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Genre (from writer): Strip-com
Premise (from writer): Dodd and Ollie think they’ve hit the jackpot when they inherit a strip club, but they soon find out it just might be the worst place on Earth.
Why You Should Read (from writer): I notice you’ve been doing more TV stuff lately. Tina Fey’s sitcom and then the AOW of TV dramas. Maybe it’s time for an Sitcom amateur Friday? How can you resist? It’s one fourth the work of reading a screenplay! — Now that you’re completely sold on the idea, here’s why you should select my sitcom pilot. It’s an R-rated workplace comedy designed for pay-cable or the internet. My idea was to take the typical big, dumb network sitcom and give it a cable edge. Imagine something like “Cheers” with drugs and nudity. It’s in the vein of some of my influences: Peep Show, Eastbound and Down, and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
Writer: Colin O’Brien
Details: 36 pages
A couple of weeks ago we switched up the Amateur Offerings procedure to reflect the state of entertainment as we know it. Instead of being script racist and separating the pilots from the features, we offered a conglomerate of ALL screenplays, movies AND television for your voting pleasure.
Not surprisingly, the vote came down to a feature (“No Guts No Glory”) and a pilot (“NSFW”). The vote was so close, I decided to read the first ten pages of each to determine which got the review. Since they were both comedies, I based my decision on laughs. Humor is entirely subjective, but I could only smile during the first 10 pages of No Guts No Glory. With NSFW, I laughed half a dozen times. So NSFW it is!
Children’s book publisher and all around conservative guy, Benjamin Dodd, is attending his creepy uncle’s funeral with his wacky best friend, Ollie, where he learns that Uncle Chester left him his infamous strip club, SKANKS.
Ollie thinks this is a sign from God (what that sign is isn’t clear) whereas Dodd treats it as an annoyance. His plan is to sell it right away. But Ollie convinces him to go check it out first. How can they sell something without getting to know it?
Over to Skanks they go, where they conveniently learn that there’s some strange rule in the contract that they’re not allowed to sell the place until it’s profitable (wha??). So all of a sudden, Dodd’s stuck as the official owner of a strip club!!
The two start meeting all the strippers (like the cute Sizzlean, who’s the world’s worst stripper. Every time she tries to talk dirty, she inadvertently lets slip that she’s only doing this for the money), Roxbury (an out-of-shape 50 year old whose big move is ashing her cigarette while she’s grinding you) and Jasmine (Ollie’s ex-girlfriend who’s become a stripper to get back at him).
In the end, Dodd becomes smitten with Sizzlean, and figures, what’s the harm in running this place until he can sell it? Let the adventures of a children’s book publisher turned strip club owner begin!
Now before I get started on my thoughts here, I want to explain why I chose this over No Guts No Glory. Gazrow is a great longtime contributor to the site and I want to help him out with a little feedback.
Upon reading the first few pages of “Guts,” I felt an intense similarity to Zombieland, with the backstory voice over that eventually leads us to the present day where we meet our zombies. When you write something similar to a famous movie, you create two problems for yourself. 1) It makes you look unoriginal. As soon as people go, “This is just like Zombieland,” they lose confidence that you’ll be able to deliver something fresh and exciting. 2) You invite quality comparisons to that film, which, 99% of the time, you lose. The stuff about being scared ever since he was a kid was kind of charming. I smiled. But it wasn’t as creative or funny as the whole “zombie survival rules” voice over in Zombieland. Zombieland set up an exciting new world. The voice over here felt more expository.
My official check-out point, though, was the Neo-Nazi Hitler-loving step-dad. Now I have no problem with Hitler or Nazi jokes. They can be hilarious in the right context. But it always worries me when one of the big early jokes in a script is NOT CONCEPT-BASED. In other words, if you were writing “Neighbors,” and one of the first jokes involved a character with a flesh-eating virus, I would be worried. What does that have to do with a family who moves next to fraternity house? Why aren’t you getting your jokes from that situation? That’s why we paid to see the movie.
Now I’m not saying this Nazi father thing doesn’t somehow link up to the zombie stuff later on, but as a reader, these are the mental “flags” that can quickly pull us out of a script. The huge left turn into Nazi humor was too jarring and too broad, and ultimately what led me to go with NSFW. It should be noted, however, that comedy is entirely subjective. And for some people this might’ve been fine. Still, I always think that when you pick a comedy idea, almost all the jokes should stem from the concept.
Back to NSFW. This script started out strong. I love that it didn’t feel like the writer was trying too hard to be funny. The laughs were just happening. I liked that we jumped right into the story as well, with some scary biker dude eulogizing Uncle Chester with the most inappropriate story ever. Good stuff.
From there on, though, it was a mixed bag (as comedy often is). I found Ollie to be a little on-the-nose. Like “Look, I’m the wacky friend! Look at how wacky I can be!” When you create the wacky sidekick character, it’s important to give him a fresh spin so he doesn’t feel like every other comedy sidekick ever. It’s usually about finding an angle (a “lives with his parents” socially unaware entitled brat – Alan from The Hangover). If your only synopsis for a character is “the wacky friend,” you’re in trouble.
From there, we need more story and more drama. Let’s take a detailed look at how to do that.
DODD
We need to know more about Dodd and his job BEFORE he inherits the strip club. You want to create the maximum reactive impact from a children’s book publisher being given a strip club. That doesn’t happen here since I didn’t even know he was a children’s book publisher until AFTER he inherited the strip club. So find a way to squeeze this in early. Maybe in the opening funeral scene, we see Dodd leafing through a number of children’s books. There can be mothers nearby who spot him doing this and mistake him for a pedophile. Also, I’m not sure you want to leave this scene without Dodd going onstage and saying something about his Uncle. It’s a chance for you to tell us a little about Dodd. Why not take it?
THE STAKES
It’s not clear why Dodd needs to manage this place. There’s a vague allusion to some artificial “condition” in the deed that he can’t sell Skanks until it’s profitable. That’s weak sauce. Let’s build a real reason why he needs this place and add stakes to it. For one, maybe there’s something Dodd needs (a new house – I’ll get to why in a second). Whereas he barely makes anything at his publishing job, he finds out this place is a goldmine. This is his meal ticket to a comfortable life. If you don’t like this idea, you allude, in the story, to some gangster the old manager owes a lot of money to. When Dodd takes ownership of this place, that debt is now transferred over to him. It could be 100 grand. So Dodd HAS to run this place to make enough money to pay this psycho gangster off or else he’ll be killed.
A FIANCE
I think you’re missing a huge opportunity by not giving Dodd a fiancé here. You can have his fiancé be a controlling bitch as well as out of his league. She’s super conservative, as is her wealthy family. Now, by accepting ownership of this strip club, you’re creating a world of conflict at home with his fiancé. Also, with his fiancé being the breadwinner, Dodd has always felt emasculated. For once, he wants to be the breadwinner (and buy an expensive ring or a house for the two of them) so that she’ll finally respect him. He takes this job to do just that. You can play this two ways. She finds out about Skanks, which creates all sorts of conflict within their relationship, or he hides it from her, which can be funny in other ways. Also, this creates a lot more romantic chemistry between Dodd and Sizzlean, since we know they can’t be together. The fact that neither of them are taken right now makes their potential romance unexciting. That’s easily changed by giving one of them a significant other.
YOU CAN GET MORE OUT OF THE WORK STORYINE
Once they get to the strip club, everything is too easy. They’re able to hang out there, explore, get to know people. It’s kind of funny, but without any conflict, it’s not nearly as funny as it could be. Conflict is your best friend in comedy. You need something bigger PULLING at Dodd here, so his time at the strip club is never comfortable. Now that we’ve introduced a fiancé, she can always be calling and telling him to “get over here” (maybe she’s even his boss or an upper level employee at the publishing house he works at). That gangster can show up and demand his money. Finally add an immediate problem from the company itself that’s demanding his attention. We can’t ever feel too comfortable in a comedy, that things are going to be okay. This setup feels too comfortable.
Because of some of these structural issues, I can’t quite give this a “worth the read,” but it was close. As you can tell from how in-depth I went, I believe in Colin. Just remember, it’s not all about the funny dialogue. You have to continually put your characters in bad situations to find the best comedy.
Good luck!
Script link: NSFW
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Finally! A writer who gets this right! One of the most ANNOYING things a reader endures is the ambiguity in which a writer picks a character’s first or last name to deliver dialogue. For example, one character will be introduced as SOLOMON HASHER and another as RYAN SMITHSON. Then, when it’s time for dialogue, one of those characters will be known as ‘HASHER’ while the other is “RYAN.” Why the last name of one but the first name of the other????? What Colin does is he introduces Dodd as: “Benjamin DODD.” And then Ollie as simply, “OLLIE.” By only capitalizing Dodd’s last name in the intro, it makes sense why his last name is used for dialogue, while with Ollie, his first. I think this is the first time I’ve ever seen this. And I thank you, Colin. I thank you!
