No, this is not an April Fools joke. Another Amateur Offerings is here! Which means another opportunity for us to find an excellent script and propel a writer into the Hollywood stratosphere where they will surely forget about us the second they get a job in the Voltron universe writing room.
To submit your script for a future Amateur Offerings, send a PDF of your script, along with the title, genre, logline, and finally, why your script deserves a shot, to: Carsonreeves3@gmail.com. Remember that your script will be posted. If you’re nervous about the ramifications of a bad review, feel free to use an alias name and/or script title. It’s a good idea to resubmit every few weeks so your submission stays near the top.
The rules of Amateur Offerings are as such: Read as much of each entry as you can, then, in the comments section, vote for your favorite script. The script with the most votes gets reviewed next Friday. If that script is really good, there’s a chance the review will kick-start the writer’s career.
And with that, here are this weekend’s entries!
Title: The Inept
Genre: Dark Humor
Logline: Chaos ensues in quiet suburbia after Eddy finds a lost wallet and obsesses over how to return it and then win over its owner, the beautiful Lindsy Rocker.
Why You Should Read: Enter a world where dueling dildo fights, threats by midget bookies, baristas posing as psychiatrists, and mistaken identity over strippers with stomas simply represents a “bad week” for Eddy, a socially inept virgin obsessed with a photo found in a woman’s lost wallet.
Title: Surviving Maine
Genre: Horror/Comedy
Logline: A group of teenagers become lost on a road trip and find themselves trapped in a terrifying real life version of Stephen King’s Maine, where all his horror novels have mysteriously come to life.
Why You Should Read: I wrote this script for fun last year. At the start of this year a TV show called Castle Rock (J.J. Abrams/Hulu) was announced with a similar premise – bringing together lots of cool Stephen King stories. I guess I just wanted to get my script out there for a few people to read before it becomes completely irrelevant. That being said, the platforms I have uploaded the script to/the people who have read it, have all been quite positive with their feedback. I’m off to slap J.J. Abrams in the face. :)
Title: The Onus of Inspiration
Genre: Metacomedy/Drama
Logline: When two roommates both decide to start making their own movies, one being a documentary about the making of the other, turmoil arises as they struggle to come up with an idea. These two often stoned minds tackle inspiration and the difference between Hollywood and independent filmmaking as friendship turns to rivalry and back again.
Why You Should Read: I’m Liam McNeal, a twenty-year old film fanatic from Washington. I fell in love with the movies in 2010 when I saw Inception, and have been studying film history ever since. I’ve written three screenplays, but this is the only one I feel is worth anything. It’s very meta, being about a documentary about the making of a movie, but I used this script to express self-doubts about my own talent as well mock the fear of Hollywood filmmaking a little bit. It’s a mix of ideas that touches on a whole lot of topics related to film, and it is without a doubt worth your time. The main characters of Todd and Lewis have two different ways of thinking, but are both in love with film. I’ve drawn great inspiration from a wide variety of movies, and that’s evident in the screenplay. It’s admittedly quite long, but I believe that the movie won’t end up being three hours long, due to direction and editing. This is a screenplay I’m incredibly passionate about, and I hope that you can look at it and perhaps give some valuable critique, beyond ‘Make it shorter’.
Title: The Young Hollywood Party Massacre
Genre: Horror/Comedy
Logline: A young, hip Hollywood couple on the verge of becoming first-time parents begin to fear their unborn baby is a murderous demon.
Why You Should Read: I used to work at a major talent agency. During my stint there, my wife was pregnant with our first child. This script was written over that period of time. Horror comedies are hard to pull off. That, coupled with a story that lampoons, among other things, big talent agencies seems like a recipe for disaster for an amateur writer. Which is pretty much why I wanted to write it. Or “needed to” is probably more accurate: I had to find a way to channel some of the negativity I was feeling about the biz, living in LA and bringing a baby into that world.
Title: Alice
Genre: Dark Fantasy / Noir
Logline: In the warped underworld of Wonderland, a disgraced detective grapples with enemies and his sanity, on a destructive journey to discover what happened to the beautiful missing Dreamer he once loved.
Why You Should Read: It’s hard to climb up the never ending greasy pole that is the films industry, but I don’t need to tell you that… I’ve been trying it for a while and now, and attempting to ignore my slippery hands I have had a go at writing my latest feature film script: ‘Alice’. This is the one that I’m hanging my hat on and I’d love for it to be chosen as this week’s Amateur Offering. It may seem impossible, but I know a girl who thought of six impossible things before breakfast.
