Occasionally in the comments section, a debate will pop up about well-loved scripts that “aren’t movies.” They’re just really good scripts. For the aspiring screenwriter, a debate like this is confusing. What’s the difference? How is it possible to write a good script that would be a bad movie?
I always get anxious during this argument. It takes so much to write a good anything that if you’re restricting yourself in any one area, you’re making an already difficult task even more difficult. The last thing we need is some writer getting traction on a script but believing he’s a failure because, “It’s not a good movie.”
However, I have to admit that there’s something to the argument. There are certain scripts you will write which read well but are doomed on the big screen. Luckily for you, I’m going to tell you what those scripts are, so that even if you decide to write one, you at least know what you’re getting into. And keep in mind that writing a “great script that’s not a great movie” isn’t the worst thing in the world. It’s gotten a lot of screenwriters their start in this business.
For ease-of-writing purposes, I’ll be referring to the great script that’s not a great movie as an NGM (not great movie) from here on forward.
NO GENRE
The first NGM script is the one without a genre. When you don’t have a genre, you have a film that studios don’t know how to market, and by association, a film that’s not technically a “movie.” The most recent example of this is Passengers. Passengers was known as the best unmade script for a decade. However, once it came out, audiences were like, “Huh?” Is this a sci-fi film like Aliens? No. Is this a love story like Titanic? Not exactly. Is it a comedy? Sort of. Is it a drama? Sometimes. All of these problems were less evident when you were reading it but became enormous once you were making and marketing it. Every once in a blue moon, no-genre scripts will turn into something amazing (Pulp Fiction, Being John Malkovich) but it’s rare enough that it’s like trying to win the lottery. When you stay in the master movie genres (Horror, Action, Thriller, Sci-fi, Comedy) you’re writing a script that’s clearly a movie. Even the less glamorous genres (Drama, Period Piece, Western, Romantic Comedy, Serial Killer) will work. But when you can’t place your script into any known genre, you’re probably writing an NGM.
STILL
On the page, “still” doesn’t matter. The reading experience is a static one (you’re sitting down staring at words) so you don’t care as much if the characters and action are still as well. To this end, you can write some pretty good “still” stories. But these scripts will come crashing down once they reach the big screen because, all of a sudden, you’re asking your audience to sit down for 2 hours and watch ZERO movement. “Movies” are synonymous with “movement” so if you don’t have any, you’re going to witness a rapidly borified audience. My introduction into this was Everything Must Go, my favorite script at one time, about a guy who’d been kicked out of his house by his wife and decided to set up a room on his front lawn and continue living there. I loved that script. But once it got to the big screen, all I saw was a man sitting down for two hours. The entire story collapsed. If you’re into “still,” I recommend writing a novel. If you’re writing a movie script, however, make sure your characters are moving towards something, literally. That doesn’t mean you have to write Bad Boys 3. An investigation where the hero is walking from one new clue to the next is fine. But ixnay on the don’t-move-aye.
CHARACTER-DRIVEN (or “TALKING HEADS”) SCREENPLAYS
Every good script should be character driven on some level. But if that’s the ONLY thing going on in your script? If there’s no heightened concept or flashy plot points? You’re probably writing a novel or a TV show, not a movie. A perfect example is a movie like 2010’s “The Kids Are All Right,” or even last year’s “Manchester By The Sea.” These scripts read well (I mean, I hated the Manchester script, but a lot of people liked it). But once they reached the big screen, you’re just watching a lot of talking heads expound emotion. And that’s not good enough for the big screen anymore. People are used to showing up to the theater and seeing 300 million dollar visual spectacles. Two hours of people looking bummed out doesn’t work. The Kids Are All Right is an interesting case because it’s got more of a story to it, but that movie had to be freaking PERFECT just to squeak into the bottom level of the public consciousness. If you’re writing stritcly character driven movies, you may want to move over to TV.
The flip side argument of all this is that there are certain “horrible” scripts that are great movies. The nature of what makes them great onscreen is what hurts them on the page. For example, the Pirates of the Caribbean movies are drowning in plot, have a ton of characters, and contain a bunch of cool effects that you can’t see on the page. All these things make them boring reads but “cool” movies. Or a script like La La Land. That movie IS the musical numbers, which you can’t see on the page.
I would agree with all of this up to a certain point. If you’re writing within the system (you’re getting paid to write by the studio), than it’s more important to make your bosses happy than write a script that pleases the masses. But if you’re writing on spec, I’m sorry but you’ve got to pull off both. You’ve got to write something that’s going to work on screen AND on the page. And that’s totally possible.
I hope this helps when choosing which script to write next. Please share your own NGM examples in the comments section in case I missed anything!
Genre: TV Pilot – Drama
Premise: A modern day Indian reservation finds itself in trouble when two rival leaders go toe-to-toe regarding the reservation’s casino.
About: Doug Jung has been scribbling his way up the screenwriting ladder lately, penning the latest Star Trek screenplay, Star Trek Beyond, as well as rewriting the top secret JJ Abrams project, The God Particle, which Jung has re-conceived to make it part of the Cloverfield universe. “Scalped” has been a buzzy project due to it being based on a hip comic book that will star an all Native American cast. No whitewashing here. Perhaps it’s fitting, then, that it will appear on WGN America.
Writer: Doug Jung (based on the graphic novel by Jason Aaron)
Details: 64 pages
I read the other day that Mark Wahlberg was creating a comic book called “Alien Bounty Hunter” for the specific purpose of adapting it into a screenplay so he could build a franchise out of it.
Most writers seem baffled by this new trend – that people aren’t creating comic books because they want them to do well as comic books anymore. But so they can quickly turn them around into movie projects.
I used to get pissed off about this as well. It not only seemed like a cheat. But it spotlighted one of the biggest frustrations writers have about the industry – its fear of buying spec scripts straight up.
However, over time, I’ve warmed to the idea. I’ll occasionally read a big-budget script and struggle to understand what it would look like on the big screen. The great thing about comic books are that they give potential buyers a better understanding of what the project will look like. And when you’re putting 100 million dollars into something, don’t you want to know as much as possible about how it’s going to turn out? I know if it was my money, I would.
So all it really is is a hack. It’s the writers way of saying, “Okay, you don’t take chances on the written word? I’m going to use this workaround then.”
Which brings us to Scalped. Scalped is an example of the way that they used to do things. Nobody created this comic in the hopes of turning it into a TV show or a movie. They just wanted to write a badass comic book! And, if you talk to any comic book geek, they’ll tell you they’ve achieved just that. Scalped is supposed to be awesome. Let’s see if that’s the case in TV form.
Chief Lincoln Red Crow is the biggest name on the Lakota Indian Reservation. He owns and runs the Crazy Horse Casino, which is responsible for most of the money that runs through the community.
But you don’t build casinos on Indian reservations without fucking a few people over. And now Red Crow is paying a price for that. His biggest rival, Henry One Star, comes to him claiming he’s had a “vision,” and that to avoid a war, Red Crow needs to close down the casino pronto.
Visions carry weight in Indian reservations, but Red Crow isn’t so sure One Star’s telling the truth. There has to be something motivating him. So Red Crow sends his men out to find out what’s up.
Meanwhile, Red Crow’s investors, the Hmong from China, are pissed off. The whole reason they invested in this place was because Red Crow ran this town. If Red Crow can’t solve minor problems like this one, they’re going to fly in and solve it themselves.
The truth is, Red Crow used to be a bad dude. He wasn’t afraid to shed blood to get what he wanted. But, recently, he’s made a promise to himself to no longer sacrifice his own people, his own culture, to get ahead. When the Hmong suggest killing One Star, Red Crow is vehemently against it. He’s convinced this can be dealt with diplomatically.
Of course, it’s never that easy. And as One Star ups the pressure, as the Hmong up the threats, and as old flames and estranged daughters come back to weigh in on the impending chaos, Red Crow will need to decide if his violent ways are truly behind him.
When you read any script (pilot or feature), you go into this mode of trying to figure out what it is. Is this a kidnapping movie (Taken)? Is this a garden variety procedural (Law and Order)? Is it a soapy character-driven drama (Parenthood)?
While you’re doing this, one of three scenarios occurs. One, it becomes a familiar thing, like the shows I listed above. Two, it never commits to a show-type and ends up becoming this incomprehensible mess. This is basically most of the amateur pilots I read. Or three, which is the direction every writer should be aiming for – it becomes something in between these two worlds, something that feels both familiar yet unpredictable. I’m talking about shows like Lost, like Taboo, like Better Call Saul.
That’s where I see Scalped.
And the first lesson I learned from this script is that when you start with an unfamiliar world – like an Indian reservation – you increase the chances of creating a show that’s unpredictable, because, obviously, it’s hard to predict that which you’ve never seen before.
But make no mistake. Scalped doesn’t rewrite the screenwriting rulebook. Nor should it. Yesterday, we were talking about conflict. And I’ll talk about it again, even if you’re getting sick of it.
You see, in television, conflict is paramount. It’s more important than in features because, unlike features, you don’t have an entertaining plot barreling forward at a hundred miles an hour. You can’t. There are too many episodes, too much time to fill.
The only thing you have left to entertain with, then, is conflict. What’s at the heart of Scalped’s pilot? Two rivals who are gunning for each other. Conflict with a capital “C.”
Even better, Scalped has placed a THING at the center of its plot that creates conflict in every direction it turns – the casino. You could take all of these people in this town, send them away, bring in a whole new set of people, and you’d still have tons of conflict because of this casino. That’s good writing there. Inject shit into your script that creates conflict for you.
The only missteps Scalped makes is in its storytelling. And this is why it’s so hard to write pilots. You have to set up an entire season of storylines, so that means introducing us to people who aren’t going to be interesting right away.
For example, there’s a character, Gina, who works for the government and she’s trying to get historical status for some of the Lakota land. I know this will become relevant in later episodes. But right now, it’s boring as hell, especially when you have the rivalry of Red Crow and One Star in your back pocket. It’s like when I got a Transformer for Christmas but my parents forced me to play with the slinky Uncle Ned bought me. “But daaaaad! Ironside’s right over therrrre!” (cue Carson crying)
If you ask me, I think you should rewrite a pilot until everything’s entertaining. No scene should feel like a boring setup for a storyline to be explored in a future episode. However, I understand that’s easier said than done. Still, in this ultra-competitive TV landscape, you should try.
Bottom line: Scalped is unique and definitely worth checking out.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Use your pilot to inject as much conflict into as many things as possible. Remember, conflict is, by definition, unresolved. And since people want to stick around until something gets resolved, it’s in your best interest to create as much conflict as possible. TV is like this sick game. You keep saying to the audience, “This is going to get resolved. You’ll see if you come back next week.” And then next week you say, “I know we didn’t resolve this. But we will soon. Come back next week.” That’s what you’re doing with conflict. You’re creating issues and problems between characters and within the plot itself that remain unresolved for as long as you can get away with it. It’s dirty, but it works.
Genre: Drama – True Story
Premise: In 1971, The Washington Post had to make a decision on whether to publish the infamous “Pentagon Papers,” which exposed a multitude of injustices that the government was hiding about the Vietnam War.
About: Unknown screenwriter, Liz Hannah, has just pulled off a miracle. Her script, The Post, which made last year’s Black List, has attached Steven Spielberg to direct, and will star Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep. Hmm, I wonder if this movie will be up for any Oscars. Up until this point, Hannah’s biggest claim to fame was as a production assistant on Ugly Betty. It just goes to show that if you put in the hard work, keep writing, and keep getting better at this wacky craft known as screenwriting, good things can happen. Bonus note: This will be the first time that Meryl Streep will work with Steven Spielberg as a live actress (she voiced a part in Spielberg’s A.I.).
Writer: Liz Hannah
Details: 117 pages
If you asked every screenwriter what their biggest dream was, I’m sure number 1 on the list would be a 7 figure spec sale. But number 2 is probably that Steven Spielberg wants to direct your script.
I don’t think the average amateur screenwriter realizes just how difficult that is, though. Spielberg directs about one movie every two years. It’s not hard to do the math. He’s probably got 5-7 movies left in him. To secure one of those projects with a script of yours? It’d be like winning the lottery. Hell, it’s probably tougher than that.
But The Post is a tricky project that perpetuates a movie type Hollywood would like to distance itself from: Old White People making movies about Old White People. We’re supposed to be more diverse, more progressive, moving away from #OscarsSoWhite. A bunch of white dudes and one white woman clamoring for Academy attention doesn’t fit that mold. So it’ll be interesting to see where this goes.
The year is 1971 and Katharine “Kay” Graham has inherited the prestigious Washington Post after her husband, beloved by everyone, blew his brains out. Kay doesn’t want to own the paper. In fact, she doesn’t know what she wants. She’s just trying to figure out what comes next.
Meanwhile, Ben Bradlee, editor of The Post, is doing his best to keep up with the New York Times, which always seems to be a step ahead of the Post. Just as he’s using that problem as a rallying cry to motivate his work force, the Times prints the first set of the Pentagon Papers, papers stolen from the White House that expose the government for all sorts of injustices that occurred during the Vietnam War.
The Times story is immediately shut down by the government after an injunction, leaving what may be the most important story ever to disappear from the public eye. That’s when Bradlee realizes that the Post can come to the rescue. If they can get a hold of these papers, they can print them, saving both America and his paper.
There’s only one problem. Kay is BFFs with everyone in the White House. Hell, she and her husband used to hang out with JFK. By printing these documents, which are likely illegally obtained, she not only destroys all her government relationships, but she puts the paper at risk of being sued by the White House. Worst case scenario: there might not be a Post if these papers are printed.
Bradlee, who was good friends with Kay’s husband, has never liked Kay, nor Kay him. But if this once-in-a-lifetime story is going to be printed, these two will have to find common ground and work together. And they’ll need to do it before the government swoops in and puts the kibosh on these papers for good.
When you zoom out, there are a lot of things to like about The Post. For starters, its two main characters, Kay and Bradlee, don’t like each other. What do you want at the heart of every piece of drama? CONFLICT. So when your two main characters are diametrically opposed to everything the other does, you’ve taken the first step towards a good movie.
The stakes in The Post are also very high. You get the sense that, if published, this article could change the world. Oh, and let’s not forget about the urgency. Our crew only has 9 hours to decide whether they print the story or not. If they wait another day, the government will probably come in and kill the story.
The biggest problem with The Post though is how Inside Baseball it is. If I went to the casual sports fan and said, did you know Kris Bryant of the Cubs has a WAR (Wins Above Replacement) of 7.7? Chances are they’d stare at me like I had 16 heads. More tellingly, they wouldn’t give a shit. They just enjoy watching Kris Bryant play.
All this stuff in The Post about how the paper is run, with the editor, the CEO, the president, the owner — I didn’t care about any of it. But worse, it prevented me from enjoying the goddamn story (aka watching Kris Bryant play).
One of the keys to writing a great script is to identify the main story points then build a plot around them, stripping away everything else. The main story points in The Post are the conflict-laden relationship between Kay and Bradlee, the conflict-of-interest in Kay’s friendships with the government, finding the Times’s source who had the papers, and, finally, the decision of whether to print the papers or not.
Whenever the script stayed with one of those points, it was good. When it drifted into the tiniest details of The Post and its reporters, it lost me. That’s the Inside Baseball stuff you don’t need. And I realize there’s a fine line. You do want detail in your story. But it’s your job to know when the details start to interfere with the drama. And that happened too many times here.
Another issue I had was Kay herself. Her backstory was wonderful. She’s a woman whose husband was beloved by all, who then shot himself, leaving her as the reluctant owner of the paper, and who detests her position because she doesn’t fit into the Good Old Boy’s network.
Here’s the thing though. Kay doesn’t want anything to do with the paper. So she doesn’t really care about the Pentagon Papers. To her, they’re more an annoyance than anything. “Annoying” isn’t dramatic. One of the reasons we’re so invested in Bradlee’s plight to print the papers is because he actually gives a shit.
What they should’ve done is focus less on how Kay doesn’t care about the paper, and more on Kay’s relationships with people in the government. Then, as Kay got closer to printing the papers, she’d have to make decisions on whether to destroy all those relationships in the name of the story. A character who doesn’t give a shit either way isn’t a very interesting character.
I’m torn by The Post. It has the requisite conflict within it to merit a movie. But its drama gets buried in unnecessary details and a main character who doesn’t even want to be involved. Maybe Spielberg will exploit the script’s strengths by streamlining the story. I hope so. If this is just another Inside Baseball stuffy #OscarsSoWhite movie, I don’t think it can thrive, even with its A-list talent.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Wanna supercharge a character? Give them a conflict of interest. Kay has a duty to do what’s best for the paper. However, she’s good friends with the Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, the man who’s done all these horrible things that are exposed in the Pentagon Papers. Whenever your characters’ decisions are difficult, you’re creating dramatic tension. Whenever your characters’ decisions are easy, you’re creating boredom.
Congrats to Scott Serrandell who won this past weekend’s dialogue mini-contest. Some really funny dialogue, exactly what I was I was looking for. I’ll be looking forward to see what he does in the official Scriptshadow Short Script Contest.
Genre: Drama
Premise: (from The Black List) A multigenerational love story that weaves together a number of characters whose lives intersect over the course of decades from the streets of New York to the Spanish countryside and back.
About: Dan Fogelman broke onto the scene with the original Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone pairing, “Crazy, Stupid, Love.” His next project, the oldies-Hangover film, Last Vegas (which he made clear to me was written BEFORE The Hangover), was a sneaky hit. Mixed in there were The Guilt Trip and Danny Collins, neither of which did well. Nowadays, Fogelman has moved over to television, with his viral NBC show, This is Us. “Life Itself,” a highly ranked 2016 Black List script, is his return to features and will star Oscar Isaac and Olivia Wilde. Fogelman will direct.
Writer: Dan Fogelman
Details: 116 pages
Dan Fogelman is one of the biggest screenwriting success stories of the past decade. He came out of nowhere five years ago to sell three huge specs at a time when everyone thought the giant spec sale was dead. And he was doing it with the kinds of movies Hollywood doesn’t make anymore, mid-budget light-as-a-feather dramadies with heart.
Things looked bad when one of his biggest sales, Danny Collins, however, failed badly at the box office. It was looking like Fogelman was in trouble. So he just hopped over to the TV side where he now has one of the most buzzed about shows on television (This Is Us). When you think about it, Fogelman’s character-first stories were always better for television anyway. So we probably should’ve seen it coming.
But now Fogelman’s back with a feature. Let’s see how he did.
I have to admit, the last thing I expected when I opened a Dan Fogelman script was Samuel Jackson screaming at me. Yes, Samuel Jackson is our narrator. At least for now. There’s a lot of “at least for now” in Life Itself. To give you a taste of that, we meet Julianne Moore a few pages later. And Julianne Moore gets slammed into by a bus, her bones and guts sprayed everywhere.
Yes, Life Itself is Dan Fogelman unhinged.
Confused yet? I was. Eventually, after things settle down, we meet Will Dempsey, a sometimes-writer who’s devastated by his pregnant wife, Abby, leaving him. Will was so destroyed, in fact, that he spent six months in a nut house. Now he spends most of his days talking to his therapist, who looks a lot like Julianne Moore.
We jump back in time to see how these two met. You’ve never seen two people more perfect for each other and more in love than these two. Which begs the question – how could Abby possibly leave Will?
To answer that question, we’ll need to get into spoilers, as Life Itself is one giant spoiler-fest. Which makes sense since life itself is a spoiler fest. So don’t read on if you don’t want to know what happens. I’ll be semi-vague in order to protect the script’s twists. But what we learn is that Abby and Will didn’t divorce. A far worse tragedy occurred. And that is why Will has gone off the rails.
Oh, but if you think that’s all you’re getting here, let me remind you that Life Itself is DAN FOGELMAN UNHINGED. After getting over the shock of the earlier tragedy, Fogelman hits us with a DOUBLE TRAGEDY that was so shocking, I spent the next ten pages reading the script through tears. No, I’m not kidding.
Without getting into too much detail, we cut to years later where we follow Will and Abby’s daughter, Dylan (named after Abby’s favorite musician, Bob Dylan), growing up, and explore how the tragedies of her earlier life have turned her into the rebellious and dangerous beauty she is today.
In the meantime, we follow a poor Spanish family who is peripherally attached to Abby and Will. And, at a certain point, we realize that that Spanish families’ story is going to loop back around and re-intersect with that of our original characters. But while we’re praying it intersects the way we hope it will, there are no promises when it comes to Fogelman’s most twisty and turny narrative yet.
I apologize that summary was so vague but there are too many major twists and turns and I don’t want to ruin them ahead of the film. That makes this script difficult to analyze but I’ll do my best.
I want to start with bravery. As a writer, one of your jobs is to evolve. Each script you write, you want to push yourself into new, even uncomfortable, territory. If all you’re doing is rehashing the same old characters and storylines that you always do, you’re never going to write anything great.
I did not recognize this Dan Fogelman at all. I remembered in his previous scripts that he always played things safe and predictably. He did safe and predictable well. But you always knew what you were getting from Fogelman, and that kept his scripts from ever elevating into awesomeness.
Life Itself is a whole other beast. At first, Sam Jackson is breaking the fourth wall, screaming at both us and our hero. Then Julianne Moore gets violently slaughtered by a bus. Then we’re hit with two major fucking traumatic twists within a ten page period. Then, for the second half of the script, we’re meeting this whole other family in Spain…
It’s like, “What the hell??”
Truth be told, this story is better suited for a novel or a television show. Whenever you have multiple characters and you really want to delve into those characters (I mean, beyond the basic likable trait and character flaw), you need time. And you can only get that with the 60,000+ words a novel affords you or the 7+ seasons a TV show does.
When you try to do the same thing with a feature, you always run up against the problem of plot. Features need the plot to keep moving. And that always conflicts with character development. Yes, you can do both. And the best writers do. But only to an extent. I don’t care how talented you are. If you need your characters to destroy the Death Star by the end of the movie, you need to keep your plot moving along. And that takes away those slower character-driven scenes that are such a staple in TV shows.
And yet, Fogelman gets as close to pulling it off as one can. I’m not sure how he does it but I want to say the twists are a big part. He knows that because there’s no plot, if he hits you with 40 scenes in a row of characters saying I love you and I hate you, we’ll be bored to death. So he slams you with these huge shockers that we never saw coming and it’s like this jolt of espresso that powers us through another 15 pages of character development until the next twist arrives.
I do think this approach finally bit him in the ass, though. Because the first act was so strong and so unexpected, the second quieter half, with the Spanish family, couldn’t quite live up to it. And while there will always be parts of a screenplay that play better than others, you should try to make it so that each quarter of your script is better than the previous quarter. That’s because you want your final quarter to bring the house down. And in Life Itself, it’s the first and second quarters that bring the house down.
Still, this is quite an achievement. It’s unlike anything you’ll read all year. It’s complex yet a surprisingly quick read (one of Fogelman’s specialities). I would go so far as to say this is his best script. Could it have been better had he hit a home run in the 3rd Act? Sure. But I’d still recommend this to anyone wanting to learn how to write vibrant memorable characters.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: As much as I hate flashbacks, there’s no question that they help the reader care about a character more. For example, if I introduced you to John, the hockey player with an attitude, all you see is a hockey player with an attitude. But if, at some point, I flash back to when John was a child and showed that he witnessed his father beat his mother to death, that character is fleshed out ten-fold. He carries so much more weight. That’s what Fogelman does here on multiple occasions and it really helps his characters shine.
All right, guys. In honor of the upcoming short script contest (You’ve got 9 days left to enter – and it’s free!), we’re going to do another short script weekend mini-contest.
Last weekend we did dialogue-focused shorts and the results were a mixed bag. The short and sweet of it? You guys are better than last week. So we’re going to try this again. What I want you to do is read yesterday’s new dialogue article and then write a short script that is dialogue-focused.
The requirements are 2 of the following…
1) Irony
2) Looming sense of dread
3) Sexual tension with an obstacle in the way.
4) Use dialogue obstacles to keep the dialogue fresh.
Also, remember the basics. Utilize conflict and/or tension within the scenario. Characters say more interesting things when there’s some sort of problem in the scene. That problem can be on the surface or under the surface. Also, it’s hard to have characters say interesting things if they are not interesting themselves. So make sure your characters are unique in some way.
You can do this. Really push yourselves. Come up with some unique situations and some unique characters and have fun with the interaction.
Post your short in the comments (you can write the scene inside the comment itself or include a PDF link). Page count is open but I recommend staying under 8 pages. The winner will be determined by how many UPVOTES they get (Disqus allows you to upvote a comment – so please UPVOTE any short you enjoy).
Contest ends Sunday at 10pm.
Good luck to all!!!
