Good work tonight.
This is where we're at so far. Continue to break the rest of the story. Bounce ideas off each other.
PILOT EPISODE
WALTER enters the apartment, on his cell phone with his wife, Betty, who kicked him out of the house and wants a divorce. While he gets ready for bed, Walter lets Betty know how desperately he wants to save the marriage. (Establish through attitude that they’re childhood sweethearts.) But Betty’s not interested in reconciling. Walter has spent more time in the air than he has at home, and she's tired of it. For all the time he’s away, she might as well be single. She says goodbye.
Walter tries to go to sleep, but his mind is racing. This isn’t how his life was supposed to turn out. He turns off the light.
OVER BLACK, SUPERIMPOSE: 11:35pm
From the crack under the bedroom door, we see the light go on, and through the door, we hear Walter’s plea as he’s back on the phone, imploring his wife to let him come home. Again, she ends the call.
OVER BLACK, SUPERIMPOSE: 2:07am
Again from under the door, we see the light go on. Through the door, we hear Walter make another plea to Betty to let him come home.
SUPERIMPOSE: 5:15am
Traces of light peer through the curtains. The apartment is quiet…when AMANDA enters, wearing a little black dress, holding a bottle of champagne, clearly drunk from a night of partying in Miami.
She kicks off her stilettos, heads into the bedroom and gets in bed…when she sees Walter in her bed. Surprised by his presence, she starts beating on him, defending herself. (Perhaps she knows martial arts.)
It’s revealed that they’re roommates, but they’ve never met. Amanda lets Walter know that he's in her room. He wasn’t expecting her to be in town. Even so, he has no business being there. She kicks Walter out and sends him to his bedroom.
We see Walter’s bedroom. It’s the size of a broom closet. He’s clearly not happy about it. He hears his cell phone ring. He looks for it, then realizes It’s in Amanda’s room. He goes back to the room, but the door is locked. He knocks on the door, asking Amanda to let him in.
Inside the bedroom, Amanda is passed out on the bed, with Walter’s cell phone ringing next to her.
The next morning, Amanda opens her bedroom door, hung over. Walter is asleep in his boxer shorts, just outside Amanda’s door. She steps over him, heads to the kitchen, and attempts to sober up – either with coffee or hair of the dog.
Amanda heads into the bathroom and brings her drink with her. The sound of the shower being turned on Walter wakes up. He goes back into Amanda’s bedroom, sees that his cell phone is dead, is pissed at Amanda, and locks to door to get some sleep.
Amanda gets out of the shower and heads to her bedroom...but the door is locked, and Walter won’t let her in.
Amanda goes into Walter’s room and throws his suitcase with all his clothes out the window. On the street below, the suitcase either hits a car or Walter’s wife, Betty.
Betty knocks on the apartment door. When the door opens, she sees Walter is in boxer shorts…Amanda is in a towel. Betty takes it the wrong way. She thinks Walter and Amanda are having an affair. Now there’s no chance for reconciliation.
Walter and Amanda are stuck with each other.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I'm very happy with how the Pilot pulled together. Thanks to Ed for getting us focused on a good outline.
ReplyDeleteI think if Amanda is like taking her clothes off as she is heading the bedroom, just her dress, her shoes, down to her underwear and they are still on the floor like that in the morning, in like a path to the bedroom, it could be another element to solidify Walter's wife's suspicion.
ReplyDeleteWhat if Walter had a blow up doll with him when Amanda finds him in her bed?
ReplyDeleteI just wrote a ton and of course it was deleted.....
ReplyDeletedanielle weintraub.
I was saying how I like the flow right now of the pilot. I also liked that Amanda stayed in the flat vs. leaving in order for walter to go back into the bedroom.
Also, I wasnt too sure about his wife situation, only because I don't feel that younger audiences would find it interesting or unique. It is just an old school comedy routine. I was still thinking it would go more unique or indie type style. What is our age range? Does it matter?
Christina, it could work to have Amanda's clothes on the floor. It also depends on Walter's character. If he saw her clothes all over the floor and he was a neat freak (like Felix Unger in "The Odd Couple"), he might pick them up and do something with them that would piss Amanda off. The clothes on the floor could be part of the progression in their conflict.
ReplyDeleteNo blowup doll, Gabriel. it's antithetical to Walter's character.
Danielle, be specific when you write about going "more unique or indie type style". Post your vision. What situation do you see Walter finding himself in that would force him to stay in the apartment with Amanda?
Because of the ages of the main characters, we definitely want the show to appeal to an audience in their 20s and 30s - which means we should be doing an intelligent comedy - clever and witty, with stories that have solid structure and great twists.
danielle weintraub
ReplyDeleteindie as is I can see this show or want to see this show on IFC or how HBO does "Bored to Death", "Flight of the Concords". IFC has a pretty witty/unique show called Portlandia. It's a skit show but it works in a really new and unique way that a more youthful audience can find humorous.
When I think of Walter and his wife situation, my mind goes to king of queens, 2 1/2 men, etc all those sitcoms on abc, cbs.
I know it's now good to say a negative comment without coming up with a solution. But it's hard to think of ideas without knowing these characters voices yet.
If I had to give them a situation as to why they are stuck in the same apartment but the most basic is that even when you sign a lease together you cant break it for a year. But if you want a more extreme situation then the airline payed for the apartment and it's apart of their pension to live there in the building for the rest of the year and the only spare room available was to room with Amanda. I really have to brainstorm about it more.
I have been watching this funny British show "come fly with me", if you can download it it's worth watching. It's a skit show from the guys that did "little britain". Nothing like what we are doing here, but it's about an airline and has silly characters.
The idea that the wife walks in on them has been used. But that's because people catch their significant others cheating on them. We give the audience something standard so the can make assumptions. The situations don't have to be new, the way the characters act and react in the situations is what should be new.
ReplyDeleteWhat we have now is the wife comes in finds them, gets pissed, tells Walter it is over for good now, and storms off. We got a problem, things are playing out just like they should.
Maybe this is the last straw and the wife thinks "fuck it you can have him." She could still think walter is with amanda, she can even make a comment about how she feels bad for amanda and then perhaps the two women verbally gang up on walter till he goes storming off to his tiny room.
it only switches up who storms off (we would need more than this), but the point is we should have some kind of twist. The whole episode Walter is trying to get his wife back, he is trying to get out of the tiny room and into the big room. But by the end of the episode he is running to the tiny room to hide from his wife (as well as Amanda).
Sorry I wasn't in class for the hashing out of the pilot, but you guys have done a really fantastic job here!
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree with Danielle that the flow is good. The pace feels right and with snappy dialogue this could really be a fun start.
Something that might be funny at the end, Robert's post triggered this, when Betty walks in, how about Walter is picking up after Amanda and they are fighting. So maybe he's standing there, trying to figure out how to fold a bra, and yelling at Amanda that every time he comes to the crash pad she leaves her crap everywhere and he has to pick it up after her. Amanda comes out of the shower in a towel to yell back about how he moves all her stuff. Meanwhile, Betty is standing in the doorway, convinced it's a lover's spat.
I like Ed's idea of having the wife declare Amanda can have him. Maybe even because he's so worked up, Walter says something regrettable in response (like an agreement, or something else to get her goat), but immediately tries to take it back and chases after her.
That's just what I was thinking... can't wait to work on this more in class tomorrow!
As Walter has come into Amanda's messy room and he's on the phone with his relationship falling apart his OCD kicks in and he starts to clean up the room before crashing on the bed. maybe every time he wakes instead of just hearing the conversation outside the door we see him cleaning something intensely.
ReplyDelete