With a ban on international road racing on the horizon, a vagabond enters the world’s longest automobile race for a final shot at glory.
2 Likes
I enjoyed reading this script and it certainly rolled like a movie in my mind. I would’ve given it a higher rating had I felt a connection to Godard that lasted beyond his kindness to the young boy who caused him to crash and lose the race in the beginning. Ah, I thought, a loveable rogue but it went downhill from there as there wasn’t anything loveable about him; his behaviour toward Schuster, his cruelty toward Stefan but his total disregard for his friend, Du Taillis’s suffering made him very unlikeable. His willingness to endure 9 months in prison as punishment doesn’t really offer the reader a sense of how or why there was any change in his character. The truer hero is Du Taillis and he does rather steal the spotlight from Godard by finishing the race despite his illnesses. I think I’d liked to have seen Faustine ride alongside the prince and make Godard experience along the course of their adventures how it feels to be disregarded/disgarded. But lots of funny moments so well done!
1 Like
I left a far more scathing review of the Waif but I think this is a significantly better constructed script.
Here are the totality of my notes as I read through:
The concept of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps wasn’t reworked into the “positive” connotation until the 1920’s ~a decade prior to this. Maybe you could make the joke of him being the first to coin the term in this way. Also the concept originated in Germany.
“Unskilled laborers” all labor requires a degree of skill, let’s see a french diplomat lift a box correctly. Call them laborers.
*invented not “inverted” snert.
22 hour days is pretty unrealistic for driving, I’d say 19-20 max.
Scene 116 a bit too ridiculous, woman guillotined, chekov reference, both be damned.
Generally I think this script needs more notation of style, at times it reads like a Wes Anderson, others like a Mel Brooks, I think sitting more in the Anderson camp and playing the crashes and unfortunate moments like his miniatures/stop motion would be very stylistically impactful and resonate with the vibe of the work.
I agree with the above reviewer, we need more from Godard, more of his soul which cuts through his facade of regality and the imprisonment needs to be a grander sacrifice, he should fear imprisonment dreadfully and it should be a true act of valor. I as well agree with the bit about Faustine, we need some conclusion there.