Friday, November 01, 2013

(Rookie) Screenplay Review: Thief

Premise: A successful actor holds a reunion at his mansion for some old friends. But trouble ensues when there turns out to be a thief in the group, and unresolved feelings start to resurface...

Written by: Michael Cornetto, Sandra E. Watson, Thomas Pascal, Gary Rademan

Technical: Undated draft. 115 pages.
















Gabriel's Place de Ra-Zon (above): an episcopalian-worshipping, sexually unrestrained house of drug-induced hormone horrors.

The plot eventually becomes a mystery, but does start out clear enough: Gabriel is a successful actor,  hosting a reunion at his L.A. mansion for some old friends. Among the cast of characters we have Fransesca (who was, until recently, a man named Frances; as well as an old lover of Gabriel's). Darnell loves cocaine, cock, and drugs. Roddy (formerly known to the group as Burner) is a recovering addict, currently sober. I'm making these characters sound way, way more interesting than they actually are. The other characters include Johnny, Cherry, Jimmy, and Jeana. Do any of them ever say anything intelligible or do anything sensical? Nope.

Ghastly. Horrendous. Murderous. These words don't even begin to describe how bad Thief actually is. Thief is disturbingly bad in every way, and truly bottom-of-the-barrel writing. It is written with English words, but might as well read in martian, as it contains serious language mistakes. Most of the descriptions are cliche (written by a person with English as a second language?) The vast majority of the language choices are bizarre ("The name hits Cherry like a hot wind.") ("Jimmy (28), still looks like a boy scout,") ("The kitchen is big enough and stainless steel enough to feed an army.")

The big thing that puzzles me is that the formatting isn't that off. Thief has the basics down: scene location, description, and dialogue. The content is atrocious, but the formatting looks like it was corrected by someone with an iota of intelligence. The formatting is clean and easy to follow. 

I read this script in its entirety. But asking for a coherent summary of Thief, is like asking your dumb buddy for a coherent summary of his last acid trip. So would it be too much to say that Thief is the worst screenplay ever written, in the history of the galaxy? Well, it's certainly not out of the question.

I am still scratching my head, wondering who or what could possibly write something of this calibre.



About: I got this script from an amateur screenwriting message board. I have tried to contact the writers of Thief (I don't know if they're still around--this script is not too new), asking for background information on it. If I recieve a response, I will post it here.

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