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Part 1 of the original thread (warning: long):
EXERCISE: Title Bout
Jack Fear:
Simple words, single words, make great titles, don't they? Punchy but vague-wide open. And simple words have associations with other simple words, implying series or relationships, whether there are any or not. Now Warren Ellis has announced two new comics series with one-word titles-one of them is called Red. And I got to thinking about Red, and about what you could do with it as a title, and what you could do with the other colors of the visible spectrum-so I ran 'em down and did thumbnail pitches for each title, with the following results:
Orange: Paranoid thriller. Loyalist functionary Willy Clay's convictions are shaken when he discovers that a politically-motivated killing in Drumcree is a smokescreen for politics of a very different kind: Willy's growing awareness leads to an explosive climax amidst the frenzy of the Marching Season.
Yellow: A seriocomic erotic odyssey. When Hugh Malcolm wanders into the men's toilets in an unfamiliar nightclub, he begins a farcical initiation into a kinky underworld, and must ultimately confront uneasy questions about his own sexual identity.
Green: Either reportage-a "war journal," of sorts, from the frontlines of the eco-terrorist movement-or family history, following an immigrant from Ellis Island to the beginnings of a new life in the early decades of the 20th Century.
Blue: Kitchen-sink realism tracing a woman's struggle to come to grips with clinical depression. Takes a bit of a movie-of-the-week approach, but hey, it worked for The Tale of One Bad Rat.
Indigo: Historical adventure following a young Venetian trader along the "Silk Road" and into India, in search of a source of the rare and precious dye.
Violet: Countercultural teen romance: a lesbian coming-of-age story set against the early-1990s riot grrrl scene of the Pacific Northwest.
So. Look at lists, look at words, look at patterns, take them as titles... What kind of book/movie/comic would have a title like North? Like South? Like East or West?
Sweet
Sour
Bitter
Salt
Touch
Taste
Smell
Hear
See
Inside
Outside
Upside-Down
Over
Under
Through
Rip
Rig
Panic
Get the idea? Play with them, see what you come up with, and then pitch 'em to me in a few sentences.
muse:
Salt - A drama based series about a gorgeous mulatto young man who has the ability to love and make love to anyone- regardless age, race or gender. A natural empath, he's drawn to people who's lives have been carved up. Those who have felt true pain but have survived it enough to come away beautiful. He isn't really from anywhere but can find sanctuary in any place, and teaches his lovers to find it, before eventually moving on. He keeps a journal but refers to it as a map. It's not that our hero is shallow, but true falling in love is not permanent but fleeting, and rather build relationships on love's memory, he leaves and starts all over again.
Rizla B. Goode:
Bitter: A grim-up-North family saga/melodrama about the descendants of a man who starts a successful brewery in late 19th century Yorkshire.(or is that to obvious?). The founder means well, but is a complete bastard, so the next generation of the family grow up resenting him, but at the same time being thankful to him for building a thriving business. As the story moves through the various eras of the 20th century, successive generations are all tainted by the badness of the founder. Inevitably the brewery hits hard times creating more bad blood, and the contemporary family members go through the history of their family, revealing far more evil deeds than they ever suspected…
Ideally suited for an 8,000,000 part drama on BBC2.
Dr Sax: All beer from Yorkshire is shit.
Rizla B. Goode: All the better for my sordid tale.
Ganesh:
South: a lush, technicolour evocation of a J G Ballard 'drowned world'. The icecaps have melted and, as we travel south, the temperature builds, the cicadas get larger and noisier, the water level rises. Cities crumble, sinking beneath verdant jungle or glinting smooth-as-a-millpond water. Exotic blooms sprout ever mirrored skyscrapers, insects skim the surface and giant iguanas lurk, viridian and deadly. Passions blossom in the humidity...
Whisky Priestess:
Crush: (by Stephen King)
A maladjusted, lonely, bespectacled young man growing up in an orphanage discovers that his powers of emotion are such that he can literally flatten people with the strength of his feelings. One day he sees one of the carers molesting a girl in his care. The malefactor is squashed like a fly by our psychic hero's wave of hatred, and terrified, the two kids go on the run to escape persecution for the inadvertent crime. Only problem is, the boy and the girl begin to fall in love, yet he is terrified to give in to his feelings in case he kills her . . .
doubting thomas:
TASTE: A high society farce/comedy-of-errors.
"Crazy People" meets "The Hudsucker Proxy" as an anti-talented designer gets a break (as part of a cruel wager or wilful attempt to bankrupt a fashion label)--naturally, his/her atrocious designs are devoured by the public. I can't see how a villainous Nathan Lane, and possibly a monkey, can't be in this movie.
muse: Isn't it wonderful how the right monkey can make a movie?
PATricky:
SEE:The Movie/drama/thriller
Young city boy is blinded in a freak accident which results in heightened senses and visions. The journey to master this new found perspective brings him to the razor's edge of insanity and purpose as he stumbles across a secret society devoted to the exploitation of individuals with such gifts/curses... um... we could even have ninjas too!!!
PANIC: Movie/mystery/thriller
Based on the classic broadcast of Orson Well's War of the Worlds. Panic sets the young Radio Broadcaster as the protagonist who discovers a conspiracy to use a form of mass hypnosis and cultural programming through Radio. Using the ensuing mass hysteria of his broadcast as a means to outmanoeuvre these conspirators he inadvertently creates an underground army determined to overthrow the government and elevate him to a status somewhere between King and Martyr.
Ganesh:
Smell: Lars von Trier and Bjork are reunited for a tragi-comic musical in the dogme style. A young Scandinavian girl on the cusp of womanhood chokes on an asparagus spear and experiences an out-of-body warning from The Powers Beyond. When she awakens, she finds she has the power to smell paedophiles. Choreographed tragi-hilarity ensues.
Jack Fear: Bitch. Okay, rounding out a triple bill with "Panic," we have:
Rip: Satirical SF. In a corporate-owned future, copyright laws are enforced with deadly sanctions. Rip follows two well-armed corporate investigators into the seedy world of underground music-trading, tracking down the hardened criminals who distribute illegally-produced CDs. Music by Metallica.
Rig: Down on the interstate, the eighteen-wheelers rule the highways, and it's a man's life: but after long-distance trucker Cletus DuPre's eighteen-wheeler is struck by lightning, it develops sentience... and she's the baddest big-rig to ever carry contraband! Starring Jan-Michael Vincent as Cletus, with Martha Raye as the voice of the truck, who speaks to Cletus through his CB radio. Coming Wednesdays to CBS-TV in 1979, good buddy!
Christ, it's like TV Go Home in here...
zzzzenith:
Top: a dark and surreal crime drama with an occult twist. Hard-bitten undercover detective Stoke Newington infiltrates a troupe of circus performers to investigate a spate of brutal murders, but soon finds himself walking a deadly tightrope. Stoke's perceptions, ethics and even his very identity are warped as he is sucked into an alluring yet dangerous world of sadomasochism, weird drugs and sexy androgynous trapeze artists. Warning: contains clowns.
Bottom: Hilarious yet sweetly charming knockabout fantasy farce characterises the latest comic in the Sandman Presents... series. After dim-witted but lovable wannabe actor Bottom has his head magickly transformed once again into that of an ass, he sets out on a journey of discovery across the Sandman universe. Expect a host of unexpected cameos from the likes of Lucifer, Tim Hunter, some ravens, that girl from A Doll's House, Tefe Holland, John Constantine, the Dead Boy Detectives and the sodding Endless. Warning: contains elves. And possibly Tori Amos lyrics.
Whisky Priestess:
Over: (Major League meets Field of Dreams meets Bull Durham meets ever other feckin' baseball film ever made. In England.)
Starring: Geoffrey Rush as Geoffrey Boycott
Joanna Lumley as his wife
Alfred Molina as the scheming captain of the Pakistani squad
An ageing Test cricketer is desperately trying to hold on to his position on the England team for the vital test match against Pakistan. If he makes just one more test run he can break the record and retire to write his autobiography and appear on They Think It's All Over.
His position is threatened by a cheeky youngblood (played by Leonardo di Caprio) who's a genius with the bat and has his eye on Geoff's wife. She embarks on an affair with the youngster, telling Geoff the night before the match that not only has the captain called and said he's only a substitute in the match, it's "all over" between them. Geoff, insane with grief, burns his bat and goes on a wild drinking spree. Next day he turns up, hungover and shabby, to watch Leo win the match and his wife's heart. But oh no! Evil Alfred Molina, bribed by a Pakistani nuclear weapons manufacturer with a billion-dollar bet on the Pakistani team winning, has poisoned the cucumber sandwiches and Leo dies on the pitch. Geoff has to step in at the eleventh hour, win the game, his wife back, and Save the World!
Jack Fear: "The movie that will have you cheering, 'Thank God it's Over!'"
Whisky Priestess: Come on, I can make it work, I know I can! Joanna's in, all we have to do is sign up Leo and get Nick to write the script.
ElijahDProphet:
Upside Down: A gay love story made by Americans taking place in Australia.
Outside: Made for the sci-fi channel and direct video release. The story of five people on a spaceship that cannot re-enter the atmosphere unless one of them goes....OUTSIDE!
Inside: the story of a young comic fan and shut in, who due to his HUGE lawsuit when he is fired from a corporate job for no reason, can have his comics hand delivered buy Swedish bikini models, who he insists wear full length fur coats. Our young here needs to come to terms with his fear of the outside world when he is called upon to save the corporate fat cat who had him fired in the first place.
Whisky Priestess:
Under: Starring Jennifer Lopez
The heart-warming true tale of a champion limbo dancer in decadent 1920s Paris. She is the toast of the town until, during a particularly enthusiastic bout of perversion with Henry Miller (Gary Oldman) she breaks her spine in five places. He immediately abandons her and, confined to a wheelchair, she is reduced to begging on the streets hanging around on the fringes of Paris's criminal underworld, and drowning her sorrows in absinthe. One day, however, a naive young art student - a failed medic - sees her in a cafe and wants to paint her. They become friends, then lovers, and Jacques (Matt Damon) slowly uses his physiotherapy skills to nurse her not just back to health, but back to the top (as it were) of her profession. The film end on a triumphal note when she becomes the most celebrated limbo dancer in Europe thanks to her incredibly bendy spine.
Biologic K-9 = poptastic drama bomb:
HALCYON: The story of an old mans first girlfriend. A recounting of his nineteenth winter and the reason he left her for the comforts of the sea. "in the halcyon days of my youth."
mr_Thomas:
Plimsol: Touching Rom-Com about the love affair between a plimsol and a foot. Plimsol played by Woody Allen. Foot played by Dolph Lundgren.
Rizla B. Goode: Hey, I'd pay to see it.
Whisky Priestess: Isn't that already in pre-production at Columbia, bankrolled by Converse? There's talk of changing the title to Sneaker, though.
mr_Thomas: yeah, and there's a porn version of it in production, called Pump
lunk:
DOWN: Pumping rollercoaster of an action movie set in Michigan bakerlite mine. Management greed has led to comprised safety standards at the mine. This directly places the lives of a mining team (Harvey Keitel as the grizzled team surpervisor, Josh Hartnett the inexperienced newbie) in danger when their liftshaft collapses, trapping them at least 10 inches below ground level. Truck Demin (Mel Gibson) is the maverick rescue team leader whose unorthodox methods have brought him into conflict with his superiors earlier in the narrative. Truck has an itchy nipple threating to to flare up and has promised his wife Sara Lee (Helen Hunt) that this will be his last mission before retiring to run a locust ranch. Time is running out for the luckless miners (who in a desperate bid to keep going embark on a taking-off-their-shirts-and-dancing-saucily-to-Donna-Summer's-"Hot Stuff" montage). Meanwhile as Truck and his team descend, his wife tearfully confesses an affair with young Hartnett to her best friend (Rosanne Barr). Then Truck loses his nipple talcum powder... |
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