Thursday, December 06, 2007

SCRIPT TO SCRAP

My work life has begun to take on the contours of a failing marriage. I find myself sometimes talking like an unhappy husband who says things such as, "I don't hate my wife, but ... " After about 15 years, I am beginning to feel a similar warmth for working at newspapers. I don't hate it, but with each passing day an AmWay distributorship starts looking real good.

But before I start waylaying and blackmailing family and friends into joining a multi-level marketing venture, I think I should try to make an honest buck. Doing something that I enjoy. So I'm taking a stab at writing a screenplay.

Keith Demko, our very popular movie blogger, has enthusiastically lent his support to this project. I am running some ideas by him, and he is telling me what the screenplay is missing.

I'm trying to write a sci-fi thriller centered on a newspaper. It starts at night when the pretty young cop reporter who has just gotten engaged is sent out check on a report of an explosion in the sky and a large object falling to Earth. And by the way, I think that the reporter should be played by Jessica Biel. Anyway, when she comes back, she says there is nothing to report, but she is acting a little odd, a little stiff and mechanical. She says she is not feeling good and asks to go home.


During the next few days, her behavior becomes increasingly strange. She tries to eat her shoes in the newsroom , and she asks visitors to the paper whether they are in contact with "the mother ship." Her work attire goes from business casual to bikinis . The perpetually overcaffeinated assistant city editor grows suspicious, and those suspicions only deepen when the reporter turns in a P&Z article. It leads off with "The Center City planning and zoning board has approved a massive rezoning request for downtown that will create a new retail and restaurant district. City officials are predicting it will generate millions in new tax revenue, but the money will not save the wretched Earthlings from the wrath of the mighty Zardor and his astrofleet of destruction. The puny humans will get their urban renewal, Zardor-style."

The assistant city editor -- now twitching far more than normal -- decides to lay a trap for the oh-so-obviously pod woman. He tells that staffing levels mean she is going to have to work on Christmas Day and New Year's Eve. When she unhesitatingly agrees to do so, the editor falls upon her with fists flying and keeps shouting, "She's not human! She's not human!" The reporter takes the blows with no visible reaction until tentacles coil out of her mouth and decapitate the editor. This finally arouses the other reporters and editors, and once they finishing looting their fallen colleague's desk of stapler, notebooks, pens, tape dispenser, etc., they scramble to get exclusive interviews with the alien. Most of the questions are about pod woman's political ambitions, which are brushed aside with "I have no comment at this time, other than to say I am exploring several options."

Pod woman then goes to search for a smallish person who has a Ring of Power that ensures world domination. This person is friends with a dancing gopher. I haven't worked it all out yet, but you get the drift of it. But with the help of my good buddy Keith, this will be a classic.

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