Ed Hooks' thoughts on the script

So I sent an e-mail to Ed Hooks, hoping he would have time to read through the script. This always seems like a long-shot since he is a very busy man.. But was I proven wrong (again..) Within an hour or so of sending him the script I got a reply with his thoughts: ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Hey Kristian. It is good to hear from you. Regarding your new script, if you boil the situation down to its essential story, you have a boy and a girl meeting in a public park for a first "date". The boy does a truly stupid thing when he blows up a condom, and so the girl leaves. It reminds me of a girl I approached in New York's Central Park one sunny summer day almost forty years ago. I was being so "cool", walking over and sitting down next to her. She smiled, and I smiled back. Then, casually - just like in a Humphrey Bogart movie - I pulled out a cigarette and lit up with my Bic lighter. The girl's expression changed to disgust as she waved the smoke from the air around her face. Then, with no further conversation, she just got up and walked away, leaving me alone with my cigarette. (I stopped smoking thirty years ago, by the way). Your guy did weird things with a condom, I lit a cigarette, another guy may have just eaten an onion sandwich. It does not matter a lot what the guy does just as long as she is turned off by it. My personal opinion is that the introduction of the condom into the scene is too jarring. Maybe it is not unusual for a guy to have a condom handy for a first date, but I find it hard to believe he would show it to her that way. He would have to be a real idiot to show the condom on a first meeting, even if he is trying to cheer up a child. The girl sees the condom and figures he was planning to have sex with her on the first date and calls the whole thing off. I would be surprised if she stayed around after the condom thing. She has two reasons not to go further with this guy. First, he must not be all that bright if he is blowing up condoms. And the fact that he brought a condom to the first date suggests that he only cares about sex. If I was in her place, I would walk off, too! You have a lot of extraneous stuff going on in order to justify the guy not having money with him. And him being broke doesn't add much to the story anyway. 1) Whose story is this, Kristian? Right now, it looks like you are trying to tell his story and her story at the same time. I suggest you look at the entire sequence of events from only one character's perspective. 2) Maybe it doesn't matter, but I wondered why they are meeting like this for a first date. Were they paired up by an on-line dating service? You might simply want to have the two of them coincidentally sit next to one another, an accidental encounter. My best relationships have started like that. It is not necessary to have her see him searching for money to buy flowers. If he walks up with flowers dangling dirt from the bottom, Jen and the audience will understand that he picked them rather than bought them. Simplify the story, Kristian. "This is a story about a girl named Jen on the day she met ….." Or make it a story about him. I'll stand by in case you revise it. Ed" ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- So grateful that he took time to read through our script! Will show this to the rest of the group so we can sit down and go over it together.