2 out of 4 stars
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Mystified By Stephanie is an illustrated novel presented as a screenplay by Daniel A. Shea. On his acknowledgments page, he claims that it is a fictional account; however, by the style in which the tale is told about the main character Dan Shea, the story feels more like an embellished memoir.
Growing up, Dan was an inventive trouble maker. Partially deaf, he used his differentness to his advantage as a child and eventually became quite proficient at reading lips. When all of his friends decided to enlist in the Marines, Dan gladly joined them on their trip to the recruiter…only to be turned away because of his partial deafness. His girlfriend, Stephanie, was also doing everything she could to try to keep him from joining the military; she even turned the recruiters away from their door when they tried to pick him up for a special hearing test he was guaranteed to pass (wink, wink). Despite his girlfriend’s meddling, Dan does eventually have the opportunity to use his unique abilities to serve his country.
While reading this book, one needs to keep in mind that it is essentially a working draft of a screenplay. It includes notes about staging and background music with a major emphasis on The Talking Heads. The piece also contains a lot of pictures of locations and people that are referenced in the novel. There are notes warning the reader that the author must be contacted to find the status of semi-classified government information. So, keeping all of that in mind, Mystified By Stephanie is a rather humorous story about childhood mischief blooming into adolescent and adult shenanigans. There were moments that had me chuckling and trying to envision the story unfolding on the big screen.
Unfortunately, the story is presented in a very choppy style that makes it a bit hard to follow along. There is some jumping about in time and location, as well as a very confusing progression of Dan’s time in the military. The title’s namesake, Stephanie, plays such a minor role in the screenplay that one wonders why her one-dimensional, weak character has even been included at all. The copy also needs a strong going over by an editor. While I am not the most well-versed in critiquing screenplays, this piece has enough grammar and editing mistakes to be distracting to the reader. Additionally, many of the pictures and illustrations are distorted from poor formatting or were of very poor resolution to begin with.
If this were a straight-up novel with this many errors, confusing plotlines, and formatting issues, I would probably assign it a single star. Since this is technically a screenplay and has some potential, I’ll give Mystified By Stephanie 2 out of 4 stars. I think with a little more work and some solid editing, Shea could have a marketable movie screenplay. Anyone who grew up wild in the early seventies would enjoy some of the nostalgia present in this work. A filmmaker or director would also be able to see this for the potentially fun movie or play that is lurking in the pages of this screenplay.
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Mystified By Stephanie
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