Keeping things simple late in the story...

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  • Keeping things simple late in the story...

    Joe and Frank are going to assassinate a senator. This senator has done something very controversial so that he's gotten a lot of heat in the press. Huge crowds are demonstrating outside his office as a result. The senator is meeting another important person secretly somewhere besides his office. That is where my characters, Joe and Frank, are planning to assassinate him. The problem is, I don't know how Joe and Frank find out where this place is without going through a lot of exposition. Because this meeting is decided upon late in the story, a bunch of exposition to explain how they find out where the meeting location is will really slow everything down, right when everything's supposed to be speeding up. I just want it to be simple.

    The reason I don't want the meeting at his offices is because quite a few things happen outside the meeting place post-assassination that require there to be no one else around (and at his offices, there are huge crowds of people demonstrating). So, any ideas on how they find out where this place is? Simply and easily? By the way, this is a comedy.



    MODS: Sorry if I placed this in wrong forum. Feel free to move.
    Script Reviews - 5 a week! http://scriptshadow.blogspot.com/

  • #2
    Re: Keeping things simple late in the story...

    Story Development would be the right place.

    You probably need to set up something earlier in the film to allow forsimelivery of the information later on. For instance, if you establish early on that one of the guys knows a secretary in the office, then it's just a quick phone call as the senator passes by the secretary to head to his secret meeting.

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    • #3
      Re: Keeping things simple late in the story...

      Hey Keen, thanks for taking the time to respond. I considered that yet these guys are such bumbling morons that I cannot conceive of a scenario under which they would know anyone associated with the Senator.
      Script Reviews - 5 a week! http://scriptshadow.blogspot.com/

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      • #4
        Re: Keeping things simple late in the story...

        As they sneak towards the Senate Office Building they 'bump' into the Senator sneaking away and then follow him. Bump could also mean fender-bender depending on how thematically bumbling your dudes are.


        R.O.T.

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        • #5
          Re: Keeping things simple late in the story...

          Hey Roger, thanks for responding. I'm actually considering this as a backup option. However, even though they're bumbling, it would be nice if figuring out where the secret meeting is taking place wasn't so coincidental. They've travelled all the way across the country to do this. To have them bump into him feels just a bit too lucky.
          Script Reviews - 5 a week! http://scriptshadow.blogspot.com/

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          • #6
            Re: Keeping things simple late in the story...

            I realize that, but perhaps they have discussed their own get-away route and in scouting out that route they come across the Senator making his own get-away. It's not perfect, but a little set-up of some sort may make the chance encounter plausible.


            R.O.T.

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            • #7
              Re: Keeping things simple late in the story...

              The place for exposition is *before* things happen. Think of Act 1 as the "set up act" where all of this info will be set up, but it isn't important until later. You can still set things up in Act 2, but the deeper into the script you get, the more you want to have everything already set up, so that things can just *happen* and we already know why and how and where.

              - Bill
              Free Script Tips:
              http://www.scriptsecrets.net

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              • #8
                Re: Keeping things simple late in the story...

                I'm trying my hardest to do that, Bill. I really want to just set this up early so I don't have to think about it. The problem is the meeting in question comes late in the script as a result of a series of other situations. Moving the revelation of this meeting up would mean moving up all the things that lead to it. I guess I could do that. But it feels like a lot of work for something that should be a relatively simple easy to solve. (and yet I can't solve it!)
                Script Reviews - 5 a week! http://scriptshadow.blogspot.com/

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                • #9
                  Re: Keeping things simple late in the story...

                  By the way, this is literally the LAST thing I need to figure out with this screenplay. As soon as I do, it's finished. I have been trying to do so for TWO WEEKS. So, just letting you guys know how important suggestions are. They could be the difference between me finishing tonight and me finishing another two weeks from now.

                  Script Reviews - 5 a week! http://scriptshadow.blogspot.com/

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                  • #10
                    Re: Keeping things simple late in the story...

                    Could the meeting with the other important person take place after a public event like a ribbon cutting cermony maybe? If it's something like that, I think I would buy that publicity precedes the appearance. Bring the mountain to mohammed as it were. Bring the meeting to the pre-existing scheduled event.

                    Or heck, they could just learn about it as a newsblip on a car radio. "Senator McCorkinshmidt has just announced he'll meet with such and such to appease such and such controversy."

                    If it's not plausible to bring this meeting to or near a public event, if it's a quiet meeting over drinks/back room politics sort of stuff, maybe you can just have your bumblers ask thier cabbie where Senators go to drink.

                    Just some punting. Hard to know what'll work without more specifics.

                    If all else fails, pull a Wayne's World, have them run into a security guard with a lot of information that seemed superfluous when he said it.
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