole's despair as she tried to fight her inner hunger which is why I think it deserves an E for Effective if nothing else.
Eric's script I have to say was rather intriguing. There was not so much say a conflict as rather a deadline which the two featured characters were attempting to work towards. At times, this did get quite tiring and the ability of Eric to sustain the importance for Stacey to be rescued from her TV land prison was lost a couple of times towards the end. But it was at this stage that the script turned brilliantly. Whilst he did manage to get a steady momentum going with Grant trying to help Stacey escape, the sudden climax when the deadline is up and the question of "What will Grant do next?" provides a brilliant moment for the audience and to top it all off, Grant doesn't do anything at all. Something which, you have to admit, is probably what you too would do if you were a lonely middle-aged single man. If you were a 12 year old boy, you'd probably have already called your mum to get her to help you out. If you were a 60 year old man, you probably would have thought you were senile and taken yourself off to a retirement home to the delight of your daugher-in-law. But I honestly believe a 40 year old man would have had that exact reaction which contrasts so brilliantly with the action style set up that Eric had going in the first half of the film. A little work to be done on keeping the audience engaged but all in all, I would definitely give the script a P for Powerful.
So that leaves it up to the group unfortunately guys! I have to admit, I haven't really seen many other scripts, other than my friends, so I'm placing a lot of faith in my crew member's judgement. Hopefully they'll come up with something interesting at our meeting this Monday.
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