I watched the 2016 Academy Award ceremony recently, that horde of virtue signallers, with their silly names, silly hair, silly clothes and sanctimony, barely able to read the teleprompters, and it occurred to me that here I am, beavering away in obscurity, when I could be writing award-winning scripts. I mean, I’ve not seen enough films to know what the people want, but I have sat through enough to know what they deserve. Since they’ve done Batman vs Superman, what about James Bond vs Obi-Wan Kenobi?
So I’m sitting in one of those Potemkin cabins on the lot (of my mind), facing three illiterate men (always men), who are drinking excellent slave-free coffee and popping the odd melon ball into their gobs, sending text messages (doubtless to Sammy Glick, their superior) and here’s my Pitch.
“Okay, so there’s this guy, he’s gender dysphoric, he’s an ice-fisher see, but the lake where he lives is melting. So he decides to go north. This bunch of 8 rednecks in the local tavern give him directions and they bully him as well, so he leaves, swearing to get revenge. He gets chased by a bear, raped by a priest, and at the Canadian border, he has to try to climb the new wall that’s been put up. He gets thrown in prison.
Turns out he’s been given bad directions and he’s been heading south all the time. He’s released in an arranged swap and sent back home. He denounces the priest, befriends the bear, kills the rednecks, gets a gender re-assignment and creates a wilderness room of peace, powered by moonlight.”
“Title?”
“Moonlight-Room Girl.”
“What else you got?”
“A Romantic Comedy. ‘Boy Steals Girl.’ The President’s son – I thought Jared Leto would be good – goes down to the Mexican border to dig a tunnel under his father’s wall. He meets border control cop, Jennifer Lawrence, they hook up and she helps him smuggle in a bunch of peons. They march on Washington, and to defuse the situation, the President appoints her to the cabinet, hoping she’ll look stupid when the border is completely breached.”
“Kind of a Hunger Games style…?”
“But she finds out the President was in the pocket of a mafia construction company, so he has her sent to Guantanamo. Jared breaks her out. and they go to Havana, where they meet the new President, who appoints them both to the Supreme Court.”
“And I’ve got an environmental thriller, ‘Swelter Girl’.
“Young girl (Sammi) in a field of poppies, playing with two dolls, shadow falls on her face, she looks up and sees a giant black wave, tornado, whatever, blackening everything. She clutches her dolls and attempts to run but the blackness overtakes her. Cut to farmhouse. Young organic farmer, single Dad, his Mom putting a cherry pie on the windowsill, turns the tap on and black slime issues forth.
“We get a flashback here – the young mother, Meghan, giving birth. Lights flicker on and off during a big electrical storm. She lies back, smiling. Farmer gathers up child (Thorsten) – sees he is deformed! He looks to Sammi and then his mother. Meghan, unknowing, looks serenely out of the window and sees a large shadow. Cut to Farmer: he rescues Sammi and they take refuge in a grain silo. And it plays out from there – a kind of cross between Wizard of Oz and The Road.”
“Be perfect for Leo.”
“Any African American roles?”
“Not if you don’t want.”
“You got a deal.”
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