ideas for movies part 1

I am clearly not a movie producer or screenwriter, which is too bad for humanity as a whole or, at a minimum, certain segments of the population; like those with braces. I often dream of being a screenwriter but those dreams are usually prempted by my dreams of building walkie talkies which usually leads to a thorough analysis and critique of my dreams in general. 

In my day to day life I am often bombarded with ideas and I usually feel the need to either duck and hide or carry around a piece of aluminum siding just in case (luckily for me there is a big collection of aluminum siding in the lot next door where that unfinished house sits - I can't believe they haven't at least finished the siding by now). So, though I have zero chance of ever making a movie, that hasn't stopped me from formulating a variety of amazingly great ideas that, if given the chance, would render those high-powered movie moguls not only speechless, but also with a clean bill of health at no extra charge. Here is an idea I've been working on and keep in mind I haven't completely fleshed out all aspects at this pre-pre-pre-production phase.

The movie opens with a man sitting in a room. I haven't decided how many windows, if any, this room should have but I am leaning towards three as my uncle is in the window business and I would like to help him out. It is also unclear if the movie will open with him standing or sitting as the sitting may lull the audience into a stupor that they will never recover from or it may connect the audience, who is probably also sitting, with the man in ways that a standing man could never do. If he is standing, an actor with suitably strong legs would need to be cast as I would want the actor to give the impression that he is standing with ease and, if asked, he could stand for hours and hours. It is also unclear if the man should be alone or should be accompanied by a friend or a confidante or a cactus that he so badly wants to over water, but knows that he shouldn't. The relationship between the man and his cactus could be a pivotal aspect of the overall plot where the director explores the depths of human-desert plant relationships and uses that as an allegory about the plight of modern man and also of desert plants or the opening scene could be a throw away scene leaving the audience wondering what was the point of the man sitting in the wonderfully bright room with modern, impeccably installed windows accompanied by either a fellow human or cactus. In the end, the final decision over whether to use a person or cactus comes down to which auditions better. 

The man appears to be either the most intriguing person we've ever seen or just outside the top ten and looking to move up. He isn't a sit-in-a-room-with-a-cactus sort of guy, or maybe he is and it is his evil twin brother we should be watching as everyone gets them mixed up. Then, after reviewers are starting to question the decision to have the entire movie take place in a small room regardless of how quaint and deserving it may be, the ceiling literally collapses as I have long been a big fan of both unexpected entries to rooms as well as expanding the ways in which we utilize ceilings as up until now it is quite predictable and boring (plus my other uncle is in the ceiling business and needs some work- we all told him years ago that he should expand his company to also work with walls and floors, but he scoffed at us - although it is possible he was momentarily choking on a piece of cracker. Always eating crackers he was and building ceilings). 

Through the ceiling comes a helicopter with some sort of militia looking for our hero (too soon? I'd really like him to be a hero as would the fingers I'm typing this with and I find it a good idea not to ignore the wishes of my fingers too often or else they scratch and pinch and refuse to help with the food intake forcing me to eat like a pig, which is only tolerated by those I eat with on the occasional barnyard-themed weekends). Turns out he was in some sort of witness protection program and that he has some sort of key piece of hyper-important information that the government irrationally needs and just can't take the time to knock or call first. The audience will hopefully see our man as the lone hope for all of us against the tyranny of the unyielding kill-at-all-costs-up-until-the-Chinese-takeout-arrives-but-only-if-they-remembered-that-plum-sauce-as-it-is-delectable autocratic forces of the government and if not, then we may need to turn this into a musical comedy.

Luckily our man had a contingency plan just in case storm troopers came through the ceiling that he had just finished painting Sistine Chapel-style and was still recovering from the neck cramps and he flees through the trap door in the floor which is covered with a lot of paint drips reminding him that he should have covered the floor more thoroughly with old newspapers (if this lack of foresight about keeping the floor clean during the painting for the ceiling angers early audiences it may lead to a scene being inserted during the opening credits in the European distribution of the film showing the laying of the newspapers with poetic flair while Brahms is playing on an antique phonograph that either keeps skipping or is a rare composition of a modern-thinking Brahms who was exploring the use of skipping in his music).

Our man escapes through the trap door and into another hidden room that is nearly identical to the recently-vacated one only this time with no windows as it is underground. He spends only a minute here as we can hear chainsaws and jackhammers and what sounds like a family of woodpeckers above trying to break in. He just can't wait to see the woodpeckers who had babies earlier this spring! 

Our hero is refreshingly relaxed and the audience will hopefully appreciate his relaxed nature in the face of danger and will adopt some of this in their own lives as people are a little too highstrung these days and he is looking in the mirror and adjusting his hair and silently and over-dramatically bemoaning his receding hairline before racing out the door and jumping into an incredible car noticeably smudging the door which will most likely cause audience members to audibly gasp which is one of my goals as a budding writer. We can tell that he wants to buff out the smudge but his enemies are close by and he drives off obeying both the speed limit as well as his father's rule about drumming his fingers obsessively on the steering wheel as it drives everyone batty.

One thing I am unclear about at this point in the process is what does he have that the government wants. Should I go the typical route of an important set of files or photos or cheats for a video game on a jump drive or some sort of key or passcode or recipe for the best hummus? Or maybe they need a sample of his hair for a new exhibit at the museum and he is refusing to just give them a sample without some sort of hair in return. Or possibly the government is just bored and they have nothing to do this afternoon until their friends get off of work and they plan to get some dinner and watch the game. Or maybe we have it all wrong and this guy is pure evil or, seeing how hard it is to achieve total purity in this day and age, something-close-to-actual-purity-so-much-so-that-it-will-undetectable-to-all-but-the-keenest-eyes-and-the-chance-of-that-guy-with-the-keen-eyes-watching-my-movie-is-slim-as-I-am-sure-a-man-of-his-ocular-proclivity-will-either-be-occupied-with-more-important-tasks-or-watching-a-better-film-not-wanting-to-waste-his-eyes-on-just-any-images and the government is trying to capture him to prevent his unleashing his most recent weapon or gas or brand of faulty tap shoes on the world. 

Regardless, a chase ensues. It is as much of a chase as it is a chess game and that is because it also happens to be an actual chess game between our hero and a government-appointed grand master chess player who is part of this military force purely in the off-chance that a grandmaster chess player is needed which almost never comes up which renders him a little off guard. Note: for those who are not impressed, it is really hard to film a high-speed, high-anxiety, car-flipping, gas tank-exploding, cows-eating-grass-and-acting-generally-unimpressed-as-cows-are-relatively-unimpressed-at-the-best-of-times-until-the-grass-has-all-been-consumed-or-scorched-as-a-result-of-the-chase-and-then-watch-out car chase and to carry out a top caliber chess match at the same time. Now, I'm sure that some of the more callous of the critics will surmise that the chess game was only inserted to try to tap into the highly sought-after chess-playing segment of the population and they would at least be partially correct with my reserving the right to upgrade that to completely correct at a later date. 

Finally, when it seems that our hero cannot divert capture any longer he grows tired of being the hunted and just gives himself up by slamming on the breaks which defies all expectations for their ability to break so adeptly. If there was ever a great opportunity for a "breaks" company to sponsor a film and receive exposure and market penetration at an almost unprecedented level, this would be it. In fact, to prove a point, all cars and trucks and hijacked school buses involved in the chase will stop on a dime (not the same one, weren't not that cheap- we will have numerous dimes scattered on the street) aside from one not using our break sponsor's product and not only will that car crash in the most graphic means the producers can afford, but the car and its occupants will also completely vanish thus leaving open at least one, albeit a confusing and nonsensical one, option for a part 2 if the film is critically acclaimed. 

Our hero walks slowly towards the out-of-breath government officials who are clearly glad to have nabbed their man at least partially because their spouses have cooked meatloaf and gravy served with a sides of green beans and mashed potatoes and they would hate to be late because the food is not half bad and because I have created their characters as meatloaf-and-gravy-and-sides-loving human beings and they really have no choice.

The next morning, our man wakes up in a holding cell and he can't decide whether he should pace or do pushups or to sit cross-legged and attempt to touch his nose with his tongue. As he struggles with this decision, his cellmate wakes up and interrupts his state of deep thought. As the cellmate slowly turns around, we discover that it is either the man's hairdresser who should have been arrested years ago for those overly offensive and controversial haircuts or his cactus-salesperson who has been illegally smuggling in quite-legal cacti for years for confounding reasons as it would have been really easy for him to perform this importing without any criminal element or risk of going to jail and yet he insisted on living on the edge. Friends shook their heads and suggested "import the cacti and then go rob a bank if you want to" but their words of advice fell on deaf ears. As this part may be tough to play, I am already searching for an actual hard-of-hearing cactus salesperson. Send resumes ASAP. 

The two men well up with emotion upon seeing each other and the hug for just long enough for the audience to start to wonder about the nature of their relationship. They whisper into each other's ears simultaneously so that neither can understand what the other is saying and a long exchange is shown where they both keep starting to whisper at the same time and then indicate "no, you go first" followed by "no, you" followed by something else said in unison until the two of them give up whispering, equally impressed at their ability to whisper for so long in complete unison without any rehearsing. Also, the two actors have been hugging for so long at this point, that they are also starting to wonder about the nature of both their character's relationship as well as their own and whether the actor hired to play our lead actor wants to purchase a few cacti once the film has wrapped.

At ten o'clock the government negotiators have finally arrived and all present wonder if they either forgot to set their alarms or are trying to be cool and fashionably late. The aide for the negotiator is trying to tell her as she enters the scene that this is not a moment where it is possible to be fashionably late as she is dealing with possibly traitors or moles or undercover government negotiators who are already far cooler than she can ever be so she may as well quit while she is ahead and just admit that she is late because she couldn't decide whether to perm or straighten her hair this morning and finally settled on a look that could be described as "wilted Italian parsley".  

It is clear that our two have finally communicated and got their story straight as we see in a series of amazingly fast and comical flashbacks from their cell overnight filmed with a Benny Hill-style humour that is a welcome break from the tense nature of the film for the audience allowing them to laugh for exactly 25 seconds as well as a chance for the director to press a few of those cool buttons next to the record button that he is always pressing to the point of where a little part of him dies inside each time he does.

A lone light bulb sways slowly above a rickety table which our hero, his cellmate/friend and the government negotiators sit around even though the table is square which involves a bit of coordination for all involved to make a shape resembling a circle. An electrician has been called to do something about the light bulb as the swaying is fairly distracting and having no light shade makes all who happen to look at it momentarily blinded which is sort of chuckle-worthy the first time it happens and completely not the next 11 times. Finally, after a lot of awkward silence while the actors all wait for the actor playing the electrician to arrive, the electrician for the movie walks in and begins to fix the light as he thinks it is just a light that needs fixing and not a million dollar scene in a billion dollar movie (depending on how my loan from my great uncle goes, I may have to divide both of the figures by 10 or even 100). This scene is quite long as it takes the electrician a long time to figure out how to remedy the situation and the director will hopefully not cut corners as it is important for the youth of today to recognize how complex and time consuming some electrical work actually is. 

At long last the electrician is done and he presents the bill to the negotiator's aide who makes a face that seems to say "why would I have to pay for this - I actually liked the stereotypically swinging light in the first place and plus negotiator's aides don't make nearly as much money as one would think and that is probably at least partially due to my poor job performance and it is something that those higher up have spoken to me about and threatened to cut out my free morning omelette until I improve." And then the electrician pulls out a submachine gun surprising everyone and pulls off his dirty work jacket to reveal an equally dirty spy-looking jacket that everyone instantly can see as part of an amazing Halloween costume. 

Before anyone can react, "the electrician" (I'm calling him that as it is totally unclear whether he has to be an electrician at all as there will never be any need to prove that he fixed the light although it would be a bonus in the long run to have a workable light in this room that also doubles as a room to hang out and discuss both modern and ancient philosophies over cups of steaming rooibos tea when the shoot is over and even occasionally during a shoot if the director is particularly relaxed and/or nearsighted) and our two guys race out of the building dressed as a cute teenaged girl with braces and her slightly-too-youthful looking mother who is carrying one of those almost-laughably large saddle bag purses who often frequent high security facilities like this as their way of not appearing too culturally aloof with moderate results.

Another chase scene ensues and, due to monetary constraints, only small snippets can be filmed and they will only be shown if the audience claps loudly enough to fill the applause-o-meter on the screen. The movie ends with our hero and his friend who is obviously miffed that he wasn't considered important enough to be given a name or at least a cool moniker winning the lottery (they stopped during the previous chase scene as they had to use the washroom and just couldn't hold it; though they did discuss the pros and cons of wetting one's self via being tasered before finally deciding that the long-term health of their bladders was more important than one would think. While at the gas station they also bought a lottery ticket). The movie then cuts to 6 months later where the two have clearly had hair cuts that give them both the illusion of Jewishness as well as drawing attention to their I-can't-believe-they're-not-Slavic-although-they-could-be-Slavic-as-we-on-the-whole-are-not-totally-sure-what-that-would-even-look-like cheekbones. We see them volunteering at a local charity, with big smiles on their faces and we are left wondering how they avoided being caught and what were they even being interrogated about and why did they want to catch him in the first place before the final close up that reveals all which I can share at this time as it would (a) give away the end of the movie, (b) not make any sense and (c) possibly I don't have an ending at this time at all and instead am considering either not ending the movie at all as I believe that is sometimes giving the audience exactly what they want and audiences sometimes need to be treated like an incessantly-barking rabid dog which is to encase them entirely in jello rendering them stationary, bouncy and more edible.