suggestions on an injury

[tpfkabi]

i started a screenplay. i'm on page 13. close to the end i want an injury. well, let me explain.
guy/girl break up
after guy sees girl with another guy
as comic relief, i want to have the guy pull pranks on the new guy
in reality the girl isn't into the new guy too much
there's a montage of orig guy in funny disguises pulling pranks and i want the last one to be one a little dangerous and that would cause an unintended injury
-the injury needs to require a brief hospital stay, but not be something that the people wouldn't be willing to forgive/not press charges..when the orig guy confesses later
=====
by playing the pranks and putting the new guy in hospital, he actually puts them together and she starts to fall for the other guy

maybe this is unclear, but any help would be appreciated.
thanks.

[ReelHotGames]

My suggestion is that whatever the final prank be, it actually come off as if the "new guy" has pulled some boner move that has landed himself in the hospital with some sort of embarrassing injury (something involving privcate parts possibly) - that way he doesn't want to draw further attention to the matter and cause any problems. And you know, ass humor is always funny... If you're into that sort of thing

[tpfkabi]

thanks for the suggestion, but i don't want to go the Farrelly  route. this is not a gross out comedy by any means. i was planning on a dark film about loneliness with patches of comedy, a light heart, but as i link scenes together it doesn't feel that way at all. well, i'm not sure. i haven't quite figured out how to write scenes without dialogue. in my head the wordless scene might be 2-3 minutes, but on paper its just a paragraph.

[ReelHotGames]

as comic relief, i want to have the guy pull pranks on the new guy
in reality the girl isn't into the new guy too much
there's a montage of orig guy in funny disguises pulling pranks and i want the last one to be one a little dangerous and that would cause an unintended injury.

That makes it sound Farrely in a bit, but if you want it to be a darker comedy then I think pranks isn't the best way to go, make it spying, using disguises to follow the girl and her new guy, a creepy stalker thing with humorous outcomes as the "stalker guy" keeps hurting himself INSTEAD of the other guy. Then in the last "bit" there can be an accident of some sort that causes fingers or toes to be lost, the loss of a digit that can be re-attached can be funny.

But the thought of an injury caused by the ex-boyfriend as a result of a prank without there being charges filed seems implausible, a better choiuce would be that charges are filed - and the girl who is not really interested in the new guy or the old guy ends up with the thrid guy, the cop filing the report, leaving both guys out in the cold.

[tpfkabi]

i've had the beginning and ending for a long time..you know, scenes that you have to have...it's the connecting that is hard, making it actually fit the story and not there just to be there

the feel for the scene is more like the one in Rushmore where Murray and Schwartzman are pulling pranks (smashing bike, cutting brakes)
there's a lot of threes in the story, and the pranks get progressively worse.....i was thinking the first would be something dumb like giving the guy gum that turns his mouth black
i can't think of something that would keep someone in the hospital for a day or two that's not too serious......what i'm trying to do is setup a scene where the orig guy feels bad and takes a gift/flowers, etc and when he gets there he hears or sees them getting closer, talking in the room or something w/o them seeing him, so he listens for a while and decides to leave the gift with one of the old people at the front counter, which is kinda odd...here he realizes what he did actually had the opposite effect....and later he does come clean and i want the other guy to be able to forgive him.....i don't know it might not ever make sense.

[ReelHotGames]

the feel for the scene is more like the one in Rushmore where Murray and Schwartzman are pulling pranks (smashing bike, cutting brakes) there's a lot of threes in the story, and the pranks get progressively worse.....

After your last post that's exaclt what I thought of when you were talking about sort of a dark comedy prank stuff.

i can't think of something that would keep someone in the hospital for a day or two that's not too serious......

That's probably because anything that keeps you in the hospital for a few days has to be fairly serious. They send surgery patients home the same day sometimes. A few days in the hospital is very serious, so loss of a digit, or accidental poisoning come to mind, but even poisoning wouldn;t require more than 24 hours.

You would need to have something along the lines of a traction set up where he had to be specifically hooked up and immobile maybe.

[SHAFTR]

Lockjaw woudl be funny...i'm not sure how you get that though.

[rustinglass]

He gets his eye superglued to one of those tourist telescopes and has to unscrew it from the ground (don´t ask me how)and carrie it all the way to the hospital. While doing this he sees that the girl is coming in his direction, so he puts it down and pretends to be watching the statue of liberty or something. The girl greets him and he says  "leave me alone, I'm trying to watch this", she kicks his ass and messes up the eye even more.....
He has to wear a pirate patch for like a month. :infinity:

[tpfkabi]

interesting, but this happens in a college courtyard.....in anytown, usa...definintely not New York so there won't be any tourist attractions anywhere close by.
thanks for the suggestion though

[jtm]

Lockjaw woudl be funny...i'm not sure how you get that though.

A freind of mine who worked in an er told me a story about a guy who came in with a bloody girl stuck in his lap.  It turns out she was going down on him and her jaw locked and he grabbed a lamp and busted it over her head.