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No! Do my work for me ...

Whisky Priestess

14:30 / 27.01.03

All right, seeing as it's pass-the-buck time, how do people fancy writing me a story for a 20-minute film from this fragment given to me by a director? It's unpaid, but a screen credit will be given if you come up with a corker, plus free tickets etc.

What I have to work with is the following:

"NOTHINGMAN"
Having lost his job, his wife and then his home, a man attempts to commit suicide, but despite jumping off a ten-storey building, running in front of a car, taking overdoses etc. he just can't die. Forced to stay alive, he is propelled on a journey of rediscovery where slowly but surely he learns to love life again.

(HINT: It's the journey of rediscovery part I'm having trouble with. The rest is jam.)

14:40 / 27.01.03

Perhaps every suicide attempt is a copy of a celebrity suicide - tries to blow his head off like Kurt Cobain, tries to drive himself off the road like James Dean etc etc, and through each failed attempt and subsequent survival he learns to live again through the art of the people who succeeded before him, making him feel that he's destined for higher things.

Just thinking off the top of my head here.

It's not a comedy by any chance is it?

Whisky Priestess

14:42 / 27.01.03

Wish it was ...

The Natural Way

14:51 / 27.01.03

My bro wrote a short comic strip about a *jumper* who, on the way down, sailed past another jumper and immediately fell in love and found a reason to live. A series of unlikely events foil the suicide and they live happily ever after. She always had difficulty topping herself, too. Fate had something else in store for her, etc. The accidents that sabotage the suicide attempts could be understood as some kind of divine force - some higher plan in operation - and could conceivably engender faith......

But I suppose the director wants the guy to be physically indestructible or something, right? How annoying.... That scuppers that, then.

15:00 / 27.01.03

How 'bout every time he attempts to top himself, he manages to kill a boatload of innocent people instead. From this, he discovers that he greatly enjoys killing people, and joins the Royal Marines.

15:08 / 27.01.03

Perhaps with every botched suicide attempt he inadvertantly saves someone else's life.

15:19 / 27.01.03

An angel comes down to tell him that God is real and loves him, and he has to live his life in happiness. The man then goes all "oh why did I lose my wife, job, home, yada yada yada". whinge whinge whinge.

The Angel goes all frowny and dark, then says something like:
"The lord our god is a vengeful god. You must love him with all your heart and praise him and preach to others, telling them of his magnificent glory and boundless love - or burn forever in the fires of hell. They are your choices."

That'd learn 'im.

15:24 / 27.01.03

What if he just learns to stop whining and adapt?

Whisky Priestess

15:50 / 27.01.03

Excellent, excellent - all good ideas, people. Thanks. Anything's better than staring at a blank piece of paper mumbling "uplifting journey of discovery - bah!"

18:21 / 27.01.03

Actually, I'd favor the idea that he can't die, but does gruesome damage to himself... bruises, broken bones, missing limbs, tattered flesh, zombie-type stuff.

Or maybe, that he just gets a bit... thinner. Less substantial. Gradually turning himself into a ghost.

And what could make him become more substantial?

18:28 / 27.01.03

A reverse on Sax's idea:

everytime he tries to kill himself, he inadvertantly kills someone else (i.e. jumps off building, lands on some lady, who breaks his fall, but gets her neck snapped; jumps in front of traffic, but driver swerves to miss him and hits lamppost). Maybe by mourning them (to whatever extent he's capable of), he ends up mourning himself....

22:01 / 27.01.03

Could you shoot it in black and white with a whey-faced protagonist who bears a striking resemblance to Harold Lloyd? This unfortunate gentleman is so keen to quit this vale of tears that every time he runs out of his house to plunge from a tall building, vault into an electricity sub-station or play chicken with a locomotive, he catches his braces on the front door and is plucked from the jaws of death at the last minute. Eventually it dawns upon our hero that he has invented bunjee-running and the material comfort afforded by a lucrative career in touring pub entertainment and night-club events is all it takes to make him happy and content.

No?

Okay. Having hacked his nuclear family into small gobbets with an axe, Mr.X (no relation to the estimable Mr. Xoc) is driven to suicide by guilt. As he discovers that a divine entity (cunningly disguised as a pulsing spiral galaxy) has rendered him invulerable through repeated an ineffectual bids on his own life, his journey to enlightenment is aided by an angel looking suspiciously like Uncle Albert from 'Only Fools and Horses'. At the climax of the film he pulls some tiny objects from his pocket, realises that they are ZUZU'S FINGERS and suddenly regains the will to live.

Or. Play everything entirely straight. Mr. X nearly dies every time with lingering and excruciatingly painful effect until finally he can take no more punishment and decides to wait for his injuries to shorten his life or a whim of fate to carry him off. BUT every action in the film is acompanied by Loony Toon-style sound effects.

Whisky Priestess

12:37 / 28.01.03

Hmm. Thanks, Orr ... I think. I have now written the treatment and sent it off: it's a conventional suicidal-boy-meets-nurse story. A happy ending, unfortunately, but with a kind of spooky dark edge. As we all know, love is the only thing that can reanimate a lust for life, apart from huge amounts of money, and we don't have the budget even for pretend millions. Pretty actresses are so much cheaper.