All screenplays on the simplyscripts.com and simplyscripts.net domain are copyrighted to their respective authors. All rights reserved. This screenplaymay not be used or reproduced for any purpose including educational purposes without the expressed written permission of the author.
Outside Looking In by Joseph Caruso - Drama - A 55 year old man, retires from the I.T. Field to pursue a life in standup comedy. He becomes a lead act for a band touring the midwest and falls in love with the lead singer, along the way finding out the realities of show business and the love of his life. 110 pages - pdf format
I found this to be a well thought-out story. Jack made a nice protagonist. Mary was a fine female lead. Daniel was a total, unlikeable jerk. The story followed the formula quite well including the happy ending.
There are a few issue I think I can help you with.
You need to work on your scene titles. For example, On page 19 you have a slug line, “INT. A WEEK LATER.” Besides not needing a period at the end of a slug line, that is not a slug line. It should be “INT. AIRPLANE – DAY” That’s actually not even good action text. A camera can’t film it and an audience cannot see it. If it essential to the story that it is a week later, you would show that with a text line superimposed over the film. You can look up “superimpose in a screenplay” in a search engine and find out how to do that.
My recommendation is to keep the slug lines in the classic format of INT. or EXT. PLACE – DAY or NIGHT, and to keep it simple. For example, you have EXT. OUTSIDE OF A GUN SHOP. DAY . It should be “EXT. GUN SHOP – DAY” and that’s it. You don’t need to say OUTSIDE because the EXT. already told us. As for the following action text, there are other issues. “Next morning” is good although it’s hard to film that. The director may have Daniel wear last-night’s clothes and it’s a morning shot. However, the “Some 100 miles away” would be hard to film. I would take that out. It works in a novel or short story, but not in a screenplay.
You bold the beginning of every scene all the way to the first dialog. You shouldn’t do that. Actually, you shouldn’t bold slug lines either although many writers who post on this site do that including myself. Bolding beyond that can cause a producer to put your script down and move onto the next one.
On page 62 Jack’s dialog is broken with an action line: Jack makes a face that makes Mary laugh. After that he resumes his dialog. You need another JACK dialog heading with (CONT’D). I think this is an oversight because you do it right everywhere else. This leads us to my next comment.
You need to proof read this more. There are a couple of places where a word was missing. For example, on page 9 in Dave’s monolog, he states after a pause, “Actually, they recommend stand-up comedy after I received Sociology degree.” It reads a little like English is not Dave’s first language. If English is not your first language, I apologize. Your English is pretty good if it isn’t.
Still, there are many places where a period is placed where a comma should be. Also, on page 17 after Jack asks if he can think about it (the offer), Chet says, “Yes sure, he is my card.”
There are a few places where you have unnecessary words. Near the bottom of page 41, “Daniel just walks out of the restaurant.” You don’t need the “just”. He walks out of the restaurant.
One last thing to note, the FADE OUT at the end of the story is on the right margin, not the left. I didn’t know that too until somebody on SimplyScripts told me when I posted something.
Anyway, that’s all the advice I can think of. This is a nice story with low budget demands and a happy ending. Good luck.
I believe that there have been writers who received interest from producers. I haven't posted anything significant, so I haven't heard from anybody. I may post a feature soon, so we'll see.
I'm glad that I could help. I look forward to your edits and your next project.
Pages: 1
Author
Outside Looking In
Logged
Locked Board