Writing a Screenplay for the LA Comedy Shorts Film Festival

After much deliberation over ideas for the feature-length script challenge, I decided to go with this one:

A story about an aspiring crime novelist. He took a job at the state paper writing the obituaries for material, but after five years, his lack of success is deeply discouraging him. When his girlfriend leaves him, and he loses his job, his anger and frusteration take over and he decides that in order to really write something great, he's going to have to get inside the mind of a murderer. What better way to do that than to BECOME one.

His murders begin to take a pattern early on, and he takes on a method of irony. This meaning that the way he murders a victim depends on what the victim had done to make him want to murder them.

His plan, initially, was to write about his own exploits, and then sell it as a non-fiction crime novel once the case goes cold. However, amidst his plan, he meets a woman.

The woman eventually finds his writings, and finds them engaging and interesting. When she finds out from one of her friends that it's based on crimes committed in the area, she finds it a bit disturbing, but the writer manages to convince her that it's harmless use of material. However, while watching the news one night, she finds that the police issued a statement that they'd found a body days after she'd read the writer's story about it.

From this point, hilarity ensues as the writer's futile efforts to cover up a case that's catching up with him fail.


Comments, concerns?

Might be hard to generate sympathy for a main character who's a serial killer.

Clearly, you've never seen Silence of the Lambs or Dexter.

Also, if you want to see an example of a similarly-themed movie done well, find a copy of A Shock to the System.

In this very black comedy, Michael Caine plays a middle-aged executive who is passed over for a long-awaited promotion (in favor of a younger man, of course) and who is consistently nagged by his castrating wife (Swoosie Kurtz). One night, he inadvertantly kills a homeless man and finds that he's gotten a powerful "rush" from the experience. He then starts to kill off the people who have been making his life miserable. Along the way, a pretty young secretary (Elizabeth McGovern) falls for him and starts to learn the truth, and a bloodhound police detective (Will Patton) begins to close the net on him.

If you want a sympathetic (and funny) serial killer, check this one out. You don't want to copy it, of course. But it might give you some great ideas...

He ought to kill a dentist from blood loss after yanking each tooth...

I'll have to look this one up. I quite enjoy Michael Caine, and I love dark comedy. Clearly.