Hosed

A mother tries to discover who, among her family, left the garden hose on the lawn to freeze—only to blithely discover that she herself is the culprit.

Type:

Short

Status:

For sale

Page Count:

7pp

Genre:

Comedy, Drama, Family, Mystery

Budget:

Shoestring

Age Rating:

Everyone

Based On:

“Questions I Wish I’d Never Asked,” from the posthumously published collection "Let Me Tell You" (2015), by Shirley Jackson.

Synopsis/Details

American suburbia, 1960s. In an attempt to figure out who left the garden hose outside in the freezing cold, a mother questions, in succession, her older son, her older daughter, her younger son, her younger daughter, and her husband. All deny any wrongdoing. Then the mother finds the real wrongdoer—in the mirror.

Story & Logistics

Story Type:

Pursuit

Story Situation:

Enmity of kin

Story Conclusion:

Surprise Twist

Linear Structure:

Linear

Moral Affections:

Accusation

Cast Size:

Several

Locations:

Single

Characters

Lead Role Ages:

Female Adult, Female Teenager, Female under 13, Male Adult, Male Teenager, Male under 13

Hero Type:

Anti-Hero, Ordinary

Villian Type:

Anti-Villian, Authority Figure

Stock Character Types:

Absent-minded professor, Battle-axe, Boy next door, Everyman, Girl next door

Advanced

Adaption:

Based on Existing Fiction

Subgenre:

Childhood, Comedy, Drama, Family, Generation Gap, Literary Adaption, Parenthood, Small-town Life, Teen/Youth

Equality & Diversity:

Female Protagonist

Life Topics:

Adolescence, Childhood, Mid-life Crisis/Middle Age

Time Period:

Post-war era (1946–1962), The Sixties (1960–1969)

Country:

United States of America (USA)

Time of Year:

Winter

Relationship Topics:

By marriage, Family, Genetic, Husband

Writer Style:

Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor, George Axelrod, James L. Brooks

All content on ScriptRevolution.com is the intellectual property of the respective authors. Do not use or reproduce scripts without permission, even for educational purposes.

Submitted: 2021-Apr-23

Last Updated: 2021-Apr-23

Want to read this script? You must join the revolution first. Don't worry, it's free, easy, and everyone's welcome.

The Writer: R. J. Cardullo

A former university film teacher, I turned to screenwriting several years ago. I have also written film criticism for many publications. A New Yorker by birth, I grew up in Miami and was educated at the University of Florida, Tulane, and Yale. My last U.S. address was in Milford, Connecticut; I am now an expatriate residing in Scandinavia. Many of my scripts (both long and short) are adaptations of lesser-known works by well-known authors. I am happy to re-write, collaborate, or write on demand. Thanks kindly for any attention you can give my work. Go to bio

More Scripts From R. J.

Brooklyn Boy

The protagonist of "Brooklyn Boy" knows he can’t go home again. All he can really do is think about it—about the influence on his life of Brooklyn, the Mafia, Catholicism, and World War II.

Feature Crime, Drama, Family For sale 126pp

3 readers love this script

Hemingway's War

Inspired by Hemingway’s experiences as a correspondent during the Spanish Civil War, Nick Adams is the protagonist of this script. He witnesses a traumatic event, participates in one, or learns of one during each episode.

Feature Action, Adventure, Drama, War For sale 108pp

2 readers love this script

Active Service

"Active Service" represents one man’s experiences in the Greco-Turkish War (1897): his change from urban scandalmonger to foreign correspondent, and from innocence to awareness, observation to participation, self-abnegation to self-revelation.

Feature Action, Adventure, Drama, Romance, War For sale 90pp

The Fifth Column

Set during the Spanish Civil War, "The Fifth Column" concerns Loyalist attempts (led by an Anglo-American) to stop Fascist double agents operating behind the lines in Madrid—and awaiting four columns of fellow Franco insurgents.

Feature Action, Drama, Thriller, War For sale 101pp

The Monster

A black stable-hand saves his white employer’s young son from a house fire, but the black man’s burns disfigure his face so much that he becomes a pariah, like the employer himself—and his family.

Feature Drama, Family, Horror, Thriller For sale 76pp

Welcome to Our City

Emotionally gripping and mockingly satiric, "Welcome to Our City" captures the festering racial climate of the 1920s in a vision of American life that is uncomfortably relevant to our own times.

Feature Drama For sale 115pp

The Third Violet

"The Third Violet" is a love story and an art history, yet its episodes unfold in the matter-of-fact manner in which they might occur on a battlefield—or inside a New York tenement.

Feature Comedy, Romance For sale 119pp

A Cool Million

Through the pathetic inability of its protagonist, Lemuel Pitkin, to achieve material success or otherwise meet society’s standards, "A Cool Million" darkly satirizes the myth of the American dream.

Feature Comedy, Crime, Drama, Film-Noir For sale 112pp

Animals

"Animals", an adaptation of several Depression-era stories by John Steinbeck, focuses on the subjects of the human animal, capital punishment, and marine biology—as well as on the drama of the protagonist's psychological evolution.

Feature Adventure, Drama, Mystery For sale 104pp

Fitzgerald’s Hobby, or Adventures in the Script Trade

From 1939 to 1940, in seventeen stories, F. Scott Fitzgerald humorously mocked himself as a Hollywood hack through the character of Pat Hobby. Several of these stories are adapted for the screen in "Fitzgerald’s Hobby."

Feature Comedy, Drama, Film-Noir For sale 116pp

The Vegetable, or From President to Postman

"The Vegetable, or From President to Postman" satirizes the ambitions of an ordinary man who wants to be President of the United States—that is, if he cannot make it as a postman.

Feature Comedy, Family, Romance For sale 116pp

Courting Justice

"Courting Justice" depicts a cross-generational drama among Indians, whites, and blacks, from the early nineteenth century until the American Civil War. The action takes place near the Mississippi River, in Washington, D.C., and in Tennessee.

Feature Action, Adventure, Drama, Family For sale 92pp

The Artificial Black Man

"The Artificial Black Man" depicts the journey of a Southern white through four decades in two American states. The protagonist comes to grips with the realities of race in America and witnesses his family's disintegration.

Feature Drama, Family For sale 109pp

Willie

In the pre-Civil Rights era, young Jacqueline Brown accompanies her Aunt Willie’s body by train from Harlem to the family’s home in South Carolina—learning in the process who she is and what Willie represents.

Feature Drama, Family For sale 113pp

Nowhere Man

In "Nowhere Man", the protagonist, Bobby Randazzo, journeys from college to Vietnam and back to the “horrors” of a global, postwar America—in the end finding himself nowhere, and everywhere.

Feature Drama, Family, War For sale 103pp

While the Auto Waits

A young man of wealth comes upon a young, lower-class woman in a park; each pretends to be a member of the other’s class until it's time to return to work—or leisure.

Short Comedy, Romance For sale 8pp

3 readers love this script

The Boarded Window

This is the story of a man who THINKS his wife has died of fever.

Short Horror, Mystery For sale 3pp

2 readers love this script

Company for Dinner

"Company for Dinner" is about a man who fails to notice that he’s entered the wrong home at dinnertime; no worries: the lady of the house and her son don’t notice, either.

Short Comedy, Drama, Family For sale 5pp

1 reader loves this script

The Fear

"The Fear" is an eerie tale that features not only an isolated, nighttime setting, but also a female protagonist who has an obsessive, increasingly unhinged fear that she and her husband are being stalked.

Short Drama, Family, Mystery, Thriller For sale 5pp

1 reader loves this script

Light in Darkness

"Light in Darkness" concerns a masquerading moralist who campaigns (for a price) for the closing of brothels—until he realizes that he has been so successful, he’s putting himself out of business.

Short Comedy, Drama For sale 28pp

1 reader loves this script

Hosed

Synopsis/Details

The Writer: R. J. Cardullo

Pages