I should say I agree with everything kotte said. He's the man, he seems to know what he's talking about here.
If anything, you've overwritten this script a great deal. That's not a negative comment, but it says something about what can be put on the screen. Only write what you can show. Too much description just fills the page, and will get you into a hole. Since you're shooting this yourself, it doesn't matter TOO much, but this is stuff you should be telling the actors in your directions to them.
If you haven't, read Boogie Nights (the deleted scenes on
www.ptanderson.com are really good, too), and listen to the Boogie Nights commentaries. Hard Eight, too. Read the Magnolia screenplay, and listen to the secret commentary. It's accessed the similarly to the Pulp Fiction one, except you need jelly. Apple works best. It's a bit of a cliche here but I can't think of any other source that's been so helpful for me (maybe others can).
In the first Boogie Nights commentary, PTA talks about working with Macy, and how he sticks to the script verbatim. Also, how he is able to write something like "Beat." in a certain context, that, because of that context it conveys PARAGRAPHS of information. You need to condense this, and use action words, instead of passive verbs. Each paragraph should be as short as it should be. No needless elaboration, the main idea, and maybe a couple sentences more. People don't like reading big blocks of text. I realize you wrote this for yourself, so it isn't much of a concern now. But it will be.
Page 2, for example, was a bit hard to get through because of its repetition. You go to great extents to describe everything about what Nicole is feeling, when a few lines, and some apt direction would have sufficed and made it easier to read.
A screenplay is your blueprint, your architecture. Like kotte said, again, thoughts, questions, these things don't work here. Condense it. Pick up The Screenwriter's Bible by David Trottier. It seems you have a general grasp of format, but that book, and Final Draft, will go a long way to solidifying all of that.
Dialogue is/should be very telling. Page 12, "Nicole shakes her head with disappointment." Period. The end. None of the rest of the paragraph is necessary. All that is implied, and the dialogue, if well-written, will carry it. The actors will pick up on that.
Page 17 is the heart of the script, where things start to get interesting. I wish you would've gotten there sooner. Trimming the script will help that a great deal, but also, remembering that this is a visual media will help even more. Write what can be shown, without using "We see" or anything like that.
Another example:
NICOLE: Now you're comparing yourself to Thomas Edison?
(Actions...)
ALEX: No!
Delete those actions in-between. They are more internal and are all implied anyway.
"Nicole truly loves God, and Alex truly despises the idea of God."... Again, it's obvious from the dialogue, which, really is a good thing. So that can be deleted.
ALEX: Seatbelt.
Again, you can delete most stuff that comes after that. It's implied, so that part is well-written, just overwritten.
Keep looking for passages like this to trim as much as you can. Good luck. Break a leg.
