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Author Topic: 10PTT: Wayne's World 3 - Wayne's Leisure World by Trevor Schindeler  (Read 2200 times)
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« on: May 14, 2016, 03:23 PM »


Trevor Schindeler wants another Wayne's World.

Trevor REALLY wants another Wayne's World.


So he wrote it, he publicized it, he tried to fund it -- well, fund some advertising to drive interest.  And Trevor learned the internet is a fickle friend.  Now, his GoFundMe page is a cruel 404.

That makes me sad.  As part of his GoFundMe, he published his screenplay for all to read.  I read the first 20-something pages.  You're about to see the first 11.  I expect with some dedicated googling you'll turn up a copy of the full script, if you're truly interested.  I won't provide it here because that nuked GoFundMe page suggests Trevor changed his mind about his script's production readiness.  (I'm reproducing the pages here under obvious Fair Use terms.)

[UPDATE: Script still available!]


Mindful of its first-draft nature, I liked it.  There's no story I could find in that first act.  What we get is Wayne and Garth being Wayne and Garth -- except now they're old and living in a retirement village.  No hook, no inciting incident.  Just familiar faces and scenarios floating in a sea of possibility.  I wanted to read more, but even if the story eventually arrives somewhere in Act Two, there's no excusing that lazy first act.

I do believe there's something there -- just enough to make me hope Trevor keeps going, keeps improving the screenplay.  I like how Trevor shows us a very familiar Wayne and Garth.  Reading the scenes, I often forgot I'm supposed to imagine Wayne and Garth as old folks.  I kept picturing them as the young men we know and love -- only with less hair and more wrinkles.  I don't know if that's good or bad.  Can they be Garth and Wayne if they're decrepit and slow and frail?  Does age, if depicted accurately, strip them of their essential Wayne's Worldliness?


Because what we have in these pages, as I see it, is Mike Myers and Dana Carvey wearing deliberately false-looking old-age makeup but otherwise giving the same energetic physical performances we expect.

And I'm very much okay with that.

We saw something similar recently with DUMB AND DUMBER TO.  So why not WAYNE'S WORLD 3?  Why not begin with Leisure World Retirement Home?  You know, other than all the legal reasons with a spec screenplay based on studio-owned characters and IP...

Okay.  Maybe you want to know more about how this screenplay came to be.  Links ahoy.

http://metro.co.uk/2016/02/22/this-guy-has-started-a-gofundme-page-to-get-someone-to-read-his-waynes-world-3-script-5710876/

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/24/waynes-world-3-fortress-hollywood-trevor-schindeler

http://www.cinemablend.com/new/One-Random-Guy-Really-Trying-Make-Wayne-World-3-Happen-113867.html

http://www.crowdfundinsider.com/2016/02/82034-party-on-man-launches-gofundme-campaign-to-get-hollywood-execs-to-read-his-waynes-world-3-script/

Alrighty, it's 10PTT time.  This is by no means a good screenplay no matter how you look at it, whether squinting left-eyed at format or right-eyed at structure or gazing omnipotently with your third eye at story.  It won't sell and it won't get made.  Paramount won't touch it.  Why would they?  Myers will write his own if he wants to.

So, I need to ask: Why, Trevor?  Twenty years feeding a naive belief you could get your WW screenplay produced.  You might have spent those twenty years crafting a career as screenwriter or director, then -- and only then, with your amassed contacts, skills, industry credibility and audience appeal -- turned your attention to this dream project.  That's a reasonable and believable path to success.  Instead, twenty years wondering what to do on Mars, the whole time forgetting to build your spaceship.

Trevor, deep down you must have known from the start it was a fool's errand.

And yet... a good start.

And yet... when have YOU, dear reader, so doggedly refused to give up your dream for so long despite the odds?


Fuck it.  All of it.  Fuck the odds.  Fuck the "right" way.  Fuck everything except not giving up.  In the end, our time expires and we all give up the option of giving up.

But not a moment sooner, dear reader.  Hold tight.  Against an impossible universe, that's how you win.  Go into that long dark night knowing they had to seize it from your warm, dead fist.

Oh yeah.  Here's the 10PTT...


* waynes-world-3-waynes-leisure-world-title.png (2.35 KB, 462x301 - viewed 95 times.)
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« Reply #1 on: May 14, 2016, 03:58 PM »




NOTES:

1.  "The Year 2047"
Don't tell us twice.  Keep the slug clean and let narration supply the context.

2.  "Things look very much the same..."
See what happens when you scrape the fat off the bone?  Twenty-one words boiled down to eight.  That's almost a two-thirds reduction without losing meaning or intent.  And we're one sentence into the script!

3.  "A car drives past..."
If we get no information about how the car drives past -- rockets, whips, roars, creeps, coasts, cruises -- then we may as well save a word here and let vanilla be vanilla.

4. "Only the upper portion..."
I don't understand what the purpose or payoff is for this thing about not seeing the car's wheels.  I'll come back here if the other shoe drops later.

5. "Drives..."
Second instance this paragraph for the bland verb "drives".  Give the car some personality.  Anyone watching that car arrive, what would they assume from the model of vehicle?  The way it's being driven?  Would it attract attention or go unnoticed?  Either warrants a more descriptive verb.

6. Present progressive tense
See http://10ptt.com/smf/index.php/topic,344.0.html.  I bear no love for 'ing' and its slovenly affiliates.

7. Slug
I doubt we need anything here but "INT. CAR." or "IN THE CAR"  It's a natural segue.  Any embellishment only clutters comprehension.  Putting that aside, where slug-line clarification is required I prefer the brevity and efficiency "same" achieves over "continuous."  A four-syllable word costs readability, even in a slug, and therefore ought to do more than simply state the obvious.

8. Beat breakdown
Let's dissect this paragraph.  It conveys this information: (1) A middle-aged man chauffers his elderly mother while (2) I LOVE ROCK N' ROLL by Joan Jett and the Blackhearts plays on the radio, which (3) delights her so much she cranks up the volume.

Notice how my one-sentence breakdown connects those three ideas.  It flows.  The source text kind of throws down each beat without neatly tying them together.  It feels like somebody's stomping on the brake pedal between each idea and we're bunny-hopping down the road.

9. Logistics
If in this shot we hear the song end then we only have screen time for a few bars of verse/chorus -- unless this opener is part of an extended under-credits sequence.  I'm wondering if the author's intention is for us to hear I LOVE ROCK 'N ROLL right from the opening shot with the car ambling through those retirement home gates.  That makes sense.  It gives us enough time to let the tune's head-nodding beat hook us good.  So, an alternate opening shot/scene might be watching the mother's age-spotted, nail-polished fingers find that car radio volume dial to give it an enthusiastic twist, raising Joan Jett to window-shaking decibels.  Then cut to ext car as it arrives.  That would create immediate intrigue.  We know an elderly lady owns that withered hand.  Who is she, this old lady who adores classic 80s rock 'n roll?

9.  Time
Hit the pause button.  We must return to the opening scene, where the author writes "it's the year 2047."  How does the movie audience know the scene plays out in 2047?  Well, they don't.  Sure, we know because the author told us right there on the page in the first sentence of the screenplay.  "It's the year 2047."  But there still has been no visual or verbal manifestation of 2047 on screen.  I appreciate much can be left to the intrepid director and the production designer and the dozens of department heads who know how to read between the lines.  But here, at notation 9, we have the perfect setup for anchoring the movie audience in 2047.

The radio DJ says: "That was I LOVE ROCK N' ROLL by Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, which topped the charts back in 1983."  All we need is one more sentence from him -- or a partner radio host -- to seal the deal:  "That song might be 64 years old now, but it doesn't sound a day over 25, which is how old Joan Jett was when the song came out."  Okay, yes, that's a lot of numbers to plug into a math calculation to arrive at 2047, but it's a start.  For those in the audience willing to mentally crunch the numbers, you let them feel smart instead of just spoon-feeding them context like "Hey, you're on W-P-I-G and it's the year 2047!"

10.
Nipping this in the bud.  "Continuous" is a tool to remove ambiguity.  Here, as before, there is none.

11. Excessive detail
Unless all this description about landscaping and groundswork leads to some gag or other, we don't need it.  We've established how the retirement home maintains neat and tidy gardens.  Belaboring the point creates expectation.  If that expectation won't be paid off, we're just wasting space.

12.  Passive sentences
Untwist those passive sentences and make them active -- unless you're deliberately staying passive for effect.

13.  Repetition
Never tell the audience something they already know, unless it's for deliberate effect.  Put "television" in the shot slug or in the description but not both, i.e.:

-----
ON TELEVISION

a cheesy advertisment for Leisure World Retirement Home.  An attractive middle-aged couple...
-----

or perhaps:

-----

A CHEESY ADVERTISMENT

on television sells Leisure World Retirement Home...
-----

or better:

-----

A CHEESY TV ADVERTISMENT

hard sells Leisure World Retirement Home.

-- An attractive middle-aged couple enjoy the facilities
-- play golf
-- and relax in a luxurious bedroom.

-----

The first is typical.  Shot slugs generally serve to focus the audience's attention -- on people, things, events.  They are your story's ushers, skillfully guiding you with their torches in the dark, making sure you arrive safely to your seat.

14.  Redundant
The first sentence feels redundant: "We see couples enjoying the facilities then we see a specific couple enjoying the facilities."  Let's save space and detail the specific couple only, and leave the rest to the imagination/director.


* waynes-world-3-waynes-leisure-world-p1.png (143.63 KB, 821x967 - viewed 97 times.)
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« Reply #2 on: May 14, 2016, 04:07 PM »




NOTES:

15.  Pedantesque
"An attractive middle-aged couple enjoy the facilities."
"Another couple gets served by attentive staff in an elegant dining room."

"Couple": singular or plural?  Depends.  The singular -- "An attractive couple enjoys the facilities" -- is arguably correct, because the couple perform as a unit.  But plural "enjoy" sounds, to my ear, more natural in this sentence.  On the other hand, the singular use of "gets" in the second instance feels right as well as being grammatically "correct".  Grammar is robust; it can withstand rough handling so long as the meaning of a sentence is clear.

16. In for a penny
I try to resist editing dialogue, just because.  But I'll indulge myself this time.  This TV ad narration works very well, I think.  Which is probably why I feel compelled to give it a quick final inspection, brush off some lint and straighten its tie.  "Have meals in our fine dining facility" seemed like a bit of sentence gymnastics intended to maneuver "dining" into the right position.  We can't say: "Dine in our dining lounge."  I like the faux sophistication of "dining lounge" over "fine dining facility" so let's work with it.  How about: "Indulge yourself in our restaurant-quality dining lounge."

17. Transitions
Transitions are a personal preference thing.  But I can tell you this: you can and should do without them until they become truly necessary in the first production draft.  When working on a spec or any first draft you don't need CUT TOs, except where they remove ambiguity from a scene transition.  I'll give you two good reasons to discard your CUT TOs:  (a) You'll save a small but accumulating amount of whitespace, perhaps enough to contract your 101-page script to 98 or 99 pages.  Same as how the silly $9.95 price tag tricks our brains into thinking we're getting oh such a bargain compared to those suckers paying $10, screenplays with an athletic two-digit page count get a little more love at first sight than those waddling, wheezing three-digit page count monstrosities.  (b) Unnecessary transitions interrupt the reading flow.  Until your screenplay sells, do everything you can to make those words flow.  From sentence to paragraph to scene to sequence -- don't give the reader cause to stop reading.  If you need a transition -- and you will, just not for every scene -- make it a natural one.  Make it do something more than divide scenes.

Here we have an ideal opportunity to do exactly that.  We will make the transition do more than CUT TO.

Presently we're tight on the TV screen watching the Leisure World Retirement Home advertisment.  After that we go wide, revealing we're in Leisure World's front lounge.  So let's use the transition to enhance context and deepen the narrative flow rather than interrupt it.

-----

WIDEN TO:

INT. LOUNGE - LEISURE WORLD

-----

And, just like that, no need to remind the reader this scene is "continuous."  We could get creative -- being careful not to go too crazy, mind you.

-----
REVEAL:

INT. LOUNGE - LEISURE WORLD
-----

That too tells us we've gone wide to establish the lounge.  I promised not to go crazy, but I can't help wondering how Spielberg would handle this transition.  It might say CUT TO on the page but it sure as shit won't be a CUT TO on screen.

-----

NARRATOR: You worked hard all your life.  Now it's time to enjoy your golden years.  Let Leisure World give you the freedom you've earned and the lifestyle you deserve.

CRANKY ELDERLY VOICE (O.S.)
I want my MTV!

SPLAT!  A spoonful of sticky red jelly hits the TV screen, slithers down.

In a flash an English Cocker Spaniel named REX is there to lick it off.  Nobody pays the little dog any mind, so REX probably belongs to a resident.

Unexpected delicious snack gobbled, REX scampers to his next rendezvous, and we FOLLOW --

INT. LOUNGE - LEISURE WORLD

-- weaving under and around Leisure World's elderly residents, who look much older and much poorer than the actors in the TV ad.

From hairstyle to footwear, the residents are dressed according to popular music genres from their youth: psychedelic rock, Motown, disco, punk, hip hop.  Everyone (caregivers too) grooves to classic Rock 'n Roll playing on speakers throughout the facility.

REX arrives under female resident KATHY who chats with a handsome middle-aged man named ROB.  REX ignores Rob, waits for Kathy to ruffle his ears, then DARTS OFF, and we FOLLOW --

-----

See any CUT TOs in the Spielberg version?  Nope.  Just one fresh slug to orient us after the TV ad and not a scrap of doubt about the continuity.

Aside: nobody does visual flow like Spielberg.  Not even old Spielberg.  If you, the screenwriter, can capture in words the kind of narrative flow Spielberg delivers on screen, you'll go far, oh yes.  Spielberg is one shining example of good flow.  I bet you can think of others.  My point being: don't let screenplay format and its technical minutia strangle your story flow.  Plenty of time for your story to be put in chains when producers come aboard.

18. Potted
"There are no potted plants."  Glancing ahead, I see this observation repeats and repeats.  Either there's a clever payoff coming or...?  Am I missing a running joke carried over from the first movie?  I'm intrigued.

Aside: 1800 words and we've only finished page 2.  And you thought it was the script pages undergoing the "torture" test.


* waynes-world-3-waynes-leisure-world-p2.png (148.3 KB, 872x988 - viewed 92 times.)
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« Reply #3 on: May 14, 2016, 04:13 PM »




NOTES:

19.  Less is more
It's common to omit the INT/EXT & NIGHT/DAY to indicate no change in general location.  Think of it as sub-locations.  The writer established we're INT Leisure World Retirment Home.  We don't need those full slugs blocking our way at regular intervals like hastily toppled filing cabinets during a foot chase.  Use simple, shortened slugs until we EXT or CUT TO another location.

I'll say this again: don't erect walls between scenes; install doors, and oil the hinges if necessary.  Better yet, install those beaded curtains that tickle your body as you squeeze through and make that pleasant clattering sound like a bag of marbles hitting the floor and scattering.  Or install those batwing western saloon doors that spring back and forth creakily after you spur-jangle your way into that bar full of reprobates and wanted posters.  Heck, forget doors.  Just knock a sizable hole in the wall and shove the reader through.

Smooth scene transitions, baby.  Make 'em silky smooth.

20. Dance for your supper
I'm not thrilled with this tiny scene.  How do we, the movie audience, know this is "Stacy"?  By naming her is the author tagging Stacy as an important character?  If Stacy is an important character shouldn't we see her "in character res"?  I bastardized that saying, but my version should totally be a thing because you understand exactly what I mean: seconds after seeing Stacy and studying her we should have some idea of the kind of person she is.  If Stacy is nothing more than an extra then why name her?  Let's read on and discover the answer...

21.  Shocker: eating in the dining room
"Residents eat."  That's the meat in the sentence.  Dining room, residents, eating.  A two-word slug followed by a two-word sentence works the same as the longer original sentence.  But are we at breakfast?  Lunch?  Dinner?  All are possible because we've been told only that time of day is DAY.  We should pick a meal time.  Let's go for lunch.

-----

DINING ROOM

Residents eat lunch, but not the fine cuisine from the TV ad.  These are factory meals served on compartmentalized trays.  Like in prison.

ANNE, mid 20s, attractive but intense, sits with resident TOM.  Tom's hands flutter restlessly.  He seems not to notice.  Parkinson's Disease?   No.  These aren't tremors or spasms.  These are gestures, rehearsed and eloquent.  These are the hands of a magician, now retired.  Holding an invisible wand.  A pretend top hat.  An imaginary rabbit.  Forty years of stage work grooved deep in his brain -- and stuck on repeat.

-----

Took a long stroll there, but I'm back now.  Here's what happened along the way: I took a 19-word paragraph and I stuffed it like a turkey until it fattened to 89 words -- four times as long.  Oops.  I indulged myself to demonstrate what storytelling sentences look like.  Storytelling sentences work two jobs.  Day job: describe to the reader the plain facts and keep the story moving forward.  Night job: make the reader feel something about these characters and what's happening to them.

I don't know yet if Anne and Tom are main characters, so I can't say if one or the other deserves a proper character intro.  If they do, we need more than plain facts.  We need to be intrigued by these characters right from the meet-cute.  Character introductions should create questions for us.  Why dress like that?  Why say that?  Why do that?  Nothing is what it is without cause.

So far in this screenplay we've been given no character intros.  Cathy, Rob, Stacy, Anne, Tom -- all introduced with no description, no traits, no CHARACTER.  Some get an implicit or explicit age tag, and that's all.  We understand that any person labeled as "resident" will be elderly, so we don't need an explicit age indicator.  What we do need is some small understanding about these characters.  Something on which to hang our expectations.  We want clues early about how this character and that one might fit into the story.

I did a bit of that in my revision above: "attractive but intense."  One extra word to offset "attractive" and create some tension.  How do we get "intense" from her?  She doesn't speak in this brief shot so all we have is her body language, her posture, how she sits, how she's dressed.  Give an actor "attractive but intense" and soon you'll learn exactly how a performer conveys those two qualities without needing to say a word.

Same goes for my fluffing of "male resident TOM."  I overcooked it, but you gotta admit Tom's a lot more interesting in my intro.

Movies are about characters and relationships and how those relationships come together and break apart and come together between FADE IN and THE END; about how those relationships CHANGE.  While those relationships churn, lives are sacrificed and saved.  Perhaps entire galaxies prosper or perish.  And still, none of that is half as important as the relationships between your characters.

Did I make my case for character intros?  I hope so.  I fight savagely and often to convince you to trim words and reduce page count.  But not here.  Character intros are exempt.  Save words elsewhere and spend that coin during character intros.  First impressions count.


22.  Silky smooth

INT. LOUNGE - LEISURE WORLD
...
HALLWAY
...
DINING ROOM
...
EXT. PARKING LOT
...

See how that works?  The EXT signals we're outside now.  No time of day in the slug signals we're CONTINUOUS.  We omitted a bunch of unnecessary (for a spec) screenplay scene scaffolding and we gained readability and whitespace.


23. Let it be
The author instinctively knows how this bit will play out: in a single traveling shot.  We should let the description be what it wants to be.  Don't fight it.  Unleash it.

-----
EXT. PARKING LOT

ELECTRICAL CABLES

run out the back of a rusty Aurora Cable 10 truck, across the LAWN, through an open BASEMENT WINDOW to a --

STUDIO MONITOR

And there they are: our boys, WAYNE CAMPBELL and GARTH ALGAR.  We're just in time for --

WAYNE AND GARTH
(on monitor, singing)
Wayne's World!  Wayne's World!  Party Time.  Excellent!

Some things never change. Some things do.  Our boys are 84 years old.  Wayne still keeps his long black mullet despite a monk-like bald spot.  Garth's unruly mane is now silver-grey and he wears thick framed glasses.  Both have on their familiar ripped jeans and t-shirts.
...

-----

24.
We know they're elderly.  Give us something else.  Describe that close-up the way an audience sees it.  Make us feel the horror.  Garth and Wayne are old, man.  LOOK AT THEM.  Exactly when did the universe turn so cruel?

[Uh oh.  I've put 3,000 words on the dial and we're only at page 3.  Note to self: git along, lil doggy.]


* waynes-world-3-waynes-leisure-world-p3.png (122.64 KB, 779x988 - viewed 93 times.)
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« Reply #4 on: May 14, 2016, 04:25 PM »




NOTES:

Here we hit the doldrums for script notes, thanks to a chunk of dialogue.  Quick!  Before the breeze dies and we're stranded...

25.
The true and correct location is BASEMENT.  The lads  converted it to their studio.  Putting BASEMENT in the slug gives us connecting context -- i.e. the aforementioned cables described as running into the "open basement window" --  and now we can throw away another useless CONTINUOUS.  I'm keen to omit from the slug the LEISURE WORLD repetition, but it doesn't hurt to remind readers we're still located at the retirement home -- in case our context-driven scene transitions aren't doing a good job.

Something like this would suffice:

-----

STUDIO MONITOR

...

The camera zooms into Wayne and Garth’s now elderly faces.

INT. BASEMENT (WAYNE'S WORLD STUDIO)

Wayne and Garth host from their familiar couch while three original "metal head" production crew members work the broadcast: ALAN NILAN on Camera One, TERRY ROBERTS on Camera Two, and NEIL ENGLISH operating an old switcher.  Their friend PHIL sits with legs spread, head over a bucket in the pre-vomit position.


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« Reply #5 on: May 14, 2016, 04:31 PM »




NOTES:

Nothing to see here, Chuck.



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« Reply #6 on: May 14, 2016, 04:43 PM »




NOTES:



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« Reply #7 on: May 14, 2016, 04:51 PM »




NOTES:


26.
This dialogue-heavy bit runs three pages -- and mercifully shortens this 10PTT.  I like how it begins, with the "magic trick," but by the end it feels stretched and strained.  The scene will improve with a tighten and a trim -- perhaps down to a page and a half.  Sure, by all means let's see the lads doing their shtick.  But are we missing a chance to illustrate how old they've become?  I guess it depends on what the screenwriter has in store for us.  Will old Garth and Wayne be shown as mostly unaffected by old age?  Still the same old Garth and Wayne, still capable of their heyday hijinx?  Or are we watching a Wayne and Garth youthful in mind and spirit but decrepit in body?  If so, we should see how time has wearied them, how they can't quite deliver the same physically manic performance of yesteryear.

This is our first scene with the guys.  It has to ROCK.  It must be hilarious or endearing or both.  It must tell us -- preferably visually -- what their predicament is.  It must link into the inciting incident around the corner.  It must do a bunch of these things all at once.  What is must not do is simply return to the same old WAYNE'S WORLD except everyone's old.

27.
A CUT TO and a full-bodied slugline is a must here.  I don't need to do a thing.  We've jumped in time and location, so every part of the slug has a job to do.

28.  "A number of residents are in the lounge."
This is filler and should go.  If it's important to know how full the lounge is, try: "Jammed with residents."  Or "Almost empty."  If it's unimportant then say nothing.

Does it matter where they sit?  Couch, chair, stool?  I'm guessing, yes, it's important that Kathy and Rob SHARE the couch, suggesting intimacy.  If that's the author's intent, don't leave the reader guessing and grasping: make it so!

-----
Among the chatting residents, Kathy and Rob share a couch.  Rob listens attentively.
-----

or, if they wanted some privacy...

-----
Away from the gabbling residents, Kathy and Rob share a couch.  Rob listens attentively.
-----

I snuck in some character POV there with "gabbling."  To me it suggests Kathy and Rob dislike the other noisy residents.


29. !!
Don't repeat things you told us earlier.

And I'd argue for striking KATHY's "(intently)."  The way her line is written already suggests a focused tone and delivery.


30.
Slight problem now.  This new scene, slugged as MORNING, feels suspiciously like a CONTINUOUS from an earlier scene.  In that earlier scene -- which precedes our establish on the basement studio -- we had this exact tableau: Rob and Kathy chatting together and dog Rex playing with an elderly resident.  It seems too much of a coincidence for that tableau to repeat the next day.  This leads me to believe that we are, in fact, CONTINUOUS from the basement scene, that we have not CUT TO the next day, as I first thought.

If this is true, why was I led astray?

Poor slugline management.  The script begins with DAY as the slugged time of day.  From there it's all CONTINUOUS until the present scene, slugged as MORNING.  To go from DAY to MORNING implies a night between.  Else why not use MORNING in that first scene slug instead of DAY?  It's confusing.  And if it's confusing then the writer has failed the reader.

31.
Well, there's Anne and Tom together again.  In the earlier scene, the two were sitting together.  Here, they're playing shuffleboard.  Does this mean it's NOT a continuation of the earlier scene?  I'M SO CONFUSED!


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« Reply #8 on: May 14, 2016, 04:54 PM »




NOTES:

32.
Or the slightly tidier: END FLASHBACK



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« Reply #9 on: May 14, 2016, 04:57 PM »




NOTES:

33.
There's really no need to keep chewing up a line for "(to camera)" once we've established context.  So let's not.  Here, it's not difficult to follow who's talking to who.


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« Reply #10 on: May 14, 2016, 04:58 PM »




NOTES:

34.
Strong verb "slops" makes "a mess of" unnecessary (tautology).

35.
See how we're eliminating those "(to camera)" parentheticals by controlling context through description?  Most of the context is right there in the dialogue already.


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« Reply #11 on: May 14, 2016, 05:26 PM »




NOTES:

36.
We can leave in parentheticals now that it's no longer just Wayne and Garth obviously talking to camera.  We've introduced a third party who's unaware of the camera, so things get a bit trickier without the dialogue parentheticals.  We could omit them and work harder in description, but that's going to cost whitespace.

37. Skip the minutia
Do as little stage management as possible.  Movies are life with the boring bits cut out.  Same for screenplays: cut out the boring bits where people walk from here to there and back.  In any case, we have a natural match cut with:

WAYNE: Is Mary around?
BRUCE: I'll look.

We could cut to one of a hundred different scenes of Bruce doing something, somewhere, and every time we'd be thinking: "Ah-ha, he's looking for Mary."  We could cut from Bruce's "I'll look" to him in an astronaut's suit bouncing across the surface of the moon and we'd assume that's where Mary is.  Bruce told us he'd go look for her and here he is, in the next shot, looking for her -- thanks to the implicit manipulation of movie editing.

So.  If we don't need to be told a second time, let's skip the boring stage directions that move Actor A upstage to Mark B.

-----
WAYNE: (to camera) Is Mary around?

BRUCE: I'll look.

ADMINISTRATOR'S OFFICE

Bruce leans in, spots Leisure World's ancient administrator, MARY, entrenched behind heaped papers and precariously stacked files.

BRUCE: Hi, Mary.  You know we have computers for that now...

Due to her shrunken height and the rampart of paperwork, she has to stand to see him.

MARY: Don't trust 'em.  Push the wrong button and suddenly it's dubya dubya triple eye.

BRUCE: Wayne wants to speak with you.

MARY: What now?  His boa constrictor escape again?

LOUNGE

Mary and Bruce emerge from her office adjoining the lounge.

MARY: (sunnily) Good morning, Wayne.  How are you today?

WAYNE: (to camera) Fantastic!  Awesome!  There are some people who want to meet you.

Mary looks around in confusion, then at Bruce -- who shrugs.

-----

Let's back it up and explain how context and LESS screenwriting scaffolding works to our advantage here.

"ADMINISTRATOR'S OFFICE" -- no INT.  That tells us we have not substantially relocated.  Therefore, we can assume this office is within the retirement home and probably nearby.

"MARY: Don't trust 'em.  Push the wrong button and suddenly it's dubya dubya triple eye."  We describe Mary as "ancient" and "shrunken."  We sketched her as an old lady buried in a trench of paperwork.  And finally, we give her a personality trait: she mistrusts technology.

I'd say that's a step up from the original dry intro: "MARY, a female administrator."


END 10PTT

Aaaaaand at page 11 we're done.  I hoped to wrap up this 10PTT with an inciting incident, but I found none.  I scanned ahead to page 23: still nothing. And what about the hook?  The opening with the son driving his mother to this retirement home?  They're not major characters?  Not even minor characters?  Maybe they return in Act Two.  It's rather odd.  What's very clear is, this screenplay has serious structural voids weakening the story.  How can I finish Act One not knowing what the movie's about?

BUT.  I do like the Wayne and Garth stuff from that first act.  I think the author got pretty close to the classic "yes, it's so stupid, but try not to laugh" tone we expect.

Despite its shortcomings, these script pages left me wanting more WAYNE'S WORLD.  I reckon that means Trevor Schindeler delivered on his "you had one job!" promise.  Thank you, Trevor.  If we're getting another BILL AND TED, we gotta have another WAYNE'S WORLD.


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