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Armand’s Pass 10: Essence Only
What I learned is… Getting to the essence is very important because it helps us communicate our ideas in a clear and economic way.
LOGLINE: A ghost haunting the house where he was murdered must save a group of college kids from impending death when the masked killer who was never caught returns for an anniversary spree.
DRAMATIC QUESTION: Will Tyler the ghost stop and unmask his killer?
MAIN CONFLICT: Can Tyler, the ghost, and Maddie, the final girl, save this new group of college kids from being killed?
DILEMMA: Tyler faces these choices: To allow the serial killer to “win again” without interfering and “live” with the guilt of letting more innocent college kids die OR Intervene, having to confront his biggest fear and fail anyway.
THEME: Sooner or later, you must confront your fears in order to move on.
EXT. MANOR – SUNSET
Aerial view of an impressive manor surrounded by the forest.
INT. FATHER’S PRIVATE OFFICE – CONT.
Tyler, a privileged and arrogant college kid, gets drunk in his Father’s office.
Charles, Tyler’s half-brother, knows Tyler was kicked out of school, questioning when Tyler will tell their intimidating Father. Charles tells Tyler he lacks the courage to own up to the consequences of his actions.
Ivan, the scary manor caretaker, tells Tyler his father is on the phone. Tyler sees Charles driving away as he speaks on the phone (nervously) with Father. Tyler has an opportunity to be honest with his father but he doesn’t…
EXT. MANOR – NIGHT
Tyler’s college friends, including Tyler’s girlfriend Maddie, arrive to party for the weekend. Tyler humiliates Ivan in front of his friends. Ivan glares as the kids enter the manor.
INT. TYLER’S BEDROOM – CONT.
Maddie wonders why Tyler is showing off and being rude, when he’s nice and caring when it’s just the two of them. Tyler opens up to Maddie, showing his good side.
INT. MANOR – NIGHT
A masked serial killer murders all of Tyler’s friends one by one. Tyler and Maddie hide.
INT. FATHER’S OFFICE – NIGHT
Tyler is killed in a moment of cowardice. Maddie runs away. Before Tyler knows what happens next: He becomes “cursed” and turns into a ghost.
INT. MANOR – NIGHT
Montage: Tyler discovers his ghost abilities: invisible, levitating/flying, can touch or move material things, possess people’s body)… but he is not very good at it.
Tyler regrets being a coward and not saving Maddie and his friends. He refuses to visit the parts of the manor where his friends were killed, especially his Father’s office (where he died).
INT. HALLWAY – NIGHT
Tyler has “nightmares” of the masked killer re-appearing.
INT. MANOR – DAY
Tyler’s Father visits. Tyler wishes he could contact his Father. Tyler possesses his Father’s Assistant. Tyler touches his Father through the assistant’s body. For a moment, Father lets down his guard.
EXT. MANOR – DAY
When the assistant exits through the gates, Tyler is kicked out of his body. Tyler’s ghost understands he can’t leave the manor.
EXT. ROAD – PRESENT DAY (20 YEARS LATER)
A van drives through the woods.
INT. CAR – DAY
A new group of college kids show up to party for the weekend. We meet Dallas and Lex, paternal half-sisters who don’t get along. Plus: Socialite Girl, Influencer Girl, Jerk Jock, Stoner Kid & Gaymer Kid.
EXT. GENERAL STORE – DAY
The college kids make a stop for booze and snacks.
INT. GENERAL STORE – CONT.
We learn the manor was abandoned for 20 years, sold recently to a wealthy tech guru (Dallas and Lex’s dad). Lex, a true crime fanatic, points out that the caretaker is believed to be the serial killer who was never caught. Lex explains how the disgruntled caretaker killed the kids and ran away with some of Tyler’s father’s money. Going off the grid to avoid being caught. The college kids are the first people going into the manor since it was sold recently.
The college kids are warned by a shaggy MYSTERIOUS STORE ATTENDANT about the urban legend: that the Caretaker of the manor is believed to be the killer who was never caught and still roams the woods waiting to strike back.
The college kids dismiss the warning. Lex is intrigued by the Store Attendant.
EXT. MANOR – DAY
Tyler stares out of the window as the college kids enter the driveway.
INT. MANOR – DAY
Tyler deals with the arrival of the whole group, pranking them. The college kids are too self-absorbed, too high or too lost in their mobile devices to notice, but Lex believes something paranormal is going on.
EXT. MANOR – DAY
The killer sneaks into the manor.
EXT. MANOR – NIGHT
The party is getting started. Dallas is irritated by the presence of Lex.
INT. MANOR – NIGHT
The stoner kid separates from the group.
INT. BATHROOM – NIGHT
The stoner kid is murdered by the masked killer.
INT. HALLWAY – NIGHT
Tyler runs into the killer as the killer opens the bathroom door, bloodied knife in hand. Tyler freezes in panic. Is this a nightmare again?
The killer walks through Tyler’s ghostly body and stops. The killer seems to notice he’s not alone. Tyler fears the killer will somehow get him… But the killer leaves quietly.
INT. ROOM – NIGHT
Tyler is afraid to enter, but once inside: Tyler finds the stoner’s dead body, triggering his ghost PTSD.
The ghost of the stoner kid appears.The stoner knows Tyler’s life and how coward he was during the first massacre. Tyler feels guilty, but he is too scared of the killer to help the new college kids.
The stoner’s ghost “moves on” to rest in peace in front of Tyler’s eyes.
INT. MANOR – NIGHT
Tyler now attempts communicating with the drunk college students to WARN THEM but fails.
He tries to scare them to leave, but FAILS.
The college kids separate in small groups as the party continues.
EXT. WOODS – NIGHT
Tyler tries to save Gaymer Kid being chased by the killer outside the manor by flying off over the woods with the very confused Gaymer in his arms…
The confused Gaymer causes Tyler to accidentally drop him into a large wood chipper; that the killer calmly turns on to finish off the job.
The killer has increased “awareness” of a supernatural presence. But leaves.
INT. MANOR – NIGHT
Tyler realizes he doesn’t have the skills to defeat the killer. And can’t let this happen again.
Tyler figures out how to speak with Lex using her ghost-hunting app. The supernatural energy summoned by Tyler to communicate with Lex kills the internet and cellphone service.
Tyler and Lex try warning Dallas and the college kids, who are more concerned about the lack of wifi.
While Tyler is scared of running into the killer. Lex is brave and wants to find the killer in order to stop him.
Tyler learns from Lex that his father is dead, and regrets not being honest with him.
He finds out Maddie made it out alive.
Tyler possesses Lex’s body (jumps into her body) to convince her sister Dallas about the serial killer and the ghost.
Dallas doesn’t believe Lex until she sees the killer in action: killing one of her friends: Influencer Girl.
Now: Dallas, Lex, Socialite Girl and Jock are the only ones left alive.
Tyler points out Jock is just as obnoxious as he was when he was alive.
INT. HALLWAY – NIGHT
The killer chases the kids and Tyler. After he prevents the killer from killing the kids, the killer becomes “aware” of “a presence.”
The killer throws a machete at Tyler’s direction. The machete goes through the ghost’s body and lands on the wall. Tyler screams and runs for his “life.” The killer seems to be able to listen to Tyler’s screaming.
EXT. MANOR – NIGHT
The kids get in the car. They crash on their way out. The killer jumps on top of the car, tries stabbing the kids. Tyler attempts hitting the killer. The killer is able to grab and hit Tyler. Tyler is confused by feeling pain.
EXT. MANOR – NIGHT
The Mysterious General Store Attendant appears and fights the serial killer, saving Tyler, Dallas, Jock, Socialite and Lex from death. The killer escapes.
INT. MANOR – NIGHT
The Store Attendant is Maddie in disguise, now a badass who has lived off-the-grid for the last years. Tyler is shocked to see Maddie.
Maddie reveals the caretaker is alive and has been been sending her messages all these years, before she went off-the-grid.
INT. MANOR – FLASHBACK
We see college Maddie after Tyler is murdered. Defeating the killer and surviving the massacre.
EXT. MANOR – FLASHBACK
Maddie speaks with the cops next to an ambulance. Maddie explains how the cops assumed the caretaker is the killer and that he was never caught.
Maddie grows up obsessed with the massacre and the killer being out there. This alienates Maddie from everyone, including Charles, Tyler’s half-brother who is seen trying to be close to her.
INT. MANOR – PRESENT TIME
Maddie is told Tyler is a ghost, which she refuses to believe at first.
Tyler complains of pain for the first time since he became a ghost. Lex deducts the killer has a great emotional power over Tyler and it manifests from Tyler’s fear of him.
Lex performs a seance. This makes Tyler manifest in front of them.
Maddie cannot believe her eyes. Tyler is in front of her, still a college-boy.
INT. DINING ROOM – NIGHT
As Tyler gets closer to Maddie and moves even closer towards confronting his guilt, Tyler discovers his ghost body is “moving on” (dissolving into air) like the stoner’s. Tyler realizes he might be able to “rest in peace” if he stops the killer.
INT. KITCHEN – NIGHT
Lex and Dallas grow closer as the danger increases. Dallas compliments Lex’s courage.
The killer cuts the power in the manor.
INT. BASEMENT – NIGHT
Lex finds clues about the killer’s identity and motive: Print outs of Lex’s true crime posts on social media. A box with paparazzi polaroids of college-aged Maddie.
The killer appears and kills Jock and Socialite. The killer chases Lex and Dallas.
INT. HALLWAY – NIGHT
Tyler uses his ghost powers to protect the girls and fight the killer, but the killer outsmarts him. Lex saves Dallas. The serial killer stabs Lex, killing her. Dallas feels guilty. Tyler wishes “it had been him” instead.
INT. MANOR – NIGHT
Tyler has failed to protect the college kids. Maddie has also failed after all these years. Dallas gives up, wishing she was dead instead of Lex. Tyler can’t confront the guilt, walks away.
INT. FATHER’S OFFICE – NIGHT
Tyler and Maddie enter. Tyler finds an old painting of his late father. He apologizes to his father’s painting. The ghost of Father manifests and Tyler admits his mistakes. They get closure. Ghost Dad moves on. Tyler sets out to fight the killer.
INT. MANOR – NIGHT
Dallas wants to avenge her sister and friends. She grabs an axe and looks for the killer. The killer abducts Dallas.
INT. MANOR – NIGHT
Tyler rescues Dallas and fights the serial killer. But the serial killer can fight back and injure Tyler. Tyler and Maddie unmask the serial killer.
Tyler’s half-brother Charles was jealous of Tyler’s relationship with Maddie and, discovering he also fantasized of killing people, orchestrated the whole massacre and pinned it on Ivan.
Charles realizes Tyler is a ghost. Charles realizes he needs to “exorcise” Tyler out of his life once and for all.
EXT. MANOR – FLASHBACK
Charles confesses he killed Ivan the caretaker during the original massacre and got rid of his body as a plan to frame the disgruntled worker as the killer who finally snapped at Tyler and friends. Charles dumps the caretaker’s body in the back of his car before he left the manor in the opening.
INT. MANOR – PRESENT TIME
Charles didn’t win the love of Maddie before she went into hiding and he spent the whole family fortune in luxuries and bad investments. Deep down, Charles was so delighted with the memories of his killings at the manor and the power he felt, that he kept the manor as his last asset. He sold the manor to Lex and Dallas’ father and hopes to re-buy it at a lower price after he finishes his new killing spree. Charles has been obsessed with Maddie all these years. Sending her the messages until she disappeared.
Charles was planning to pin the murders on goth, true-crime obsessed Lex (based on her social media posts about Tyler), but Dallas will do.
Charles offers Maddie a chance to join him,
Tyler becomes tangible and fights the serial killer with Maddie’s help.
INT. MANOR – NIGHT
Tyler and Maddie defeat the killer. Tyler apologizes to Maddie for his cowardice. Maddie is badly injured and dies.
Lex turns out to be alive. Lex and Dallas grow closer and become true sisters.
Tyler, freed from his ghost state, and Maddie, her soul appearing like in her college years, move on to rest in peace together.
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Rob Bertrand’s Pass 10: Essence Only
What I learned: I learned that the essence of a scene is the most important core idea that you are trying to convey.
Logline: Two teenage sisters become convinced that their house is haunted, only to discover an obsessed teenage boy living in their walls, pretending to be their dead mother.
Dramatic Question: Can a traumatized teenager overcome the guilt of her mom’s death and defeat the monster haunting her home?
Main Conflict: Annie keeps experiencing frightening paranormal activity, but her father Jack thinks she’s making it up as a desperate cry for help.
Dilemma: Can Annie overcome her grief and learn to stand up for herself or will she let the guilt of her mom’s death ruin her life and relationships?
Theme: Childhood is over the moment you realize that monsters are real.
EXT. WEDDING VENUE – DUSK
Jack and Nora Andrews attend a wedding with their daughters Annie, 16 and Jessica, 8. Annie is asked to drive home because her mom and dad are too drunk to drive.
INT. ANDREWS CAR – NIGHT
Annie and Jack argue after he makes an intolerant comment about gay marriage. Distracted, Annie runs a stop sign and the family is broadsided by another vehicle. Nora dies at the scene.
INT. LIVING ROOM – DAY
At the funeral reception, Annie overhears Jack tell someone that if he hadn’t let her drive, that Nora would still be alive. We are introduced to the friendly elderly neighbors.
INT. ANNIE’S ROOM – DAY
A year later, Annie is getting her makeup done by her best friend, Jocelyn. We learn that Annie has a date with a boy she met online, but she doesn’t really want to go. Jocelyn admits to breaking up with her boyfriend.
INT. FATHER’S ROOM – DAY
Jessica enters to wake her father for work and discovers he fell asleep clutching Nora’s wedding dress while watching his wedding video. Empty liquor bottles litter the floor.
INT. ANNIE’S ROOM – DAY
Jack pokes his head in to say goodbye before leaving for work and remembers that Annie has that “thing.” He think’s getting out of the house and socializing is a good thing. Annie asks when she can get her driver’s license. Jack doesn’t think she’s ready. The conversation ends with an argument. Jack is saved by the doorbell.
INT. LIVING ROOM – DAY
Annie answers the door and is thrown off. Danny looks nothing like how he described himself. Instead of blonde and athletic, he has greasy black hair and is super skinny. He’s sloppily dressed in dirty clothes. Jocelyn and Jessica decide to follow Annie from a distance.
EXT. COUNTY FAIR – NIGHT
The date with Danny is awkward and uncomfortable. Danny wants to know everything about Annie’s dead mother. Danny thinks a mother is the heart of a family.
EXT. FERRIS WHEEL – COUNTY FAIR – NIGHT
Danny and Annie ride the Ferris wheel. Annie admits that she sometimes thinks the wrong parent died. Danny tries to kiss Annie. Repulsed, Annie rejects Danny, who doesn’t take it well. Annie texts Jocelyn that she needs to bail. Jocelyn texts back where to meet.
EXT. BATHROOMS – COUNTY FAIR – NIGHT
Annie tells Danny that she’ll be right back. She enters the restroom, then exits the opposite side, where she meets Jocelyn and Jessica. They disappear into the crowd.
EXT. RESTROOMS – COUNTY FAIR – NIGHT
Danny grows impatient for Annie. He asks a stranger if she saw Annie inside and they shake their head. Danny shouts into the lady’s restroom for Annie. No response.
INT. LIVING ROOM – NIGHT
Jessica wants to watch a scary movie and begs until Annie says yes. The phone rings off the hook, but Annie doesn’t answer. She knows it’s Danny.
INT. KITCHEN – MORNING
Jack stumbles in from work, as Jessica and Annie eat cereal. Annie tells him about Danny. Jessica thinks the house is haunted and that there’s a monster in her closet. Frank tells them to clean their dishes before they leave for school and no more scary movies.
INT. LIVING ROOM – DAY
Jack answers the front door and finds Danny, wearing the same clothes as yesterday, on the porch. Jack tells Danny to stay away from his daughter. Danny tells Jack that Annie was right, it should have been him that died.
EXT. ANDREWS HOUSE – DAY
Annie and Jessica arrive home from school. Jack left a note, he picked up a shift and won’t be home till late. Money for a pizza on the fridge.
INT. KITCHEN – DAY
Annie finds a bowl of half-eaten cereal on the counter and gets on Jessica’s case for not cleaning up after herself. Annie doesn’t want to be Jessica’s mom. Jessica swears she put the bowl away. There’s no money on the fridge.
INT. LIVING ROOM – NIGHT
As Jessica and Annie eat ramen, they hear the sound of heavy furniture moving in the basement. Annie sets down the TV remote and the girls cautiously head downstairs.
INT. BASEMENT – NIGHT
Annie peeks into the room and flips on the light. Nothing is there. From upstairs, the TV volume goes full blast. The girl’s scream.
INT. LIVING ROOM – NIGHT
Annie and Jessica search frantically for the remote, but it’s missing. Annie finds the volume button on the TV and turns it down. The remote control flies out of the kitchen and explodes against the wall. Annie smells her mother’s perfume.
INT. JESSICA’S ROOM – NIGHT
Annie tucks Jessica into bed.
INT. ANNIE’S ROOM – NIGHT
Annie enters her room and finds her window open. She doesn’t remember opening it. Jessica screams from her bedroom.
INT. JESSICA’S ROOM – NIGHT
Annie rushes in. Jessica tells her there’s a monster in the closet. Annie blames it on the scary movie. She checks the closet, but nothings in there. Annie explains that monsters aren’t real.
INT. ANNIE’S ROOM – NIGHT
Annie begins to change into her pajamas, but gets the feeling she’s being watched.
INT. LIVING ROOM – MORNING
Jack gets home from work and is pounced on by his daughters. They talk over each other, explaining the creepy phenomenon. Jack thinks they’re pulling pranks. Jack doesn’t want them watching scary movies anymore.
EXT. NEIGHBORHOOD – DAY
Annie, Jessica and Jocelyn walk home from school. Jessica tells Jocelyn about the creepy things happening around their house. Jocelyn asks if it could be their mom and freaks Jessica out. Jocelyn wants to do a séance.
INT. BASEMENT – ANDREW’S HOUSE – NIGHT
Annie, Jessica, Jocelyn and their flamboyant friend Robert, perform a séance. When asked if the spirit blames Annie for the death of Nora the spirit replies yes. They are interrupted by Jack, who’s a bit drunk. He’s furious at them for playing around with devil worship.
Annie and Jack have an emotional fight. Jack accuses her friends of drinking all his beer. Annie embarrasses Jack for sleeping with her mom’s wedding dress.
INT. ANNIE’S ROOM – NIGHT
Jocelyn consoles Annie, who’s upset that her mom blames her for her death. Annie thinks her father hates her.
EXT. ANDREW’S HOUSE – NIGHT
Jack throws Nora’s wedding dress in a trash can and closes the lid.
INT. ANNIE’S ROOM – MORNING
Annie watches Jocelyn sleep. Jocelyn wakes and they share their first kiss. They are interrupted by pounding on the wall. Jocelyn leaves and there’s a loud crash from the hallway.
INT. LIVING ROOM – MORNING
Annie finds Jocelyn in a heap at the bottom of the stairs. Her arms are broken.
EXT. ANDREW’S HOUSE – MORNING
Paramedics load Jocelyn into the back of an ambulance, as she mutters about being pushed from behind. Annie has an argument with her father.
INT. HOSPITAL ROOM – DAY
Jocelyn’s parents argue with Jack in the hallway. Annie questions Jocelyn about what happened. Jocelyn only remembers a lady in white and the feeling of being pushed.
INT. JACK’S TRUCK – DAY
It’s a tense ride home. Annie texts Jocelyn, but it goes unread.
INT. ANNIE’S ROOM – EVENING
Jack pokes his head in to say goodbye. Annie doesn’t speak to him. She watches out the window as Jack backs out of the driveway. Annie hears whispers in her room.
INT. LIVING ROOM – NIGHT
Annie and Jessica watch a mindless reality show, while armed with a baseball bat and kitchen knife. Suddenly, noises from the basement.
INT. BASEMENT – NIGHT
Annie and Jessica, investigate the basement and discover a message written in blood. “It’s your fault!” The freezer pushes towards them.
EXT. ANDREW’S HOME – NIGHT
The sisters flee the house and head to the elderly neighbors we met at the funeral reception.
INT. BASEMENT – NIGHT
Police search the house, but there’s no sign of anyone. A cop tells Jack that the message was written in ketchup and that the girls must be acting out for attention. Jack is furious.
INT. LIVING ROOM – NIGHT
Jack and Annie have a brutal argument. Jack understands that Annie’s pain because he lost her too. Jack says he has to live everyday with…Annie cuts him off, “With the girl that killed her?” The argument ends with Annie wishing her father was dead.
INT. ANNIE’S ROOM – VARIOUS
Montage – Annie secludes herself in her room as the season changes from Fall to Winter.
EXT. HIGH SCHOOL – DAY
Annie sits with Robert, eating lunch. She waves at Jocelyn, but it’s not reciprocated. Robert asks about the house and Annie reveals that it’s been quiet lately.
INT. ANNIE’S ROOM – NIGHT
Annie video chats with Jocelyn. Jocelyn explains that she can’t see Annie anymore because she’s getting back together with her boyfriend. Annie gets teary eyed.
INT. LIVING ROOM – NIGHT
Jessica watches TV on the couch. She’s startled by a red ball that rolls out of a closet.
INT. ANNIE’S ROOM
Jessica bursts in, scaring Annie and Jocelyn half to death. Jocelyn sees the lady in white behind Annie and Jessica. Annie ends the video chat before Jocelyn can warn her. Jessica consoles Annie, when a loud voice screams Annie’s name from downstairs.
INT. LIVING ROOM – NIGHT
Annie and Jessica ease their way down the stairs, searching for the signs of trouble. They search the living, but nothing is there. Suddenly, a crash from Annie’s room.
INT. ANNIE’S ROOM – NIGHT
The room looks like a tornado hit it. The bed and furniture have been toppled. Clothes and knickknacks have been thrown everywhere. On the wall is written: “Be with me…” One by one, pictures frames hung on the wall fly off the shelf, nail and all.
INT. LIVING ROOM – NIGHT
Annie and Jessica run down the stairs, as pictures fly off the living room wall. A cross slowly spins upside down. Annie pulls Jessica out the door.
EXT. ANDREW’S HOUSE – NIGHT
The sister’s run to the safety of the neighbors.
EXT. ANDREW’S HOUSE – LATER
Jack’s truck skids to a stop in front of the house. The elderly Neighbor greets him in the drive way. The neighbor says he looked around, but everything seemed normal. He didn’t call the cops.
INT. LIVING ROOM – NIGHT
Jack enters the house, only to discover the house is completely wrecked. Every light has been shattered. He’s drawn to the sound of static coming from upstairs.
INT. JACK’S BEDROOM – NIGHT
Jack opens the door slowly to reveal a message on the wall that reads: “Marry me!” There’s a quick flash of what appears to be Nora in her wedding dress. Jack is knocked out from behind.
EXT. ANDREW’S HOUSE – NIGHT
Annie grows impatient. She heads inside her house to find her father.
INT. LIVING ROOM – NIGHT
Annie enters slowly, sizing up the mess. There’s no sign of her father. From upstairs, the sound of wedding music.
INT. JACK’S BEDROOM – NIGHT
Annie opens the door and finds her father, tied to a chair with a head wound. The ghost haunting the house is revealed to be Danny, who’s wearing Nora’s dirty wedding dress. He’s completely insane and has taken on Nora’s persona.
Danny gives Annie the choice: The wrong parent died? Kill your father and you can have your mom back. You wanted him dead.
Danny chops off Jack’s left wedding ring hand. Annie convinces Danny to give her the axe so she can kill her father. It’s a trick and she drives the axe into Danny’s shoulder.
EXT. ANDREW’S HOUSE – NIGHT
Annie drags her dad to safety as Danny watches from the upstairs bedroom window. Jack is losing a lot of blood. Annie has no choice but to drive her dad to the hospital.
INT. JACK’S TRUCK – NIGHT
Annie is scared to drive, but Jack believes in her.
INT. JACK’S TRUCK – MOMENTS LATER
Annie weaves through traffic as her father fights to keep his eyes open.
EXT. EMERGENCY ROOM – HOSPITAL – NIGHT
Annie screeches to a halt and jumps out. She runs inside.
INT. EMERGENCY ROOM – HOSPITAL – NIGHT
Annie, covered in blood, screams for help.
EXT. EMERGENCY ROOM – HOSPITAL – NIGHT
Hospital staff swarm the truck and put Jack on a stretcher. Annie watches in horror.
INT. LIVING ROOM – NIGHT
Police use a dog to search the house. The dog catches a scent and barks at the basement door.
INT. BASEMENT – NIGHT
The search dog barks at the freezer in the corner. Police move the freezer and discover a large hole in the wall. A cop shines a flashlight into the hole and illuminates the face of Danny.
EXT. ANDREW’S HOME – NIGHT
Danny is handcuffed to a gurney and placed in the back of an ambulance.
INT. HOSPITAL ROOM – NIGHT
Annie learns that her father is going to live. Annie breaks down with tears of joy, until she over hears that Danny is at the same hospital.
INT. HOSPITAL ROOM – DAY
Jack rests in a hospital bed, with Annie and Jessica by his side. A police detective explains Danny’s history of violence and the charges he’ll face.
INT. WALLS – ANDREW’S HOME – VARIOUS
MONTAGE:
Danny slips through Annie’s open window.
Danny discovers the basement crawl space.
Danny takes the pizza money.
Danny watches Annie through a peephole he made.
Danny crawling through the walls to different peepholes.
Danny banging on the walls.
Danny slamming nails with a brick to make picture frames fall.
We see food wrappers and beer bottles filled with urine.
A pile of tissues and a stolen bottle of lotion.
INT. JACK’S HOSPITAL ROOM – DAY
Annie is disgusted. Jack takes her hand and tells her that they will get through this together. The police detective leaves. Annie opens up to Jack and finally comes out to him. Jack is loving and supportive.
INT. HALLWAY – HOSPITAL – NIGHT
Annie waits for the Guard to step away from his post at Danny’s door and sneaks in.
INT. DANNY’S HOSPITAL ROOM – NIGHT
Annie confronts Danny, who’s handcuffed to the bed. We think she’s going to hurt him. She tells Danny that she told her sister that monsters aren’t real. But she was wrong. She calls him a monster and tells him that he needs to get help. She ends the conversation by forgiving him.
EXT. LOCAL CEMETERY – DAY
Annie sets a bouquet of flowers down on Nora’s grave. She’s joined by her father and sister. They embrace, with tears in their eyes.
INT. DANNY’S HOSPITAL ROOM – NIGHT
A Nurse enters to check on Danny, but he escaped. She alerts the guard.
EXT. ANDREW’S HOME – DAY
A few weeks later, the Andrews watch as movers load a moving truck. Jack receives a call about Danny. Annie isn’t worried. The family gives the house one last look before saying goodbye. When it’s time to go, Jack tosses Annie the keys to her first car.
INT. SUBURBAN HOME – DAY
A mom enters the house, followed by her two young children. She finds the back door open and a dirty cereal bowl on the kitchen counter. A knife is missing from the butcher block.
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Julia’s Pass 10
A. Your logline. A funeral director turned hospitality chef hides his secret life as a serial killer/rapist/arsonist by changing into a hit man and finally a female chef who sacrifices her life to save others.
B. Dramatic Question. Will Bobby/Leo/BB/ Betty’s crimes be exposed?
C. Main Conflict. Aging humans battle neurodegenerative diseases, climate catastrophes, and their innate flaws because this is the last novel of a trilogy.
D. Dilemma. Will BB/Betty betray her boss Ibrahim to give the precious drugs to Jake or will he/she let Jake expose his past as a serial killer/rapist/arsonist?
E. Theme. Fate versus Will.F. The entire outline showing ALL of your scenes in the movie.
1)EXT. SUMMIT – GARDEN ROOF- SUNRISE
IBRAHIM AL HARBI and his ten year old son OMAR finish the Muslim prayers as the sun rises behind the crowded skyline of Long Island City.2) INT. SUMMIT PENTHOUSE – DAY
Ibrahim and Omar join SANDRINE, his wife, CORAL and DELPHINE the other triplets, and KISELE FELDMAN, also ten years old as they do online education. He puts on an N95 mask, takes the elevator, gets his car out of the garage and gets on the FDR.3) EXT. IBRAHIM’s CAR – DAY
Ibrahim picks up Boat Bob, quickly transformed from a homeless man camping out by the East River Esplanade to a clean, sixty-year-old hiker with a big backpack.4) EXT. GW BRIDGE – DAY
Looking at the signs and the net, they discuss suicide and watch trainer JAKE LA ROCHE jog across the bridge with a client. Jake pockets a small sharp basalt rock from the Palisades cliffs.5) EXT. PALISADES – DAY
Ibrahim and BB pick up LITONYA LENAPE, a geologist at the Earth Observatory who says she was released from jail early after 7 years because of COVID. She is not reformed—she would kill her fracking father again.3) EXT. SOLAR HOUSE – DAY
They drop Litonya off at her solar house on Huguenot Street so she can prepare her dissertation defense for her PhD in geology.4) EXT. COLONIAL – DAY
Ibrahim leaves BB at the Colonial garage, a huge house with antique cars where BB helps Kisele and the kids design eco boats.5) INT. TUDOR MANSION – EVENING
Ibrahim finishes his day alone in the Green Room of his home on Huguenot St. with Muslim prayers. Out his window he sees Jake covered in turquoise paint. BB watches everything from the woods.6) EXT.TURQUOISE CHURCH – DAY
Jake is painting a pink church turquoise to turn it into a virtual fitness studio. FADMA and MINA pass by, Ibrahim’s former wife and daughter. We learn that four of Ibrahim’s kids have Jake’s sperm.7) INT. LA ROCHE STONE HOUSE – DAY
Jake makes and serves lunch to JEAN LA ROCHE, his dad and a history professor locked in with ALS. His mom, DR. JOAN LA ROCHE stops by on her way to work.8)INT. NEW PALTZ MEDICAL CENTER – DAY
Dr. Joan tests positive for COVID. BB sprays sanitizer everywhere.9)INT. LA ROCHE STONE HOUSE – DAY
BB is obsessively cleaning the mansion in preparation for her quarantine. Jake morphs into a caretaker for parents.10)INT. CPR OFFICE -DAY
Jake practices CPR on dummies. JOE, BB’s adopted son, helps. Then he puts on his firefighter uniform. BB enters and he and Joe talk about boxing their first loves. FLASHBACK to the funeral of Joe’s first boxing coach in the New Paltz cemetery who died of Alzheimer’s.11)EXT. LAWN OUTSIDE COLONIAL MANSION – EVENING
During the Feldman’s super spreader academic event, BB sprays his sanitizer, secretly laced with COVID.12)INT. FELDMAN’S BEDROOM – NIGHT
As they have sex on their waterbed, JEN and ELIOT FELDMAN code. Jake and Rodney rush in to perform CPR. Then Joe arrives with two stretchers. BB helps out as usual.13) INT. HOSPITAL—NIGHT
The Feldmans are DOA. Rodney is detained for testing positive for COVID, low oxygen saturation and fever, but Jake and Joe go home. Rodney dies that night of a cytokine fire.14) EXT. NEW PALTZ CEMETERY – DAY
A service is held for Jen, Eliot, and Rodney. Litonya, Jake, and Kisele stay longer at Rodney’s grave and leave together. BB is immaculately dressed as part of the morticians’ team. Inciting Incident.15) INT. COLONIAL MANSION
A series of shots inside shows BB cleaning and doing construction for the Feldman relatives, filthy homeless rejects from Manhattan. This montage ends with LANA coding from COVID on the toilet from BB’s squirter but also because she was anti-vax. Jake and Joe enter but it is too late for CPR because rigor mortis has set in.16) INT. BOXING STUDIO – DAY
Joe tries to get his long haul COVID wife CS, Cheering Spear, back into ring shape but it isn’t working. BB and Jake offer suggestions since they are all recovered.12) EXT. SUMMIT ROOF – EVENING
Jake is training clients, including Ibrahim. As NIGHT approaches, Jake leaves and BB slips in for a secret discussion and an exchange of goods and services.13)EXT. OUTDOOR RESTAURANT – NIGHT
Ibrahim is having dinner with his wife and triplets. When they leave, BB drops a match on the wood bungalow that instantly blows up, burning SENIORS in a nearby tenement in NYC’s UES. Then he sprays the sanitizer on others in the Plexiglas cubicles.19) EXT. SUMMIT HIGH RISE – DAY
BB and others watch as Hurricane Ida pummels the East River and the Summit pancakes down.
A SERIES OF SHOTS
The pile transforms for search and rescue. Remains of OMAR and SANDRINE, Ibrahim’s wife and daughter are found.20) EXT. NEW PALTZ CEMETERY – DAY
A Muslim service for Omar and Sandrine. Ibrahim can’t trust God anymore. Fate versus human will. BB helped prepare the corpses because they were too burnt for Ibrahim to look.21) INT. TUDOR MANSION – DAY
Ibrahim meets BB in his office. Papers are exchanged.
A SERIES OF SHOTS
as his home is transformed into a modern art gallery with the return of Fadma, his former wife, and their daughter Mina, also an artist. Ibrahim argues CS his financial advisor still recovering from long haul COVID. BB enters and they have an argument about CS. Ibrahim says CS knows too much.22) EXT. GARAGE – DAY
BB toys with the last antique car, fixing the brakes.FLASHBACK
EXT. CAR – DAWN
Leo putters with a car fixing brakes.23) A SERIES OF SHOTS Beginning of Plot Point One
His wife NATALIA crashes the car on a snowy road. It blows up killing her.
Leo lovingly prepares her body for burial.
Leo lustfully satisfies himself after hours.
People come and cry, especially his handsome adopted son JOE.
Leo and his son JOE go to the funeral of Floyd Patterson at the same New Paltz cemetery.
Leo watches him box in his boxing conditioning studio as beautiful girls watch.24) EXT. SOLAR HOUSE – DAY
The antique car blows up in the driveway instantly killing Norm and Keith. CS, Joe’s wife, runs out and passes out from flames. SIRENS scream and Joe arrives to pick up CS, but the geothermal basement explodes, killing him and demolishing the house.25) EXT. CHURCH CEMETERY – NIGHT
Ibrahim and BB are screaming at each other. Then BB is left alone crying at Joe’s grave.DREAM to NIGHTMARE of his Bobby/Leo/BB’s past as a serial killer rapist. BABY IN WOMB rocking blissfully. Forceps violently pull him out of the womb into the tomb.
INT. FUNERAL PARLOR- DAY
Bobby’s right eye is made of glass as he beautifies the corpse. His right hand slips under the table as his shoulder vibrates him to an ecstatic explosion.EXT. CLIMBING PITCH – DAY
Bobby has transformed into smiling LEO, the hospitality guy, selling food and drink to BEAUTIFUL BUFF CLIMBERS, especially Litonya Lenape, the top climber and a geology prof at the college. SCREAMS as gorgeous climbers collapse on the ground. Leo/Bobby mounts them, then hides the evidence.26) INT. TUDOR TOWER – NIGHT
Ibrahim and BB are consulting in his new office overlooking Fort Washington Park where they keep vials for neurodegenerative diseases. BB talks about sex reassignment. Ibrahim must be convinced.27) INT. HOSPITAL – DAY
A SERIES OF SHOTS in various hospital rooms as BB slowly emerges as Betty, a sixty-something woman. Plot Point One28) INT. COLONIAL MANSION – DAY
Betty cooks as well as cleans for Jake, Litonya, Kisele, and their little ones, Aanadi, his granddaughter, and Jesse, their newborn.29) INT. LA ROCHE STONE MANSION – DAY
But Jake is no longer laughing because his dad is locked in with ALS and his mom is locked out with Alzheimer’s and he is desperate for something to help them. It takes both Jake and BB to bring his mom back from the woods.30) EXT. WOODS – NIGHT
Betty goes for a moonlit canoe ride and is raped by the banks of the Wallkill. FLASHBACK to Leo’s rapes and murders where cadavers disintegrated into nature. Ironically, she feels more empowered, but her perpetrators run away scared because of her unexpected reaction.31)EXT. NEW PALTZ MAIN STREET – DAY
Betty struts through the street a bit like Priceless did years ago after he as Leo tried to rape her. FLASHBACK to Priceless dancing in Muddy Mansion and the younger Leo tying her up near the French church.32} INT. LA ROCHE STONE HOUSE – DAY
Betty and Jake care for Jean and Joan La Roche, seriously disabled by ALS and Alzheimer’s.33) EXT. IBRAHIM’S BOAT – DAY
Betty sails down the Hudson venturing into a secret lab with masked scientists looking as anonymous as the men who raped her. Delphine, one of Ibrahim’s daughters, is a brain scientist.34) EXT. TUDOR TOWER
Ibrahim and Betty fight about the STEMGARCHS drugs.35) INT. HOSPITAL – DAY Midpoint
Betty is given a precious vial of drugs called the Bright Space Brain Buffet.
A FEW MONTHS LATER. She reads more quickly and holds a zoom conference talking faster and with bigger words than ever before like a STEM college student.36) INT. LA ROCHE STONE MANSION – NIGHT
Jake is helping his father, Jean, pass on to a better place with a massage. Betty helps take out the corpse.37) EXT. CHURCH CEMETERY – DAY
Jean La Roche’s service is attended by townspeople, the kids, Litonya, and Jake but there is no sign of Ibrahim. Jake pleads with Betty to find out about Ibrahim’s research because he heard Delphine talking about it with Coral and Kisele.38) INT TURQUOISE CHURCH GYM – DAY
Jake loses his balance and drops weights because of his tremor as he works out with his kids. He may have Parkinson’s and is desperate to find cures for him and his mom.39) EXT. PALISADES – DAY
Litonya and Jake argue about the EE Company, saving the planet, and their degenerative diseases. She feels she will be recycled like rocks but is Jake still a Christian?40) INT. TUDOR TOWER – NIGHT
Ibrahim and Betty have successfully turned back time with their secret brain buffet. Ibrahim says that the STEMGARCHS control the distribution and we cannot give it to anyone.41) INT. NEW PALTZ LIBRARY Years Later
SERIES OF SHOTS
For Haunted Huguenot Street, Jesse attends all the events, talks to people of all ages, pores through books, and tries to uncover what happened years ago. He has a hunch that BB might be connected because of his arrest for assault and the way he or she is now. He finds a way to hypnotize Betty with the help of Aanadi, a yoga/meditation/hypnosis expert. The screams, details, visions, nightmares, and actions make them think Leo might have been the killer. The kids are good actors and follow Betty around, making notes. Delphine pretends it is a play they are rehearsing for a ship performance.42)FLASHBACK to Leo’s time in jail for assault, a short one because he was a model prisoner, always cleaning.
43) EXT. EAST RIVER ESPLANADE – NIGHT Plot Point Two
Betty is raped by a gang like the gang who beat her up as teenage boy and wiped out his right eye. FLASHBACK to the bloody eye and ZOOM BACK to the present glass eye.44)EXT. BOAT – DAY
Delphine nurses Betty’s bruises but as the gang tries to attack her, she throws them overboard into the river with Betty’s help. Betty has too much strength and power for a woman in her eighties and Delphine wants to know why.45) INT. LA ROCHE STONE MANSION – DAY
Jake pleads with Betty for the Alzheimer’s drug to get the sticky glue out of his mother Joan’s brain. Betty feigns ignorance because she is just a cook. They struggle with Joan and eventually she trips and falls because Betty secretly arranged the carpet that way. Her Living Will says DNI, DNR, no antibiotics, so Jake must refrain from giving her CPR.46) EXT. CHURCH CEMETERY – DAY
Joan is laid to rest beside her husband Jean, but their son Jake will not rest. His Parkinson’s is worse, and he is terrified it will progress to Lewy Body dementia. Betty didn’t come to this funeral for the first time. Where is she?47) INT. LA ROCHE LIBRARY – DAY
Litonya and Jake consult with Jesse, Aanadi, Kisele, Coral, and Delphine about Betty and the brain buffet.48) EXT. BOAT – NIGHT Crisis
Jake confronts Betty with his crimes as Leo. She then confesses to the COVID murders, the tenement and outdoor restaurant torches, and other non-sexual crimes. Jake makes a deal for secrecy in exchange for the precious drugs that Ibrahim will not give him, always pretending to be powerless.49) INT. TUDOR TOWER – NIGHT Climax
Betty cooks a delicious Mediterranean meal. Ibrahim is depressed because he lost his position as CEO and billions of dollars and has the last supply of Brain Buffet drugs. As they sit down to eat, Betty tries to give Ibrahim the poisoned part, but Ibrahim wants to share everything. Torn between a possible death with him now or exposure of her past crimes and imprisonment, Betty chooses the former, but eats more slowly.TIME SLOWS DOWN.
Ibrahim sinks forever into his sofa, so they think. Betty wobbles to the door opening for Jake and the kids who run in and up to Ibrahim’s office to get the secret drugs. Suddenly Ibrahim awakes and takes a weapon out of his pocket for a final, dramatic struggle that he loses when Jake is forced to finish him off. Jake takes the drugs right away, but Litonya refuses.
50) EXT. INWOOD COVE – NIGHT
Jake, Litonya, and the kids put Betty on her boat as her lights are going out. She gently rocks herself to death.FLASHBACK to a shot of Bobby rocking in the womb.
Conclusion Fate marries Will.
51) EXT. HUDSON RIVER – DAY
We transform to survive. We transform as we die.FINIS
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[PS80] Emmanuel’s Pass 10: Essence Only
What I learned doing this assignment is to write the essence of each scene and if possible, only write two sentences max. Rewriting each scene to ensure only the clearest description allows for an easier read and a quicker writing process.
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[PS80] DAY 16 BOB SMITH’S PASS 10 ESSENCE ONLY OCTOBER 18 2021
What I learned is…?
To get down to essentials of the script around which details of the story are built. It is also an exercise in telling the story in brevity and clarity so focus is created when adding the relevant details. That is, relevant to the essence.
A. Sluglines tell us the location.
B. Place a one or two sentence description of what happens in each scene that delivers the essence of that scene.
2. Post your outline to the group include each of these:
A. LOGLINE: The making of the erotic thriller “The Blue Angel” (1930) has an impact on the principal actors, Emil Jannings and [then unknown] Marlene Dietrich and the director (Josef von Sternberg) that leads to success for von Sternberg, stardom for Dietrich, but ironically, the fall of Emil Jannings in a manner that parallels his role as the professor in the film, whose infatuation with a cabaret showgirl leads to his ruin.
B. The Dramatic Question: How could an actor – a man of Jannings’ stature have allowed himself to be exploited by the Nazis in propaganda films?
C. The Main Conflict: Between Jannings and Dietrich with von Sternberg trying to mediate as director in this feud between his discovery and lover Dietrich and his star, Jannings.
D. The Emotional Dilemma:
For Jannings: To swallow his jealousy and animus, at the director’s request in order to be partners in art with Dietrich to complete the film. Later, with apparently no film career in Hollywood, does Jannings work with the Nazi propagandist film industry just to have a motion picture career?
For Dietrich: To disregard her contempt for Jannings, at the director’s request and be partners in art with him for the completion of the film.
For von Sternberg: To be not only a lover and mentor for Dietrich but to be a director who mediates between feuding actors.
The Theme: Do not judge anyone for an action they performed under a death-threat.
OPENING:
Title: Berlin – American Sector, July, 1945.
EXT: US ARMY HEADQUARTERS –
Brandishing an Oscar statuette, Emil Jannings (now 60) presents himself at US Army headquarters shouting, “Don’t shoot! I won an Oscar!” Jannings seeks asylum from the Soviets in the free (Allied) sector of Berlin.
INT. OFFICE US ARMY HEADQUARTERS – DAY
INCITING INCIDENT: A US Army intake Officer, who is a film buff wants to know what it was like filming “The Blue Angel” and why an actor and man of Jannings’ stature allowed himself to be exploited by the Nazi propaganda film industry to which Jannings replies by telling the story of this film.
INT. SCREENING ROOM – DAY
Against the wishes of the studio brass and his star (Jannings), von Sternberg casts an unknown (Marlene Dietrich) in the role of the cabaret showgirl Lola Lola who is the love-interest of the professor portrayed by Jannings in the film – who immediately believes Dietrich is upstaging him as the star which starts their conflict.
INT. THE BLUE ANGEL STUDIO SET – DAY
After filming the first rendition of “Falling in Love Again,” Dietrich takes von Sternberg and Jannings, and fellow cast members Kurt Gerron, and Hans Albers ‘out on the town’ of the Weimar “Berlin of Lola Lola.” All accept and leave the set and studi.
INT. SABRI MAHER’S BOXING STUDIO – NIGHT
Dietrich introduces the group to her trainer, Turkish Boxing Champion Sabri Maher and has a faux boxing match with fellow actress Carola Neher, and knocks her out, and then invites everybody to join her at the gay cabaret, Club Silhouette a favorite hangout of show people and the intelligentsia.
INT. CLUB SILHOUETTE – NIGHT
Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld (Berlin’s “Einstein of Sex”) invites Dietrich and company to sit with him. In celebration of her getting the part of Lola Lola, Dietrich buys drinks for everyone in the club, including those who said she can’t act. Carola good-naturedly chides Dietrich, “Just because you got the part, doesn’t mean you can act.” Jannings, not good-naturedly, adds: “It’s her legs that know how to act.” When Nazi Brown Shirts hurl rocks through the club’s windows, Hirschfeld frighteningly predicts an end to freedom with a soon and inevitable Nazi take-over.
INT. APARTMENT OF JOSEF VON STERNBERG – NIGHT
In regard to von Sternberg’s relationship with Dietrich, his wife (Riza Royce) confronts him, “Why don’t you divorce me and marry her?” He answers, “I’d sooner share a phone booth with a cobra.”
INT. STUDIO SET OF “THE BLUE ANGEL” – DAY
On a break, Jannings complains to Gerron and Albers that von Sternberg is constantly with Dietrich and neglected his partnership with other actors in creating a great film including the real star of the film, Jannings himself. Gerron and Albers try to reassure Jannings. Von Sternberg appears and Jannings puts his complaints to him directly to which he replies, “Emil, you are the star. Marlene is the novice and needs attention as well as support from you, as the star.”
INT. STUDIO SET OF “THE BLUE ANGEL” – DAY
The conflict between Jannings and Dietrich escalates to violence when Jannings overacts a scene of strangling Dietrich’s character that he actually strangles Dietrich and injures her to which von Sternberg calls on both actors to partner up in the name of the art and finish the film..
INT. STUDIO SET OF “THE BLUE ANGEL” – DAY
Von Sternberg’s intervention has worked and Dietrich and Jannings turn in stellar perfomances especially in Dietrich’s signature song, “Falling in love again” and Jannings’ scene of the ruined professor dying.
INT. STUDIO SET OF “THE BLUE ANGEL” – DAY
After the film wraps, Jannings, convinced he has no future in Hollywood because his accent makes him unsuitable for ‘talkies,’ asks studio chief Alfred Hugenberg (a Nazi-supporter) for advice and he answers that he should work in Nazi cinema. Jannings informs Gerron and Albers who say that they have plans on what to do in the event of a Nazi take-over, Gerron (a Jew) will flee to France, Albers will send his Jewish mistress to England. Jannings, will protect his mother, a Russian born woman of Jewish origin if need be by working in Nazi cinema.
INT. OFFICE US ARMY HEADQUARTERS – DAY (AS BEFORE)
In answer the question of how he allowed himself to be used by the Nazis, Jannings tells the US Intake Officer, that if he had not worked for the Nazis he may have died and also his Russian Jewish mother. The US Officer informs Jannings that he must be de-nazified which effectively ends his acting career and ruins him in a manner that mirrors the ruination of his professor-character in “The Blue Angel.”
RESOLUTION: Closing Titles:
Emil Jannings never acted again. He died in 1950 of liver cancer. He was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Marlene Dietrich and Josef von Sternberg went to Hollywood and made many acclaimed motion pictures through the 1930’s. Dietrich condemned Hitler and Nazism, She became an American Citizen and entertained the troops even as they marched against the German Army.
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Budinscak 10th Pass – Essence Only
What I learned doing this assignment:
o I found it tougher identifying the emotional aspects of a scene as opposed to the scene’s main action.
o When I include all my scenes, it easily exceeds the requested 4-6 page essence outline.
o I hope my critique partner doesn’t mind a little extra reading.
Logline:
In 1986, a shady uncle teaches his two stowaway nephews about life and family on a cross-country trip he’s agreed to make to save his family’s restaurant from destruction.
Dramatic Question:
Will Jack be able to save the family’s restaurant by delivering the package on time?
Main Conflict:
How does Jack combat two inquisitive, sneaky kids or will the boys simply wear their uncle down?
Dilemma:
Will Jack take on responsibility and be accountable for his nephews OR will he ditch them so he can have the fun he planned and maybe be a little late delivering the package.
Theme:
You don’t have to be related to be family. Those who show up when you need them, that’s family.
Outline:
FADE IN:
SUPER: 1986
EXT. PARKING LOT – NIGHT
Carmine’s, a restaurant, sits on one end of a large parking lot with a funeral home on the opposite side.
INT. CARMINE’S – NIGHT
DINING ROOM
A large wall is covered with pictures from family events held at the restaurant over the years. An extended family dines and chats on a ‘speaker phone’ with two out-of-town sisters.
KITCHEN
TOM, Jack’s brother-in-law drags two boys, PUCK and SAL, to the kitchen where Jack is cooking. Jack can’t hide his natural flair in the kitchen or his contempt for the two boys.
Radio news report on big trial coming up.
EXT. CARMINE’S – NIGHT
Jack watches MEN struggle to remove a wildly jerking body bag from a hearse. Jack turns, steps on a cat’s tail – it screams and the men look over.
INT. CARMINE’S – NIGHT
The family bonds over food and drink. They discuss getting everyone together for a family celebration – a RE-union.
EXT. FUNERAL HOME – NIGHT
After hours, a limo carrying a local crime boss drives to an open garage bay at the funeral home.
The men from the hearse approach Don Vito and point to Carmine’s. Everyone looks in the direction of the restaurant.
Inciting Incident:
INT. FUNERAL HOME GARAGE – DAY
Don Vito watches two large lackeys flank Jack as they cross the parking lot. An underling asks if he’s going to intimidate Jack, the Don answers no, he’s going to ask Jack for a favor instead.
INT. FUNERAL HOME – DAY
The Don’s favor – personally deliver a package for me so I don’t have to burn your restaurant to the ground.
INT. CARMINE’S – DAY
Jack’s two sisters (Puck and Sal’s mothers) call to confirm that Jack will pick them up at JFK on Tuesday morning – absolutely.
By page 10, you know what the movie is about:
To protect his family’s restaurant, Jack agrees to make a long trip to deliver a package for Don Vito, unaware his two young nephews, Puck and Sal, will tag along.
INT. FUNERAL HOME – DAY
In the casket display room, Sal tricks Puck into getting in an open casket, then Sal shuts the lid – Puck goes bonkers.
INT. FUNERAL HOME GARAGE – DAY
A large cooler is installed in the trunk of Jack’s Caddy. A thermal blanket is tossed in the back seat and covers the floor.
INT. CARMINE’S – DAY
DINING ROOM
Puck is flustered when he spots, Traci (a twin, her sister, Laci) a girl in his class. Sal can’t believe Puck’s in love.
OFFICE
To help his sister who volunteered to watch Puck and Sal while their mothers are out of town, Jack drugs the boys to keep them in line.
INT. CADILLAC – DAY
Jack adjusts his walkman before he takes off from the funeral home garage. Jack never realizes the drugged and now passed out Puck and Sal are asleep under the blanket on the back floor.
INT. CARMINE’S – NIGHT
A MAN wearing a dark suit, thin tie and sunglasses asks for Jack. Cat, Jack’s sister, refuses to give him any info – the man turns and leaves.
PUCK VO, “That guy’s FBI.” CAT VO, “FBI?!”
SUPER: TODAY
INT. CARMINE’S – DAY – PRESENT TIME
Puck and Cat, his aunt, point to a picture on the wall and discuss the Atlantic City trip and why the picture has a Lincoln Continental and NOT Jack’s Cadillac.
SUPER: 1986
INT. CADILLAC – NIGHT
A montage of shots of Jack’s trip to Terre Haute, IN.
First turning point as end of Act 1:
INT. CADILLAC – DAY
Jack wakes up in his car in Terra Haute (IN) and the two boys pop up in the back seat.
EXT. PICNIC GROUNDS – DAY
Jack meets one of his partners-in-crime, Lincoln Clogs, LC, – and Lincoln’s men – in Terra Haute.
EXT. PICNIC GROUNDS – DAY
Puck, Sal, DOC & RICO (LC’s men) race go-carts and go to the shooting gallery. Puck doesn’t know how to hold a gun, Sal makes fun of him.
INT. CALL CENTER – DAY
LC gives Jack a tour of “their” psychic network call center and meets the staff.
INT. OFFICE – DAY
Jack laments about finding his two incorrigible nephews in the car and tries to pawn them off on LC – LC says NFW to the request.
Jack calls in a progress report to Don Vito.
INT. OFFICE – DAY
LC reflects on the tour of the call center with Jack and the boys. He can’t find his handheld tape recorder.
INT. CADILLAC – DAY
Jack drives past the bus station – slowly – and the boys ask if he’s looking for someone.
EXT. BUS STATION – DAY
The Caddy picks up speed and is gone.
INT. CADILLAC – DAY
Jack immediately gets a premonition how poorly this trip will be – he’s pulled over by a state trooper, but smooth talks his way out of trouble.
EXT. DINER PARKING LOT – DAY
They stop by the Platinum Restaurant outside of St Louis, but never go in. Near an idling box truck, a man talks on a payphone in the restaurant parking lot.
INT. TRUCK – DAY
Jack and the boys pick up a tail – a box truck follows. The truck’s driver has Love and Hate tattooed on his knuckles.
INT. CADILLAC – DAY
A game of punch-buggy goes horribly wrong and the boys come to blows in the back seat. Jack ties each boy up with rope and secures them to their ‘own side’ to keep them separated.
EXT. REST AREA – NIGHT
Jack buys snacks for the boys and ice for the cooler. Jack mixes a cocktail for the boys – he drugs them.
INT. CADILLAC – NIGHT
The nephews sleep, Jack drives like a madman. He thinks he’s being tailed and pulls into the House of Jimmy Truck Stop in Oklahoma.
Mid-point:
INT. TRUCK STOP BATHROOM – NIGHT
Jack averts a crisis when he beats a trucker who had Puck trapped in a bathroom stall.
INT. TRUCK STOP DINING ROOM – NIGHT
The boys have never seen this side of their uncle – and never want to. When Sal makes a snide comment about their waitress, Jack’s eyes narrow and the boys flinch noticeably.
WAITRESS STATION
The waitress smiles warmly when she recalls Jack, Puck and Sal, and she brags about her special tip. (The statue of liberty thermometer is her special tip and it’s revealed later).
INT. CADILLAC – NIGHT
The boys reveal they’re terrified of their uncle, and Jack contemplates how to best use this new information to his advantage. He practices divide and conquer.
INT. CADILLAC – LATER
Jack mixes up a concoction to put one nephew to sleep. Now which one?
INT. CADILLAC – NIGHT
Jack teaches Sal one of his favorite recipes while letting the kid drive the Caddy. Great times for Sal.
EXT. TRAVEL LODGE PARKING LOT – NIGHT
At a Travel Lodge, Jack fills the cooler with ice and looks around before going to his room.
A van slows by the hotel entrance and parks on the street facing the hotel.
INT. VAN – NIGHT
A hooded figure slouches in the driver’s seat. Hate tattooed on the knuckles of his right hand, the one cradling a gun.
INT. CADILLAC – DAY
Jack drugs Sal, Sal sleeps, Jack bonds with Puck. Puck learns about family and has a blast steering the Caddy.
EXT. HIGHWAY – NIGHT
The Caddy cruises down the highway and the nighttime view and lights of the Las Vegas strip comes in focus. Jack’s enthusiasm carries over to the boys.
EXT. PARKING LOT – NIGHT
No hotel tonight. The Cadillac pulls into a large parking lot and parks in a back corner facing the front.
INT. CADILLAC – NIGHT
Jack and the boys sleep. A truck pulls in and parks far enough away not to be noticed.
INT. TRUCK – NIGHT
Love and Hate decorate the driver’s knuckles.
EXT. HOTEL ENTRANCE – DAY
Jack’s dirty Cadillac slides up next to its doppelganger, only this one is perfectly clean and filled with a mean old couple.
INT. HOTEL LOBBY – DAY
Jack checks in as the kids take in the sights of the ornate lobby.
Jack spots a boys clothing store and looks at his scruffy nephews. He drags them to the store.
INT. HOTEL ROOM – DAY
Jack buys the boys ‘outfits’ for the day. The boys emulate their uncle getting ready – dressing just like him.
INT. HOTEL CASINO – DAY
Ready for action, Jack and the nephews take one step in the casino and are tossed. Someone recommends Circus Circus where kids can play, too.
Second turning point at the end of Act 2:
INT. CIRCUS CIRCUS – DAY
Jack loses all his money in the casino while the boys thrive playing their games.
INT. SHUTTLE – NIGHT
Jack is pissed as the boys show off their winnings.
INT. HOTEL ROOM – NIGHT
Jack learns the boys have never seen a naked woman and orders an escort. The boys hide in the closet as the escort drops her dress – there’s a knock at the door.
The FBI barges in and the woman flees. Jack’s shaken down by the FBI and forced to be their informant.
INT. HOTEL ROOM – LATER
Jack scheduled a date with an old flame, but she gave him a lot of grief for ‘babysitting’ and wanted no part of it, she cancels.
Jack does a shot of tequila from one of the shot glasses the boys won at Circus Circus. He fills up the other two glasses and salutes his nephews’ first shots of liquor.
EXT. HOTEL PARKING LOT – DAY
Puck and Sal transfer license plates from the doppleganger Caddy. Jack searches for ice for the cooler – he can only find dry ice.
INT. HOTEL ROOM – DAY
Jack calls Don Vito and tells him he may be a little late for the delivery. Don Vito tells Jack lightning will strike Jack’s family’s restaurant, Carmine’s, at 2:01 Monday if he’s not there in time.
EXT. HOTEL PARKING LOT – DAY
The FBI takes off after the wrong Cadillac.
Jack, Sal and Puck wave to the Parking Attendant as they sneak out of the parking lot.
INT. FLATBED TOW TRUCK – DAY
Hands featuring Love and Hate grip the steering wheel. The tow truck follows Jack’s Cadillac.
EXT. PLAINS – DAY
Cowboys ride galloping stallions on the plains next to the road. The boys ask if they can ride horses, just like their favorite actor, Clint Eastwood – a loud NO is the answer.
INT. CADIALLAC TRUNK – DAY
A small leak in the cooler allows carbon monoxide top enter the Cadillac’s interior. Puck and Sal drop off to sleep first, then Jack.
EXT. HIGHWAY – DAY
The FBI overtake the wrong Cadillac. The FBI spots a helicopter idling in an adjacent field, they claim command of the copter and force the pilot to take off.
INT. FLATBED TOW TRUCK – DAY
Through the windshield, the driver watches Jack’s Cadillac veer off the road. It bounces wildly riding half on asphalt, half on the shoulder of the road.
EXT. PLAINS – DAYS
In a dream sequence, Sal and Puck ride galloping stallions.
INT. CADILLAC – DAY
Jack and the boys are completely asleep. Through the front window – a major dip in the road, bridge, bad accident about to happen.
EXT. HIGHWAY – DAY
The flatbed tow truck bounces into the Caddy, then cuts in front stopping the car from plunging down the hillside/terrain/riverbank – whatever and a serious accident.
INT. CADILLAC – LATER
Jack wakes to find the tow truck driver pulling him from the Caddy. Jack and the Driver pull the unconscious boys from the Cadillac. Puck clutches his backpack.
EXT. SIDE OF HIGHWAY – DAY
Crisis:
Jack pleads to God to save Puck and Sal and in return, he pledges to turn his life around. As soon as he finishes, Sal moves – Jack immediately recants, but stops.
INT. FLATBED TOW TRUCK – DAY
Jack’s dented Cadillac sits on the flatbed covered with a tarp when they take off. While Puck is still unconscious, Jack goes through Puck’s backpack and pulls out a number of items including a tape recorder from LC. Jack turns the tape recorder on and hears the FBI talking.
EXT. HIGHWAY – DAY
The FBI manned helicopter flies overhead looking for Jack’s Caddy. They don’t realize the car is covered on the tow truck.
INT. FLATBED TOW TRUCK – DAY
Puck wakens, spots the Driver and screams. Uncle Jack calms him down and Sal tells Puck that Driver saved their lives.
EXT. LOS ANGELES – DAY
The tow truck cruises by famous LA landmarks while the boys hang out the windows taking in the views.
Montage of shots for the landmarks – Hollywood sign, Hippies and disco queens alike, tricked out cars from 60s-70s, Whiskey a Go Go, Bob’s Big Boy
INT. FLATBED TOW TRUCK – DAY
Jack directs Driver to the address – the Don’s other brother’s funeral home. Asked how he knows, Jack confesses to driving a Yellow Taxi Cab in LA back in the day.
EXT. FUNERAL HOME PARKING LOT – DAY
Climax:
Jack gathers the package from the cooler and hands it to one of the Don’s men, who carries it inside.
The flatbed tow truck leaves with the Caddy on it.
INT. FUNERAL HOME LOBBY – DAY
A couple of MEN roam around. Don Vito directs a MAN to take the kids away as he ushers Jack in another room.
CASKET DISPLAY ROOM
Puck bets Sal pulled the big man can’t fit in the casket. The man hands over his gun and gets in the casket – he fits, and is locked inside.
ARRANGEMENT ROOM
Don Vito confronts Jack about the body bag at the funeral home, Jack claims ignorance as convincing as ever.
Sal walks in and gets everyone’s attention.
CLICK – from the other side of the room, Puck pulls back the hammer on the revolver he’s aiming at Don Vito.
EXT. FUNERAL HOME – DAY
The FBI’s car speeds into the parking lot before it slides to a halt. Two men jump out and run to the front door.
INT. FUNERAL HOME ARRANGEMENT ROOM – DAY
FBI bust in and confront Don Vito, he screwed them over. Lots of yelling ensues.
Driver quietly walks in and pumps a round into his shotgun. Everything and everyone falls silent.
EXT. FUNERAL HOME – DAY
The helicopter the FBI commandeered leads the LAPD into the fray. Police swarm the grounds.
Out the back door, Driver leads Jack, Puck and Sal to the tow truck. They hop in and take off.
INT. FUNERAL HOME – DAY
LAPD filters through the offices and rooms, no one is around.
CASKET DISPLAY ROOM
Police hear muffled yells from all the closed caskets. LAPD finds everyone they’re looking for locked in caskets.
On top of the FBI caskets, a cassette tape with a message, “Jack says play us.” It’s the FBI’s confession in Las Vegas.
EXT. FUNERAL HOME – DAY
From the helicopter’s view and the pilot’s narration, we watch LAPD lead numerous handcuffed people to cars. Prominent in the view are the FBI and Don Vito.
Resolution:
EXT. LAX – DAY
Jack and the boys say their goodbyes to Driver. What about the Caddy? It’s yours now, we gotta go.
MONTAGE OF SHOTS
The disheveled trio runs through the airport to their gate, Jet leaves LAX, Jet lands at JFK, Jack and the boys sleep on a bench near a gate.
INT. JFK GATE – DAY
Jack’s sisters (Puck and Sal’s mothers) spot the three amigos sleeping – they wake them.
INT. LINCOLN CONTINENTAL – DAY
The mothers ask Jack why they’re in a Lincoln and not his Caddy, before he can answer, Puck jumps in.
The mothers notice a change in their boys, they ask Jack and he weaves a tale. The boys vouch for their uncle’s story and add a few nougats of their own.
EXT. CARMINE’S PARKING LOT – DAY
A picture is taken of Jack, Puck and Sal next to the Lincoln Continental.
INT. CARMINE’S – DAY
The picture is posted on the wall of pictures in the restaurant.
SUPER: TODAY
INT. CARMINE’S – DAY
Present day Puck talks with CAT, one of his aunts, about that picture and finishes the true story of the Atlantic City trip.
The idea is to give the illusion everyone is gathered for a somber event, when it’s actually the 30+ year of the family RE-union.
In comes Jack with Puck and Sal’s wives – the twins, Traci and Laci, from the opening scene. Everyone cheers.
EXT. CARMINE’S PARKING LOT – NIGHT
First thing you notice, the funeral home is now “Jack’s Place”.
Everyone in the movie is there having fun. All the aunts and uncles, LC and his group are there, customers are there. Jules performs his Vegas act on a stage.
Everyone’s in party mode. Jack, Puck and Sal toast everyone with a shot of Tequila – just like Vegas. Everyone does a shot.
Someone comments about the helluva mess – I got it says Jack.
Driver shows up with Jack’s Cadillac fully restored.
Driver presents Jack with his keys, Jack shouts, “Who wants to go for a ride?” Puck and Sal’s kids, knockoffs of the fathers at the same age, run up waving their hands. Jack deadpans to the camera.
EXT. CARMINE’S PARKING LOT – NIGHT
A cleaning truck pulls up, two MEN get out. It’s the two disgraced FBI guys and they’re there to pick up the trash/clean up a mess.
FADE OUT:
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Amy’s Pass 10: Essence Only
What I learned doing this assignment is that a lot of my scenes were not down to the essence. They had quite a bit of detail. I’m also confused as some of this detail was a result of me trying to elevate the scene. I worry that some things don’t make sense now.
Logline- A local news anchor’s DNA is altered when she travels through time. When she gets back one year into the future, she must decide between her career and her family and also compete with the woman who is now engaged to her husband.
Dramatic Question -: Will Andrea step back from her career to win Josh and her kids back from Meagan?
Main Conflict- Andrea desperately wants her career as a news anchor back, but she also wants her family back and they’ve had it with her working so much and never being home.
Dilemma- Andrea can keep her career and lose her family, or step back from her career and keep her family.
Theme- Realizing what’s most important in life.
INT. – STUDIO – NIGHT
Andrea interviews her husband, Josh, a detective, about the murder that happened in the town. It becomes apparent that they have an issue with one of them, Andrea, being a neglectful parent.
INT. – UNIVERSITY SCIENCE LAB – DAY
Meagan, a wealthy widow attends the dedication ceremony for the science lab which has just been named after her and bonds with the top scientist in charge of building a supercollider.
INT. –NEWSROOM – NIGHT
Breaking news happens. Andrea calls home to let her family know that once again, she will not be home for dinner.
INT. – KITCHEN – NIGHT
Josh helps the kids with their homework. They complain about their mom not being there.
EXT. – BASEBALL FIELD – NIGHT
At Andrea’s son, Benjamin’s baseball game, Meagan cozies up to Josh and lets him know she’s single.
INT. – NEWSROOM – DAY
Andrea discusses with her boss the exciting new development at the local university, the completion of a supercollider. Her boss assigns her the story.
EXT. – POOL – DAY
Andrea’s daughter has a swim meet. It’s her time to swim, but she cries because her mother isn’t there. She has to be coaxed into the pool by her dad.
INT. –UNVERSITY SCIENCE LAB – DAY
Andrea interviews the professor (with Meagan there) who demonstrates for her how the supercollider works. Meagan “accidentally” bumps Andrea into the machine and she disappears.
INT – UNIVERSITY SCIENCE LAB – DAY
Andrea appears out of the machine, but she doesn’t look like herself. She notices she’s a different height and her hands look different. She runs out of the lab.
INT. –UNVERSITY LAB – BATHROOM – DAY
Andrea looks at herself in the mirror and is horrified.
INT. – NEWSROOM – DAY
Andrea tries to prepare for the night’s newscast, but no one will talk to her about it because they don’t recognize her. Meanwhile, everyone is looking for her and panicking.
INT. – STUDIO – NIGHT
Andrea sits at her place behind the news desk. The producer threatens to call security if she doesn’t leave. Everyone is still in a panic looking for her especially now that the newscast is about to air.
EXT./INT. – ANDREA’S HOME – NIGHT
Andrea shows up at her house and lets herself in scaring her family to death since they don’t recognize her. Josh calls the police and Andrea gets arrested.
INT – JOSH’S OFFICE – DAY
Andrea goes to Josh’s office, but he won’t see her. Meagan arrives as well and he takes her up to his office.
INT. – SCIENCE LAB – DAY
Andrea convinces the professor to turn on the machine and she gets sucked in again, on purpose this time.
INT. – BATHROOM – DAY
Andrea looks at herself in the mirror and is pleased that she looks more like herself now but perplexed that she’s even more beautiful than before.
INT – ANDREA’S HOME – DAY
Andrea drives to her home, but her key doesn’t work, so she rings the bell. Josh comes to the door and nearly faints at the sight of her.
INT. – LIVING ROOM – NIGHT
The kids see Andrea and are both relieved to see her but also confused about the way she looks. She tells them about getting sucked into the supercollider and traveling through time.
INT. – LIVING ROOM – NIGHT
Meagan shows up wearing an engagement ring. Andrea learns that she’s been missing for a year.
INT. – SCIENCE LAB – DAY
Andrea tries to get the professor to send her back to the present, but he doesn’t really understand how the machine and time travel work.
*INT. – NEWSROOM –DAY
Andrea convinces the TV station to take her back as a reporter.
INT. –SCHOOL HALLWAY –DAY
Chloe is practicing for her school play when a prop falls on her. The popular girl who is the lead starts laughing at her inciting everyone else to laugh at her.
EXT. –BASEBALL FIELD – DAY
At Benjamin’s game, the pitcher dislocates his shoulder. Benjamin asks the coach if he can pitch, but he says no.
EXT. – GROCERY STORE – DAY
Andrea’s daughter’s swim team is having a bake sale. Andrea threw something together late last night after work. Her daughter is embarrassed by the cookies. Meagan’s cookies are a hit.
INT. – STREET – DAY
Andrea and Josh attend the town’s food festival and start getting reacquainted. Things are going great until Megan finds them and pulls Josh away on some “emergency.”
EXT. – STREET – DAY
Andrea calls her daughter and tells her she’s on the way to her school play, but then discovers that she has a flat tire.
INT. – AUDITORIUM – NIGHT
Andrea arrives at the school after the play is over upsetting Chloe. Andrea asks Josh to take her back, but he admits that things weren’t that great when she was around.
INT. – NEWSROOM – DAY
Andrea looks at footage from the rededication of the science lab a year ago and sees Meagan talking to the professor.
INT. –CLASSROOM – DAY
The professor confesses to Andrea that he told Meagan that time travel was possible with the supercollider.
INT. – ANDREA’S HOME – NIGHT
Chloe confides in Andrea about her bully. Andrea gives her advice that’s not really helpful.
EXT. – BASEBALL FIELD – NIGHT
Andrea confronts Meagan in front of everyone about her sending her back in time. Josh doesn’t believe Andrea and gets mad at her.
EXT. –BASEBALL FIELD – LATER
Benjamin gets a chance to pitch, but walks every hitter.
INT. – SCIENCE LAB – NIGHT
Andrea tries unsuccessfully to push Meagan into the supercollider and send her to a different time
INT. – NEWSROOM – DAY
Josh admits to falling in love with Andrea again but announces that he’s going ahead with his marriage to Meagan because life is better with her.
INT. – STUDIO – NIGHT
Andrea’s boss threatens to fire her if she leaves to go see her daughter’s dance recital instead of covering the fire at the science lab.
INT. – SCIENCE LAB – NIGHT
Andrea shows up just as the paramedics are wheeling the professor out with cameras rolling. The professor says that he saw Meagan slip out the back just before the fire started.
INT. –AUDITORIUM – BACKSTAGE – NIGHT
Chloe tells Josh and Meagan that she’s giving up on her mother, that she must not love her. The popular girl who made everyone laugh at her during the play overhears this and taunts her.
INT. – AUDITORIUM – NIGHT
Andrea shows up with her cameras and the police. They detain Meagan for questioning.
INT. – AUDITORIUM – BACKSTAGE – NIGHT
Josh realizes Andrea was right about Meagan. Andrea overhears Chloe’s bully and has choice words for her.
INT. – AUDITORIUM – LATER
The performance is done. Chloe runs off the stage to her mom and dad and brother. Andrea’s boss calls and fires her. She says that’s okay because her family is more important. Suddenly…
INT. –SCIENCE LAB – DAY
Andrea is back at the science lab. She looks like herself again. She runs out of the lab.
INT- ANDREA’S HOME – NIGHT
Andrea runs through the house calling to her family afraid that everything that just happened has been erased, but to her surprise, it hasn’t. The present and future have merged. Andrea’s family is reunited.
EXT. – BASEBALL FIELD – NIGHT
Benjamin gets to pitch and strikes the hitter out. He looks back at his mom, beaming. Andrea and Josh kiss.
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PS80 – Janeen’s Pass #10 – Essence Only
LOGLINE: A wealthy fashionista learns mind control techniques and uses them to empower women at a shelter to take action against their abusers. As her ability to empower the abused grows stronger, the actions taken against the abusers turn deadly.
DRAMATIC QUESTION: If you use mind control methods to help people without their knowledge are you a criminal if the result is murder?
MAIN CONFLICT: As abuse escalates in a household, who will survive? The husband or the wife?
DILEMMA: Does the fashionista continue to use mind control techniques to empower the abused and save lives or is she empowering the abused women to become as abusive as their husbands?
THEME: Mind control techniques are an amped up version of “thoughts and prayers”.
INT. RICHARDS HOME – EVENING
Richard slaps and punches his wife, Amber, because she didn’t have the kids in bed already when he got home. He yells at the kids.
INT. CLASSROOM – DAY
Superficial Morgan leaves her mind control class chatting with her classmates. Is mind control real or is it really just about boosting confidence?
INT. WOMEN’S SHELTER LOBBY – DAY
Morgan sees Amber Richards, her designer’s wife, with their two kids at a women’s shelter. Amber pretends she’s there on a charitable mission, but Morgan sees the bruises and is distressed.
INT. SHELTER OFFICE – DAY
Bridget, who runs the shelter, tells Morgan that Amber won’t press charges and is going back to her husband after being at the shelter only a few hours.
INT. DESIGN STUDIO – DAY
Morgan and Daniel Richards greet with fake kisses and she tells him she’s seen his wife at the shelter, donating clothes. He turns away with an evil leer.
INT. RICHARDS HOME – EVENING
Daniel berates and slaps around Amber for trying to escape from him and steal his kids while not keeping their private matters private. She whimpers.
INT. MORGAN’S HOME – DAY
Morgan decides Amber needs to empower herself to leave Daniel so she puts her copy of Silva in her purse. It will strengthen her self-confidence and help her feel she is capable of leaving Daniel.
INT. RICHARDS HOME ENTRY – EVENING
After greeting, Morgan follows Daniel to his studio. She slips a Silva book onto a table with a significant look at Amber who is holding her kids in the darkened living room. Morgan is satisfied she has helped someone in need.
INT. RICHARDS HOME STUDIO – EVENING
Morgan and Daniel consult on the design of a dress and both are fussy about fit and embellishment. As he walks her to the door, she sees Amber giving her the covert sign for help. Startled, she nods to Amber.
INT. MORGAN’S CAR – CONTINUOUS
Morgan calls the police to report that a woman asked her to call for help at the designer’s address. Two males cops arrive and Morgan follows them to the designer’s house.
EXT. RICHARDS HOME – CONTINUOUS
Daniel is in cuffs, Amber and her kids are in tears. Daniel yells at Morgan to mind her own business and stay out of their simple family spat. The conversation gets heated.
INT. FIBER GUILD MEETING – LATER
Still superficial, Morgan tells the group that includes Bridget and Cinda (a cop) that Daniel has cut all ties with her and she’s not sure what she’ll wear to the gala.
INT. POLICE STATION – EVENING
Daniel is incensed and wants to capitalize on what the cops witnessed when Morgan lit into Daniel. Because Amber refuses to testify, they side ask for the restraining order he wants.
INT. POLICE STATION – LATER
The two cops argue with Cinda and her partner, Rod, that it’s not abuse if the wife won’t press charges, but Rod sides with Cinda so we know he’s reasonable.
INT. FIBER GUILD MEETING – EVENING
Cinda and Morgan update the guild. Daniel got a restraining order against Morgan for trying to incite Amber to leave him by giving her the book. The guild members are sympathetic. Morgan sees it’s not going to be easy and wants to do more.
INT. CLASSROOM – DAY
Morgan’s Silva instructor tells her that she cannot use Silva to harm anyone or it will come back on her. She can empower an abused wife to have the strength she needs to escape from a distance.
INT. RICHARDS HOME – EVENING
Daniel, emboldened and angry, slaps around Amber again, takes her car keys and phone away from her.
He’ll buy whatever they need. He spanks the kids for crying when they see him hit Amber.
INT. MORGAN’S HOME – EVENING
Morgan uses Silva to heal Amber’s bruises. Then she empowers her and reduces her fear and emotional pain. All of this is done from a distance.
INT. MORGAN’S HOME – EVENING
Morgan’s husband, Gavin, a wealthy writer, doesn’t think it’s ethical to help someone without their permission and mentions the restraining order. She argues she’s staying away and feels compelled to do something.
INT. FIBER GUILD MEETING – EVENING
The guild includes a Cinda, Bridget, Emily (a lawyer) and ER nurse Rhonda. They explain abused women’s behavior and the fears/pride that govern their actions. Rhonda has heard of NMT, intentional medicine and Morgan is interested.
INT. MORGAN’S HOME – LATER
Morgan’s husband warns her to stay out of Daniel’s way — he’s dangerous and if he will beat his wife, he won’t think twice about beating Morgan if he runs into her. Stick with her little mind control stuff.
INT. CAFE – EVENING
Bridget tells Morgan what shelter women need most to leave, citing one resident that Morgan will try to help with confidence and bruise healing.
INT. MORGAN’S HOME – LATER
Morgan watches an NMT lesson, tries the technique and seems to feel better. Her husband warns her about interfering, but the shelter’s current residents need support, courage and empowerment.
INT. POLICE STATION – EVENING
A wife Morgan has “helped” breaks the nose of her husband during a fight. Rod thinks it’s abuse, but Cinda checks the records and says it’s merely the wife fighting back instead of taking the beatings like usual. He ponders.
INT. FIBER GUILD MEETING – TWO WEEKS LATER
Bridget tells Morgan that the woman they talked about has healed and developed the confidence needed to get a job at her old financial planning firm. Morgan is gratified and gets the name and situation of someone else at the shelter.
INT. POLICE STATION – MORNING
Cinda tells Rod about how successful Morgan has been. He is skeptical and wonders if it’s ethical.
INT. FIBER GUILD MEETING – TWO WEEKS LATER
Bridget, Cinda and Morgan shares Morgan’s successes. She shares books and web addresses for the training and the other guild women join her in learning Silva and NMT.
INT. CLASSROOM – DAY
Morgan asks the Silva instructor if Silva from a distance is legally OK. He says the law doesn’t recognize it as a true power and likens it to offering “thoughts and prayers” which is always OK.
INT. FIBER GUILD MEETING – TWO WEEKS LATER
The shelter woman tells the group that three women who were repeat tenants of the shelter have now found the courage to leave their abusers for good. Morgan wonders if it is ethical when one woman punched her abuser in the gut after he hit her.
INT. POLICE STATION – DAY
Cinda find ways to lock up a couple more abusers on second calls by focusing on getting her boss to look more favorably on preventing further domestic violence.
INT. FIBER GUILD MEETING – TWO WEEKS LATER
Rhonda says that Amber came through the ER with a broken wrist. She again refused to press charges when consulted privately but Daniel hovered and eventually took her home. Morgan, now with true purpose, resolves to help Amber.
INT. MORGAN’S HOME – EVENING
Daniel threatens to kill Morgan if she continues to put thoughts of leaving into his wife’s head. Daniel says he knows she’s violated the restraining order. Morgan is baffled, visibly shaken and shuts off the NMT video she was watching.
INT. POLICE STATION – MORNING
Cinda works on her boss to take abusive patterns into consideration more often in charging — including checking hospital records, police calls, and shelter info before releasing an abuser.
INT. CAFE – EVENING
The guild ladies tell Morgan she is making a difference. Emily does pro bono legal work fora stream of women, Rod talks to the men while Cinda talks to the women on domestic disturbance calls and Bridget has more women and children leaving her shelter in success.
INT. MORGAN’S HOME – EVENING
Morgan gives abused women strength, takes away their fear and emotional pain and gives them the confidence to act. Silva can’t be used for evil. Gavin says define evil. A man beating his wife? A wife striking back? She ponders.
INT. ER – EVENING
Amber is wheeled in by paramedics, but won’t press charges saying she has been cut off from all of her friends, has no money or credit, no job, internet or car keys and Daniel has said he will take the kids if she leaves.
INT. FIBER GUILD MEETING – EVENING
Rhonda relays Amber’s predicament to the guild and they decide to use all of their combined efforts to empower Amber to protect herself and her children.
INT. MORGAN’S HOME – EVENING
Gavin supports Morgan in court to fight the renewal of the restraining order. He worries that if Daniel finds out about her mind control work, the may say she is violating the restraining order.
INT. RICHARDS HOME – EVENING
Amber hasn’t done something to Richard’s exacting taste and he slaps her around for it. Her bruises aren’t even healed. She hides her anger until he leaves and then says, “No more.”
INT. RICHARDS HOME – MORNING
Amber retrieves her hidden stash of pain pills from her ER visits. She contemplates them.
INT. FIBER GUILD MEETING – EVENING
Rhonda fears for Amber’s life because Daniel’s violence is escalating. The guild does Silva and NMT together to empower Amber to take care of herself and protect herself and her kids.
INT. RICHARDS KITCHEN – DAY
Amber bakes Richard’s favorite dessert and gets the kids to be early so that he and mommy can have a special dinner. Amber is smiling.
INT. RICHARDS LIVING ROOM – EVENING
Amber hands Daniel a big piece of cake and a cup of coffee. She excuses herself to clean up the kitchen.
INT. RICHARDS LIVING ROOM – LATER
Daniel is sleeping deeply in his recliner. With surgical precision, Amber positions the knife over his heart and pushes it in with great force. She pulls the knife out, waits, and checks to see that he is no longer breathing. Then she calmly calls the police.
INT. POLICE STATION – LATER
Amber is in an interrogation room, her fresh bruise obvious, her manner stoic. Cinda asks her what happened. She explains, ending that this was her only choice.
INT. POLICE STATION – DAY
Rod talks to the prosecutor about the guild’s work in encouraging women to fight back. There is now a history of women harming their abusers because of the guild. The prosecutor charges the guild members as accessories.
INT. POLICE STATION – LATER
The guild members, even Cinda, are all in separate interview rooms, charged as accessories to murder.
INT. MORGAN’S HOME – NIGHT
Morgan’s husband will testify if needed that she never talked to Amber and that all she did was the equivalent of thoughts and prayers.
INT. COURT ROOM – DAY
One after another, guild members testify to “thoughts and prayers” only. On cross-examination, they say that their prayers were asking that she would be strong and heal quickly, never that she hurt her husband. If Daniel was abusing Amber and she saw no other way out, it was self-defense.
INT COURT ROOM – DAY
Amber’s stabbing of Daniel is determined to be self-defense and she is ordered to counseling, but not deemed a danger to herself or her kids. The guild celebrates.
INT COURT ROOM – DAY
The guild presents a passionate defense including the Silva teacher who swears he wasn’t involved. The charges are dropped.
INT. DESIGN STUDIO – DAY
Morgan is working with a female designer who says her neighbor is being beaten by her husband. Morgan hands her a Silva book with a link to NMT training written inside the front cover. “Thoughts and Prayers” are about all you can do.
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Pablo Soriano’s Pass 10: Essence Only
What I learned doing this project: I needed some time to come up with a couple breakthroughs. I honestly wasn’t done with my outline. But cutting it down to just the essential parts really helped. The ending is still a bit weak but it’s getting better.
LOGLINE: A Mexican family attempting to sneak across the border think they have a guardian angel when a drone begins to drop off food and supplies, when in actuality that they are being televised on the dark web as Americans place bets on their success and are simply trying to give them the advantage for their own gain.
DRAMATIC QUESTION: Can Irma take her two sons safely across the Chihuahua Desert to the US to escape the clutches of the gangsters that killed her husband.
MAIN CONFLICT: With the use of drones, a group secretly working with the border patrol creates a gambling game show on the dark web where they live-stream illegal immigrants attempting to cross the border— Irma and her sons are the show’s newest “contestants.”
DILEMMA: Does Irma stay in her small village and work for the bookies to pay off her husband’s debts or attempt to illegally cross the border to Texas at the risk of getting caught?
THEME: If there is no risk, there can be no reward.
1. EXT – TEXAS BORDER – DAY
A drone hovers over a group of migrants as they attempt to climb the border wall. They are immediately stopped by the border patrol.
2. INT – BORDER PATROL STATION, EL PASO, TX – DAY
Frank and Border Patrol officers watch the arrest of the migrants on a monitor showing the drone video feed. Frank was recently caught smuggling in drugs using his drones but instead of turning him in, the border patrol forces him to work for them to help them catch illegal immigrants on the condition that he stop smuggling drugs and not let a single immigrant get past his drones otherwise he will be sent to prison.
3. INT – IRMA’S HOME, VILLA JUAREZ, MX – DAY
After picking up her sons from detention for making projectile weapons out of school supplies, Irma comes home to find that her husband, Ricardo, ransacked their house to feed his gambling addiction. Irma makes a pact with her neighbor, Elena, to save up to get passports for her and her two sons and buy bus tickets to the United States. A gangster from the casino named Sapo comes by asking for Ricardo to collect a debt but he isn’t there.
3. INT. HOSPITAL, EL PASO, TX – DAY
Miguel brings his mother in for tests and doctors diagnose her with Alzheimers. Medical treatment is expensive since she is an undocumented immigrant and her insurance is limited.
4. INT. FRANK’S STUDIO – DAY
Frank meets up with his team where they have dozens of drones and an elaborate operation. He explains to his team the conditions that were set by the border patrol to avoid prison.
5. INT. FACTORY – DAY
Irma works at a maquiladora when her husband, Ricardo, shows up asking for money. She asks her supervisor for an advance to get her husband to leave.
6. INT. MIGUEL’S HOUSE – NIGHT
Miguel puts his mother to bed. After playing a video game tournament online for some extra money, he uses a VPN to open a private browser and go on the dark web in search of social security numbers and IDs to fake his mother’s citizenship for cheaper coverage. In doing so, he finds a Frank’s video feed of migrants camping in the desert.
7. INT. FRANK’S STUDIO – NIGHT
Frank needs a source of income now that his drug smuggling operation has been compromised. With the use of the drones, Frank’s production team is secretly live-streaming migrants attempting to cross the border on the dark web. They are taking in bets from viewers on the odds that they make it across.
8. EXT. IRMA’S HOME – NIGHT
After work, Irma gets home to find that her neighbors’ chickens were stolen by Ricardo. Fed up, she decides to use the advance paycheck to buy bus tickets to Ciudad Juarez at the border of Texas.
9. INT. MIGUEL’S HOUSE – NIGHT
Miguel begins to build a custom drone with the intention of buying in on the gambling gameshow he found on the dark web and using it to gain the advantage.
10. EXT. CASINO PARKING LOT – NIGHT
Irma takes her two sons and arrives at the casino looking for Ricardo to tell him that she is leaving him and taking the boys but when she arrives she is told that Ricardo was assaulted by security and taken to the hospital.
11. EXT. IRMA’S NEIGHBORHOOD – NIGHT
Irma returns to her house to find it burglarized and all of their money stolen by the people that Ricardo owed money to. The police arrive to tell her that Ricardo died of his injuries. All Irma has left is three bus tickets to Texas.
12. INT. ELENA’S HOUSE – NIGHT
Sapo wakes them up to tell Irma that she had to pay back Ricardo’s debt or she and her sons would have to work for the casino to pay it off. She tells him yes but actually plans to leave town in the morning. Elena tells her to meet her cousin in Salamuyuca and that he would help her sneak past the border.
13. INT. BUS STATION – MORNING
After Irma doesn’t show up for work, Sapo interrogates Elena to find out where Irma is headed. Irma and her sons narrowly beat Sapo and his men to the station and escape.
13. EXT. MIGUEL’S HOUSE – MORNING
Miguel lives in Tornillo, close to the borderline. He finishes building his drone and tests it by flying out into the desert looking for the migrants on the gameshow.
14. INT. FRANK’S STUDIO – DAY
Sapo calls Frank as it is revealed that Sapo was one the drug dealers that Frank used to smuggle drugs for. Sapo gives him information about a caravan en route and asks Frank to find and make sure Irma and her two sons are caught at the border.
15. EXT. SAMALAYUCA – DAY
Without passports, Irma and her sons cannot enter the states so they meet with Elena’s cousin who is a coyote and he adds them to the caravan he is guiding to Texas.
16. INT. FRANK’S STUDIO – DAY
Thanks to Sapo’s intel, Frank’s drones find the caravan and are able to identify Irma and her sons. He holds his end of the deal and keeps a drone on her as he projects her odds to make it across to be extremely low.
17. EXT. CHIHUAHUA DESERT – DAY
When members of the caravan discover that they are being followed by drones, many split up to avoid getting caught, forcing Irma and her sons to continue the trek alone.
18. INT. MIGUEL’S HOUSE – DAY
Miguel tunes into the game show and sees Irma’s odds and decides to bet on her. He finds the caravan using the drone and uses it to drop off food and water for Irma. Using the drone, Miguel tries to guide her to safe passage.
19. INT. FRANK’S STUDIO – DAY
Frank discovers Miguel’s drone. When Miguel has to bring it back to be recharged, Frank sends one of his to follow it and finds out where Miguel lives.
20. EXT. CHIHUAHUA DESERT – DAY
Irma’s sons figure out that the drones rotate shifts. They have solar panels on them so when they need to recharge they simply shut down as others fly over to continue to follow them.
21. EXT. MIGUEL’S HOUSE – DAY
As his drone approaches, Miguel realizes that it was followed and crashes his drone into Frank’s to take it down. He immediately takes his mother and leaves the house to hide somewhere.
22. EXT. CHIHUAHUA DESERT – DAY
Irma and her sons find drones that are recharging and they destroy as many as they can find.
23. INT. FRANK’S STUDIO – DAY
Frank is furious and sends even more drones to follow Irma. He then sends some of his team to go out and find Miguel.
24. INT. MIGUEL’S HOUSE – NIGHT
Frank’s men break into Miguel’s house but don’t find anyone there. Little do they know that Miguel’s webcam and mic are still as they search for him and discuss Frank’s operation.
25. EXT. CHIHUAHUA DESERT – NIGHT
Realizing the drones were more focused on Irma, she comes up with a plan to split up with her sons in order to draw most of the drones away from them. When they are a safe distance away, Irma’s sons use the projectile weapons they made in school to take down the few drones that followed them and make a break for the border.
26. INT. FRANK’S STUDIO – NIGHT
When Frank realizes that the boys make it across the border, he notifies the border patrol. In a rage he launches a drone straight at Irma.
27. EXT. CHIHUAHUA DESERT – NIGHT
Irma is attacked by the drones as they force her off of a steep cliff, killing her.
27. EXT. EL PASO – NIGHT
As Irma’s sons cross the border, they are immediately caught. They are not deported, as by law, the US is obliged to shelter any unaccompanied minors and provide care until they are 18 years of age.
28. INT. FRANK’S STUDIO – EARLY MORNING
After all members of the caravan are caught by the border patrol, Frank’s team wraps it up and brings in any working drone back to their facility for repairs and maintenance. They also bring in a big haul of money from their secret gambling ring. When checking all the drones, they realize that one has it’s camera still on and isn’t responding to the remote control.
29. INT. MIGUEL’S NEIGHBOR’S HOUSE – MORNING
When Miguel crashed his drone into Frank’s, he took it and quickly repaired and reconfigured it to work with his remote and on his computer. From his neighbor’s house, he was able to fly it back in time to follow the rest of the fleet back to Frank’s studio. He is already in communication with the authorities and gives them Frank’s location.
30. INT. FRANK’S STUDIO – MORNING
With the evidence from Miguel’s webcam, the authorities arrive at Frank’s studio and arrest him for his crimes. They eventually find the video where Frank kills Irma and uncover the evidence of his drug smuggling operation. His secret partnership with the border patrol is a nationally covered scandal.
29. INT. MIGUEL’S HOUSE – MORNING
Miguel avoids jail time but has to pay a hefty fine for his involvement in the gambling ring. The best he could do for his mother was start an online fundraiser within his gaming community which helps a bit. But eventually his mother succumbs to her illness.
30. INT. REFUGEE SHELTER – DAY
Irma’s sons have now been in the states for over a year. After applying to become a foster parent for child refugees, Miguel shows up at the shelter with the intention of looking after Irma’s sons.
31. INT. MIGUEL’S HOUSE – MORNING
Miguel teaches the boys how to build custom PCs and drones. The boys show a natural talent as they install projectile launchers on their own drones and shoot at targets.
THE END
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PS 80 Michelle Damis Pass 10: Essence Only
What I learned is that if your bare bones outline makes sense it will only get better with character development and dialogue. It will keep you on track, where you could easily get pulled off the rails if you aren’t sure where you are going.
LOGLINE: A Vampire forced to find a new place to live finds a home with empty-nester parents who unknowingly trade their soul-sucking daughter for a blood-sucking tenant.
DRAMATIC QUESTION: How will the family survive living with a Vampire?
MAIN CONFLICT: The vampire becoming connected to the family and doesn’t want to kill anymore and the daughters tense relationship with her mother.
DILEMMA: What will Ted (the Vampire) choose to do when the family he has grown fond of is in danger? Can he fight his urges for blood? What will he sacrifice? Himself or the closest thing to a family he has ever had?
THEME: “You can always choose a different path”
____________________________________________________________________________________________________
INT. COZY LIBRARY-ISH ROOM – NIGHT
Open on an unidentified man sits in a leather chair, cozy room, fireplace.
INT. TEDS “LAIR” ABANDONED BLDG – NIGHT
Narrated cont. He is sharing what his life is like being a vampire. Where he has lived, how he gets by, what other vampires do etc… Ted is getting ready to go out on the town-primping, choosing outfit etc….
EXT. DOWNTOWN STREETS – NIGHT
Ted walking to night club, narrating still. Explains more about vampires in general (folk-lore, misconceptions), etc…Show Ted do something “kind” for a homeless human
INT. NIGHTCLUB – NIGHT
Ted sees his vampire friend. Ted narrates background on “friend” (very young in vampire years) explains a bit about other vampires in his life. We then see Nina in the night club in the background.
INT. NIGHTCLUB – NIGHT
(we leave narration) Ted sits down at bar with his vampire friend, they start chatting.
INT. NIGHTCLUB – NIGHT
Nina arrives at bar next to Ted, orders drink she observes a guy being too pushy with a girl nearby, she intervenes, Ted notices.
INT. NIGHTCLUB – NIGHT
Nina sits down with a few friends, brings her friends up to date with her situation, she has had to move back home with parents-not happy. No job, etc…
INT. NIGHTCLUB – NIGHT
Ted narrating mor of his thoughts on humans.
INT. NIGHTCLUB – NIGHT
Ted and friend select that nights victim(s) (they select someone that deserves it from audience perspective), Nina almost a target of his friend, Ted dissuades.
EXT. OUTSIDE CLUB ALLEY – NIGHT
Quick scene of victims (don’t show any gore) Ted narrating as he walks how and why he picks his prey.
INT. NIGHTCLUB – NIGHT
Brief montage of Nina partying into the night.
INT. BEDROOM – EARLY AM
Alarm clock going off 5am. Meet Marin and Jim, Ninas parents. (Feel the love and security) reference to being newly retired.
INT. WORKOUT ROOM – EARLY AM
Marin is working out. View some of her accomplishments on walls. Get background from items in the room.
INT. ENTRY WAY
Nina comes home from partying, annoyed she can hear her Mom exercising. Looks at a family picture-mixture of sadness and anger Rolls eyes/dirty looks at Marin as she walks past room. Nina ignores her. Marin exasperated.
INT. NINAS ROOM – EARLY MORNING
Ninas bedroom is a disaster, pulls shades as sun coming up. Flops into bed. Items in room show how much she is loved. But that she is self-sabotaging
INT. HOUSE – EARLY MORNING
Marins finished with workout, walks thru house to kitchen. Nina’s path of destruction-leaves a mess everywhere. Picks up things as she goes. Obviously frustrated.
INT. KITCHEN – EARLY MORNING
Jim in messy Kitchen having coffee, Marin joins him. They have conversation about Nina. “We can’t live like this” “ANYBODY” would be better than her! “Let’s get a tenant, and pay for her to live in the city” Epiphany/Idea. Marin gets text from her sister.
EXT. TEDS BUILDING – EARLY MORNING/STILL DARK
Ted is walking up to his building. There is a guy posting a sign on a door to bldg. Building being destroyed to make way for fancy condos.
EXT. PARK/WALKING TRAILS – DAY
Marin walks with her sister Rachel, they have talk about Nina (good time to reveal some stuff) Marin tells her about renter idea, Rachel doesn’t like the idea.
INT. HOME OFFICE – DAY
Marin on computer, posting “room for rent” notice, (conflict scene with Nina). Lies to her Mom.
INT. THERAPIST OFFICE –DAY
Nina enters. She lied to her Mom about where she was going.
INT. BAR – NIGHT
Ted telling vampire friends about having to move. Friend suggests move to the suburbs, and loves it. Ted likes the idea. Would be a nice change. They eye their “dinner” (a couple douchebags)
EXT. STREET – NIGHT
Ted has finished “dinner”. Walking home past a coffee shop, sees a room for rent ad in window, takes down number.
**1 week later.
INT. HOUSE – DAY INTO NIGHT
Various interviews with potential renters, one of whom will be Ted.
INT. KITCHEN –MINUTES LATER
Jim and Marin go to kitchen to agree they want Ted.
INT. HOUSE – CONT.
Jim and Marin offer room to Ted. Nina comes home unexpectedly. They have to tell her their brilliant plan. He recognizes her from the nightclub, she can’t put her finger on why he looks familiar.
INT. NINAS CITY APT – DAY
Nina in her new place unpacking with a friend. Happy for herself but suspicious of Ted.
EXT. HOUSE – NIGHT
Ted move in “night”, apologizes for it being dark. He doesn’t have that much stuff.
INT. HOUSE – NIGHT
Jim and Marin are super kind and helpful. Ted has never been treated like this before. Funny “Vegan” dinner scene.
INT. CALL CENTER – NIGHT
Nina consoles a victim and shares part of her story.
EXT.HOUSE – NIGHT
Ted is sneaking out like a teenager to go to club. Already feeling guilty.
INT. NIGHTCLUB – NIGHT
With vampire friends, discusses new place he is living. Ted immediately feels protective-not a normal emotion for him. Nina shows up, Ted sneaks out.
EXT. FIELD – NIGHT
Ted decides to feed on a deer instead of a human. Apologizes to the deer.
INT. KITCHEN – NIGHT
Ted does all the dishes and takes out the garbage before going to bed for the day.
INT. WORKOUT ROOM – EARLY MORNING
Marin working out, Ted smiles as he passes by, opposite of Nina.
INT. KITCHEN – DAY
Marin joins Jim for coffee in spotless kitchen, “This is already working out”. Nina calls, she has a great job interview today.
INT. DOWNTOWN OFFICE – DAY
Nina at interview, sitting in waiting room looking at newspaper. Missing person article, photo of nightclub, missing person-sees Ted in background. Suspicion grows. She rocks interview.
INT. BIG BOX STORE- DAY
Marin is shopping, getting all sorts of Halloween decorations and costumes. Phone call with her sister talking about how well everything is going.
INT. HOME – NIGHT
Marin is putting up Halloween decorations as Ted is “getting up”. Jim comes home- she is excited to show him their costumes this year. VAMPIRES! Jim invites Ted to a movie.
EXT. THEATER – NIGHT
Jim talks about movies and seeing them as a family and how the experience with his Dad was so impactful.
INT. THEATER – NIGHT
Ted mesmerized by movie.
EXT. THEATER – NIGHT
Ted can’t stop talking about movie. Someone is watching (danger) Teds senses kick up….he knows.
INT. HOME – NIGHT
Ted makes an excuse to go to his room and he sneaks out.
INT. NIGHTCLUB – NIGHT
Ted meets his friend asks if he is following him and the humans. Nina interrupts. Tense conversation. She doesn’t trust him. He tells her to stop being a bitch. Nina storms out.
INT. THERAPIST – DAY
Nina at therapist. She was affected by Teds “wake-up call” the night prior.
EXT. THERAPIST BLDG – DAY
Nina is scared by a guy dressed up as a vampire as she leaves building. PHONE RINGS-Gets a call, she GOT THE JOB!
INT. HOME – DAY
Marin doing all sorts of Halloween craft/cookies….getting ready for trick- or –treaters. Threat introduced.
INT. CAR – NIGHT
Nina driving talking with friend on cell, got job, going to pick up her Dad for a celebration dinner.
INT. HOUSE – NIGHT
Nina shows up at parents (who are dressed as vampires) Nina takes them to celebrate.Ted stays to hand out candy.
INT. FANCY RESTAURANT – NIGHT
Marin embarrassed about costume, Nina takes pleasure in her embarrassment, as they check in with Maître D.
INT/EXT. FRONT DOOR – NIGHT
Montage of trick-or-treaters and Teds responses funny stuff.
INT. FANCY RESTAURANT – NIGHT
The dinner gets tense, Nina says she doesn’t like Ted, is she jealous. She tells them what he said to her. They get in a fight.
INT/EXT. FRONT DOOR – NIGHT
Montage of more trick-or-treaters and Teds responses, funny stuff until his real Vampire friends show up. SH*T…now they know where he is and the family is in danger. Nina drops Jim and Marin home.
EXT. CAR – NIGHT
Nina sees “much too big” trick-or-treaters leave, she is suspicious and follows the two Vampires.
INT. HOME – NIGHT
Jim and Marin ask Ted how he liked answering the door etc….then he asks how their dinner went.
EXT. MEETING PLACE/WOODED AREA – NIGHT
Ted arrives meeting the other Vampires they argue and fight over the family. They reveal themselves thinking they are alone.
EXT. CAR – NIGHT
Nina is shocked when she realizes what they are. She sees an old church, screeches to a halt in front of it. Grabs empty containers, exits car.
EXT. OUTSIDE CHURCH – NIGHT
Nina sneaking in to church.
INT. CHURCH – NIGHT
Still sneaking around, gets caught by a Nun. She has to confess what she is doing, Nun surprisingly defends vampires.
EXT. VARIOUS STREETS – NIGHT
Ted walking, thinking, observes trick-or-treaters and families. Internal conflict
INT. MANSION – NIGHT
Teds Vampire friends report him to Elders…he is breaking rules.
INT LIBRARY –DAY
Nina schooling herself on vampires
INT STORE – DAY
Nina outfitting herself with Vampire protection supplies.
INT. CAFE – DAY
Nina tells her Dad she thinks Ted is a Vampire, he of course doesn’t believe her. Either she storms out or he has to go somewhere.
INT. HOME – NIGHT
Jim is re-telling Marin about Ninas crazy accusations when Ted walks in (or he overhears?) Ted decides he should confront Nina.
INT. NINAS APT – NIGHT
Ted confronts Nina. She wants him to leave her parents alone. He also explains that there are other dangers besides him. He teaches her how she can best defend herself against vampires. He tells her he plans to confess to her parents, and then leave town for their protection.
INT. HOME – NIGHT
Jim gets call from a neighbor to come help him, leaving Marin alone.
EXT. NEIGHBORHOOD – NIGHT
Jim leaves just before vampires arrive. Near miss.
INT. HOME – NIGHT
The Vampires take Marin.
EXT. OUTSIDE NINAS – NIGHT
Car pulls up and grabs Ted.
INT. NINAS – NIGHT
Knock at door, she thinks it is Ted. It is other vampires-struggle/they take her.
INT. MANSION – NIGHT
The Vampire Elders confront Ted. BIG ULTIMATUM for Ted.
INT. HOME – NIGHT
Jim comes home, Marin is gone. He thinks she just ran an errand, not worried. Calls Nina, she doesn’t pick up….not worried…but odd. Texts
INT. MANSION – NIGHT
The Vampire Elders confront Ted. BIG ULTIMATUM (More of this scene) Ted leaves
INT. HOME – NIGHT
Ted arrives home…immediately smells that other vampires were there- freaks out.
INT. CAR – NIGHT
Driving to Ninas…speeding….Ted tells Jim all (the vampire stuff and the “you are the first family I’ve known” stuff)…Jim is speechless
INT. NINAS – NIGHT
Nina is gone- obvious struggle. They track her location thru phone. .
EXT. CAR – NIGHT
Speeding to location
INT. DARK UNDERGROUND PLACE – NIGHT
Nina and Marin are tied up and alone. Nina has to bring Marin up to speed on Ted being a vampire.
INT. CAR – NIGHT
It is Jims turn to talk and ask questions as they drive.
INT. DARK UNDERGROUND PLACE – NIGHT
Vampires come in give Nina and Marin a choice…die or become vampires. They discuss options.
INT. CAR – NIGHT
More Jim and Ted talking?? Maybe about Marin and Nina.
INT. DARK UNDERGROUND PLACE – NIGHT
Nina and Marin fighting about options, they have opposite views (do a pro-con list) turns into Marin asking why Nina hates her so much.
EXT. ABANDONED LOCATION – NIGHT
Ted and Jim arrive, Ted schools Jim on what they will come up against.
INT. DARK UNDERGROUND PLACE – NIGHT
Nina breaks down, confesses her own secret. Marin confesses an even bigger secret.
INT. DARK UNDERGROUND PLACE – NIGHT (each line below is a scene somewhere in the underground place)
-Vampires come and take the girls to another room. The girls see Ted and Jim. They have to stall.
-Jim and Ted make a plan.
-They start executing the plan.
-Nina and Marin stalling.
-Plan goes sideways.
-Sacrifices are offered up…from all parties (all are willing to sacrifice for the others)
-Vampires frustrated.
-Unexpected interruption –The Nun(s) arrive
-the escape and chase and escape.
EXT. OUTDOORS/NO COVER IN SIGHT – DAWN
They come up out of ground thru a metal “port” which slams down & locks leaving them above ground. How will they hide him from the sun?
INT. DARK UNDERGROUND PLACE – NIGHT
Nuns facing off vampires. Head Nun looks at watch it shows it should be dawn, sun coming up.
EXT. OUTDOORS/NO COVER IN SIGHT – DAWN
Jim, Marin, Nina, and Ted huddle together. The sun is about to come up and Ted will die. They try to cover him with all their clothes and their bodies to protect him from the sun.
INT. LIVING ROOM – NIGHT (50+ years in Future)
Ted is telling 2 teenagers (approx. 18yr old twins) what happened when the sun came up.
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Richard’s Pass 10: Essence Only (in the first line)
What I learned is… is that my essence outline is almost done. But I have to move forward before I fall too far behind. I believe I will have this completed in the next two days.
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Jennifer’s Pass 10: Essence Only
WHAT I LEARNED:
A lot of the dark comedy elements will only come out once the characters and dialogue are filled in, but this has been a useful exercise to hone the logic of the story. I’m also seeing just how much work is left to go.
LOGLINE:
A Southern high school overachiever will do literally anything on her quest to beat her rival and win a prestigious award guaranteed to get her into her dream college — even commit murder.
DRAMATIC QUESTION:
How far will Jessica go to win the scholarship (and at life), and will she win?
MAIN CONFLICT:
Jessica, the overachiever vs. her academic rival Amanda, who is a fellow overachiever type and is also up for the scholarship. Both want to win the scholarship, and both are willing to work hard to make it happen, but the rivalry with Amanda will push Jessica harder to force the win, while Amanda will provide one moral core as she tries to keep their competitiveness on a normal level and not the extremes she grudgingly begins to think Jessica is willing to go to.
DILEMMA:
Win and lose all her friends for life, or lose and destroy her chances of success but keep her loved ones close
OR
Win and lose her soul, or lose and no longer have her family’s approval
THEME:
Does winning at all costs actually pay off?
ESSENCE OUTLINE:
INT. SCHOOL GYM — DAY
Jessica, Amanda, and Ethan compete in the last round of a prestigious Southern high school philosophy competition. These aren’t your average high school students. Judges declare Amanda the winner, but Jessica is crushed and kicks herself for not going for it.
INT. JESSICA’S HOUSE — MORNING
Over breakfast Jessica’s parents try to reverse engineer why Jessica lost. Jessica’s father, the mayor of their town, wants to teach Jessica all the greasy ways he used to get ahead, while Jessica’s mother, a senator, tells Jessica to focus on the goal to go to Chapman U and create a “power base.” Jessica agrees to go on a hike with her father to their favorite spot.
Later:
INT. JESSICA’S ROOM — NIGHT
Jessica kicks herself again for hesitating in the final round, stressed almost to the point of unhinged. She looks out her window and sees her younger neighbor Jillian looking at her timidly from her own bedroom window. Jillian looks away when caught.
INT. SCHOOL CLASSROOM — DAY
Jessica and Amanda learn of the prestigious scholarship to Chapman U at the beginning of honors English lit. Jessica instantly starts making a plan, but Amanda mentions she’s already fulfilled many of the scholarship’s public service requirements and Jessica has not, instead focusing on her tech skills. Jessica’s secret hatred of Amanda and Ethan becomes clear.
BY PAGE 10:
We know that Jessica is on a mission to win at the competition and life in general at all costs. (We just don’t know which costs that entails yet.) She has her father as an ally.
INT. SCHOOL CAFETERIA — DAY
While doing a service project for children’s charity she’s just joined, Jessica forces a scholarship competitor out of helping so she looks better because it’s easier to pick on the little guy rather than a true peer like Amanda or Ethan. Amanda defends the competitor, noticing that the competitor isn’t likely to outrank either of them in the scholarship.
EXT. RACE EVENT SIGNUP TABLE — DAY
Jessica works the signup table at a charity race, where Amanda shows up unprepared for the race and notes she’s gotten word that Ethan, and Amanda are in the top 12 on the shortlist for the scholarship. Neighbor Jillian and Ethan show up to run. Jessica seethes secretly to her father, who reminds her to save some of this anger to push through at the end of the race while showing outwardly that she’s calm and cool. “Act the part, dear.”
EXT. RACE FINISH LINE — DAY
A runner is hurt, and other runners stop to help him out, but not Jessica. Amanda has been running the race but gives up cheerfully and walks instead, while in a surprise move Ethan comes from behind to beat Jessica. Jessica is lost in thought and holds back at the end. Ethan and Amanda bond over discussing Jessica being on the verge of cracking from the pressure.
EXT. RACE EVENT OFFICIALS’ STAND — DAY
Jessica secretly turns Amanda in on a strange technicality (accidentally curses under her breath, which is against the race rules), so she loses her standing in the race. She laughs it off, which angers Jessica as she attempts to convince Amanda how important this was for Amanda’s standing in the competition. Projection much?
INT. JESSICA’S BEDROOM — NIGHT
Jessica reads book on how to best others verbally. We see a stack of books like How to Win Friends and Influence People and acting books. V.O. Jessica shares that her mother thinks books like these mean she’s trying too hard, but Jessica doesn’t want to leave anything to chance.
INT. SCHOOL ACTIVITY ROOM — EVENING
Amanda and Ethan discuss Jessica and themselves now being 3 of the 6 semifinalists left in the competition while waiting for a history academic competition to start. They are concerned with Jessica and decide to keep an eye on her. Jessica enters and reviews her flashcards intensely. Jillian is a junior member of Jessica’s school team.
Later:
Jessica competes with Amanda on her team (Ethan is there as moral support for Amanda; they are getting closer), and when the opponent reveals a tiny weakness, Jessica twists the knife in the guy’s insecurity using a tactic she just learned from her book. He manages to answer correctly, winning the competition, but only barely. Jessica tries to put on a stone face but doesn’t manage to avoid showing her disappointment.
INT. SCHOOL CLASSROOM — DAY
Amanda quietly checks on Jessica to ask if she’s OK after losing the night before. Jessica hisses a mean response, but softens in how she looks at Amanda. In V.O. Jessica shares that she can’t let herself get soft, practices the technique that didn’t work in the academic competition in the previous scene.
INT. SCHOOL GYM — NIGHT
Jessica runs important fundraiser at homecoming dance (she has forced her way into leadership as a junior) while two other scholarship competitors help out. She is there alone with no allies so she talks to Amanda briefly, who came with Ethan. She catches two other competitors making out, which is against the morality clause of the scholarship, and then …
INT. PUBLIC BATHROOM — NIGHT
Jessica tips off the dance chaperone and anonymously notifies the scholarship committee that the other competitors have done something against the rules. She smiles. Jillian sees her there but walks away quickly when observed.
INT. SCHOOL HALLWAY — DAY
Ms. Sarah Collins (teacher running scholarship committee) looks on with concern as Jessica verbally abuses Jillian while accuses Jillian of stalking her, then turns around to greet Amanda cheerfully.
INT. JESSICA’S HOUSE — DAY
While Jessica’s mother drills her on facts for the next academic competition as Jessica stuffs items into bag for charity, Jessica interrupts to note that just eliminating competitors isn’t working and that she’s trying to show her commitment to service outwardly. Her mother encourages her to “think outside the box.” How can Jessica get ahead? A gleam in her eyes.
INT. JESSICA’S ROOM — NIGHT
How to beat them? Oppo research. Jessica types up a detailed analysis of Amanda and Ethan. But she also needs something else to help her shine.
INT. SCHOOL CLASSROOM — DAY
Jessica speaks conspiratorially with Amanda to befriend her, an act of manipulation using rules Jessica has learned from her reading. Amanda accidentally reveals info that makes Jessica jealous and shares that Ethan has a deadly food allergy to hazelnuts.
EXT. SCHOOL PARKING LOT — NIGHT
Jessica works to befriend Ethan before a competition. He mentions a recent win that gives him more points toward the scholarship. He is in first, Amanda in second, and Jessica in third place for scholarship. Ethan sees through Jessica while Amanda does not, not exactly anyway.
INT. SCHOOL — DAY
Jessica submits another justification (TBC) for why she should win scholarship, thinking it will get her ahead.
INT. SCHOOL LUNCHROOM — DAY
Two days later, Jessica checks her phone and sees that scholarship scores have updated, but she’s still in third place. Her world is rocked. What can she do to push things over the top?
INT. BOOKSTORE — DAY
Desperate, Jessica buys a stack of true crime, chemistry, and medical books in cash. Ms. Mitchell (English teacher, scholarship organizer) is going to say hello but hesitates, while Jillian lurks in the background and takes a photo of the books Jessica just bought. Jessica doesn’t see either one and leaves.
INT. JESSICA’S BEDROOM — NIGHT
Jessica starts trying to find a way to kill herself by overresearching different methods, getting overwhelmed, and resolving to do X (funny). Just as she starts trying to follow through, her father walks in and gives her a creepy pep talk. Her mother interrupts and says to her, “You’ve got to put yourself in front, Jessica. No one will do it for you.” Jessica closes her laptop.
INT. SCHOOL LIBRARY — DAY
Jessica runs a protocol on the library computer that makes her work totally anonymous and shuts down the video camera. She then forges something implicating Ethan doing something unethical TBC and forwards it to Ms. Collins.
INT. CLASSROOM — DAY
Ms. Collins speaks seriously to Amanda and Jessica about Ethan’s sudden elimination. Amanda is upset for Ethan but also worried about Jessica’s parents putting pressure on her. V.O. Jessica lets us know she hadn’t counted on Amanda feeling worse because of Ethan’s elimination. Something to exploit?
INT. SCHOOL HALLWAY — DAY
Jessica exits classroom and sees Jillian watching her. She walks over to Jillian and tells her she doesn’t appreciate Jillian following her around. (This will link back to the materials in the book on manipulation that Jessica read, and it’s clear Jessica is getting more paranoid.)
EXT. JESSICA’S BACKYARD — NIGHT
Jessica sits in front of a fire burning in a fire pit. Her father peeks out and asks what she’s doing. Her answer: strategizing how to win. He nods his approval. In the distance Jillian looks out a window and sees Jessica by the fire.
EXT. SCHOOL GROUNDS — NIGHT
Jessica arrives at the school with coffees in hand for herself, Amanda, and Ethan as an academic competition is about to start. Ethan confirms what’s in the coffee to make sure it’s safe and drinks. Amanda doesn’t make it to the event at the last minute.
INT. SCHOOL GYMNASIUM — NIGHT
Jessica and Ethan help put things away after competition and walk outside to the parking lot carrying a folding table and chairs.
EXT. SCHOOL PARKING LOT — NIGHT
Ethan turns on Jessica once no one is looking because he knows she must have been the one to get him in trouble and asks how she got him in trouble and out of the scholarship competition. Jessica discusses it casually while grabbing something out of her bag. A glove and a bottle of … something. She makes sure no one is looking, puts the glove on while Ethan is wrangling the item around in his car’s trunk, and dabs the edge of the bottle carefully with one gloved finger. He is almost done loading the trunk and calls her a piece of work. She looks like she might be softening or even try to kiss him, then puts one finger up to his mouth and says, “Shhh.” He starts to feel strange instantly and breathes funny. He looks for his bag and collapses, asking Jessica to go inside and get his adrenaline shot from his backpack. For a moment she is in shock, then visibly relaxes, turns on fake tears, and runs inside screaming that she needs help.
INT. SCHOOL GYMNASIUM — NIGHT
Jessica looks frantically for Ethan’s backpack and riffles through it to search for the medicine while the other couple people look on. An ambulance siren rings in the background.
INT. JESSICA’S KITCHEN — NIGHT
Jessica’s father asks how that night’s competition went. She glibly says a contestant died from anaphylaxis and that it was horrible. Her mother says, “Oh?” and gets back to eating her bloody steak. Her father murmurs “Mmmm-hmmmm” and keeps reading. Jessica smiles.
INT. CLASSROOM — DAY
The next morning, Amanda is visibly shaken. Jessica leans over, buddy-buddy, and says it’s just the two of them now. Amanda tells Jessica she doesn’t have to be strong and if she ever needs to talk to someone, she’s there for Jessica. A moment of gratefulness (or is it recognition?) in Jessica’s eyes.
EXT. SCHOOL EXIT — DAY
Jessica flags down Amanda and asks if Amanda has time to talk after Ethan’s funeral, that her parents don’t understand what it’s like to lose “a peer and a friend” like Ethan. Jessica tells her where to meet (making it look coincidental, but in V.O. Jessica shares how she makes this happen).
EXT. HIKING TRAIL WITH CLIFF — DAY
Jessica and Amanda walk the trail and talk about the funeral, Ethan, and why Jessica wants the scholarship so much. They approach the top of the trail where there is a cliff. Jessica pretends to lose her balance. Amanda attempts to help Jessica, who dodges her such that Amanda loses her balance and slips off the side of the cliff, hanging on by a thread. Jessica could help but weighs her options. We then see Jessica walking away, a self-satisfied look on her face, as Amanda struggles and slips.
INT. JESSICA’S LIVING ROOM — NIGHT
Jessica convinces the police that she is innocent of Amanda’s death. The detective asks if she thinks there is a connection between the two deaths, and Jessica says that Amanda took Ethan’s death hard. Jessica’s mother and father are the picture of concerned parents, but when cops leave, her mother turns to Jessica and asks if this means she’s won the scholarship, a proud smile on her face. Jessica smiles and walks into …
INT. JESSICA’S KITCHEN — NIGHT
She pours a cup of coffee, reaches into the spice cabinet, and pulls out a bottle we’ve seen before, hazelnut extract, which is what she used to kill Ethan. She drops some into her coffee and hums to herself while stirring, happy for a brief moment in time.
INT. CEMETERY — DAY
Jessica attends Ethan’s funeral. She drops cryptic hints that she is responsible for his death, but everyone assumes she is being hyperbolic due to grief and tries to reassure her of her innocence.
EXT. FUNERAL HOME — DAY
Jessica has taken over Amanda’s speech pattern (this will be developed in beginning) when speaking to classmates who ask how she’s holding up.
INT. SCHOOL AUDITORIUM — NIGHT
Ms. Collins announces the winner of the scholarship: Jessica. Jessica gives a speech talking about all the service and sacrifice it took to get where she is and how taking action is critical to success. What does Jessica hope to do in the future? Become the second female Senator from her state before heading to the White House. Her parents beam. In the background is Jillian who has been there all along looking on and wants to follow in Jessica’s footsteps, looking at her own copy of one of the books Jessica had been poring over earlier.
Alternative to final scene (not sure yet):
INT. SCHOOL AUDITORIUM — NIGHT
Ms. Mitchell goes up on stage to announce who wins the scholarship, and Jessica thinks it will be her, but she’s wrong. Ms. Mitchell instead names a competitor Jessica thought had been out of the race but was brought back in once Amanda and Ethan died. Jessica and her parents are horrified.
INT. SCHOOL PARKING LOT — NIGHT
As Jessica and her parents walk away from the assembly in shock, V.O. Jessica saying that Ms. Mitchell better watch her back, an evil glint in her eye. Jillian walks up to Jessica and says, “Let’s make Mitchell pay.” Jessica welcomes her into her fold.
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Jodi’s Pass 10: Essence Only – Day 16
What I learned is things can become crazy and confusing if your scenes are too long in the outline, it hampers and makes it more difficult to make changes and additions.
LOGLINE: One woman sees the devastation the Heartbeat law SB8 created years prior, and will not be silenced or controlled with the attack on a woman’s constitutional rights.
DRAMATIC QUESTION’s: Can Pam win the Governorship and overturn the SB8 law? Will her family disown her?
MAIN CONFLICT: Pam must find a way to change the SB8 law, she decides that the only way she can help the women of the state is to run for the Governorship to abolish it.
DILEMMA: Having a very conservative pro-life family, Pam runs the risk of being disowned by them.
Theme: Don’t tread on me. America is not a dictatorship…yet.
OPENING SCENE:
INT. REPRODUCTIVE CLINIC – DAY
KAREN BAILEY, a young teen finds out she is pregnant and is overwhelmed and scared. She faints.
EXT. OUTSIDE THE CLINIC – DAY
Karen exits the clinic and is scared by the bounty hunters waiting for them.
EXT. SAME
It’s a frenzy, each person clamoring to be the first to follow her, she hears many engines start.
INT. CAR – SAME
Karen is shaken and scared of the truck following her. She punches on the gas.
EXT. HIGHWAY – DAY
The two rednecks continue to followEXT. SAME
More scared than ever and going too fast, she goes off the highway. Her car flips continually, Karen dies.
EXT. SIDE OF ROAD – DAY
The rednecks had pulled to the side of the road watching the car flipping. They know they were the cause.
INT. THE MONSTER TRUCK – DAY
Against the passenger’s wishes, the driver leaves the scene of the accident.
EXT. SAME – LATER
Pam arrives on the scene and investigates it with another Officer in her unit. She finds a lead.EXT. BAILEY HOME – LATE AFTERNOON
Pam informs Karen’s Mother, ELIZABETH BAILEY and Elizabeth’s boyfriend, CHARLES WRIGHT, of Karen’s fatal accident. Elizabeth falls into Charles’ arms crying.
INT. CLINIC – MORNING
Pam’s new investigation gets stopped by the HIPAA act. She finds out about the bounty hunters who hang out there.INT. TRAFFIC INVESTIGATION UNIT – DAY
Lack of funds leave many victims high and dry. The state is overburdened because of the SB8 Heartbeat Bounty Hunters law’s ban on abortion.
INT. KARRAS HOME OFFICE – NIGHT
Pam’s asks her Social Worker friend Chloe for advice on different avenues to get around this and get info asap, as an upsurge on hit and runs.
INCITING INCIDENT:
INT. VERONICA BERNAL’S BEDROOM – NIGHT
In the throws of passion with her sex partner CARLOS RIOS, Veronica stops abruptly and asks him to put a condom on. She naively believes him when he says he sterile.
INT. PAM’S HOME OFFICE – NIGHT
Pam does research for the lack of funding. She finds masses of poverty stricken women and children, new orphanages, increased foster care staffing and foster home payments, welfare spiraling out of control. She finds articles of abuse, molestation, neglect of unloved, unwanted children. She looks into the death penalty.INT. LIBRARY – NEXT DAY
Pam asks the reference desk for updated stats on the state’s government budgets, surpluses, deficits and sources of the information.
INT. WELLES HOME – DAY
Pam’s parents tell her to leave it alone. It’s God’s will who becomes pregnant and must carry this burden. Pam’s Mother acquiesces with his point of view. This way of thinking is unacceptable to Pam.INT. POLICE HEADQUARTERS – DAY
Pam asks her friend in MIS to help her extract information on new orphanages and foster homes in the last four years. She is given a pile of pages representing hundreds of orphanages. She also needs the Operation Life List (OLL) database to find the harmful bounty hunters.INT. PAM’S DESK – SAME
She gets back and the Police Chief says the court order is not in yet, backlogged.
INT. ELIZABETH’S LIVING ROOM – DAY
Pam checks in with Elizabeth with no good news for her. She makes promises she might not be able to keep. Pam leaves and Elizabeth opens a bottle of Vodka chugging it as fast as she can.INT. PAM’S CAR – DAY
Pam checks out the orphanages. Row after row of shoddy buildings, like barracks. Very young children and toddlers play outside, with ratty clothes, one worker per thirty children. Older children are working.INT. ORPHANAGE ROW BUNKHOUSE – SAME
She gets a childcare worker to talk to her. The worker tells her they are all loved and cared for which sounds like she’s said this a thousand times before, unemotional as a script the workers have to say.
INT. MESS HALL – DAY
She falsely flashes her badge pretending to have authority to see how the children are taken care of and fed. There is little time to show affection to a child as each worker has their duties to perform. The dished out food is without love or care, your daily basics.
By page 10, you know what the movie is about:
EXT. PARK – DAY
Pam shares with her friend that she feels her hands are tied, that she can’t give proper justice to many women and the unloved, unwanted children. Chloe tells her she has some people she wants her to meet.
INT. RESTAURANT – DAY
Pam meets Chloe’s group. A Physician is going to challenge the law with his upcoming abortion civil lawsuit. They’ve got a meeting Monday with the Governor. Can Pam meet them there?
INT. ELIZABETH LIVING ROOM – DAY
Distraught and miserable Elizabeth tells Charles that she can’t keep on like this. He suggests a support group.
INT. GOVERNOR’S OFFICE – DAY
When pressed with questions the Governor excuses the group off as silly women and has his secretary escort them out.
INT. OUTSIDE THE GOVERNOR’S OFFICE – SAME
The group knows the misogynist Governor only cares about controlling women under the guise and pretense of being concerned of all ‘Heartbeats’, so how could he be pro-death penalty?
INT. SUPPORT GROUP – DAY
Elizabeth learns about the bounty hunters. She introduces herself to the group talking how her Daughter Karen died seven weeks ago. She shares that she numbs herself with booze and pills.
INT. KARRAS HOME – ENTRY WAY – LATE AFTERNOON
Chloe says they want to start a campaign for the Governorship as elections are coming up in the next few months. Pam is very reluctant to do this as the Governorship was not in her family’s plan.
INT. VERONICA’S KITCHEN – SAME
Veronica finds out she’s pregnant and is surprised Carlos does not want to help. She calls her doctor.
INT. POLICE DEPARTMENT – SAME
Elizabeth tries to tell the police she got information that it’s the bounty hunters who killed her Daughter. She is ignored. Her eyes have steely determination as she exits.
INT. KARRAS HOME OFFICE – EVENING
Pam realizes she cannot turn her back on these thousands of unwanted children and the life they’ve been dictated to have. Deepening budget cuts and millions of new families living below the poverty line needing monthly financial help, Pam’s Daughter Eliana asks if she’ll try to challenge the way things are?
INT. ELIZABETH HOME OFFICE – NIGHT
She starts a website with STEVEN HAYS, Karen’s boyfriend. They call it “Target Practice”. They instantly see traffic on their site. Her face softens and she smiles for the first time in weeks.
INT. KARRAS KITCHEN – MORNING
Chloe and Pam discuss who should be contacted next to create the plan; (unions, organizations, free clinics and a network of concerned Mothers from all over the state), after she talks with her family.
INT. KARRAS DINING ROOM – NIGHT
Pam discusses with her family why she wants to run for office. Her husband reminds her that the Governor is well established with the conservatives but there is a shot for her to beat him because they’re actually an overall minority in the state.
INT. WELLE’S HOME – DAY
Pam’s very conservative and pro-life parents are shocked at the news, they tell Pam she is a traitor to run against their beloved Governor for what they believe is an sinful and amoral cause.
FIRST ACT TURNING POINT:
INT. KARRAS HOME OFFICE – DAY
Forced term women start calling her after hearing through the grapevine she’s trying to organize help. One call is a lead on a physician who the caller just got an abortion from. She gets the info.
INT. REPRODUCTIVE CLINIC – DAY
Pam goes this physician who is still giving abortions, and asks him to join their legal challenge of the SB 8 bounty hunter law.
INT. TRAFFIC INVESTIGATION UNIT – DAY
Pam anonymously receives information on who’s on the bounty hunters hit list on the Texas ‘Operation Life List’ website. She feels things are starting to turn in a positive direction.
INT. WELLE’S HOME – DAY
Pam’s parents are embarrassed seeing Pam on television organizing funding for any physicians who challenge this law in court. They are furious and disillusioned.
INT. ELIZABETH’S HOME OFFICE – EVENING
She gives the license number to one of her henchmen of a person who brought a civil lawsuit of 10k against someone involved in helping an abortion. She dispatches her men throughout the state to stalk and attack.
Mid-Point:
INT. REPRODUCTIVE CLINIC – MORNING
Veronica learns she is eight weeks pregnant. The Gynecologist gives her the same pamphlet as Karen received, along with a business card with Pam’s name and number on it.
INT. KARRAS DINING ROOM – MORNING
Pam’s Brother Edward enters for the monthly family brunch but only sees the Karras’s. The parents are missing from this longstanding family tradition they have.
INT. WELLE’S ENTRY WAY – DAY
Pam shows up with flowers for her parents. They give her an ultimatum to give up her endeavor or give up her family. She must choose.
EXT. KARRAS GARDEN – DAY
The only remedy when feeling down is gardening. She half heartedly and intermittently digs a hole for a pot of flowers. She brushes off her parent’s ultimatum, wipes her eyes and continues digging.
INT. KARRAS HOME OFFICE- MORNING
She asks Ellie for her help with making a website for the ‘Right to Choose’ movement. She is very happy to have this avenue open to women and children for communication.
INT. KARRAS HOME OFFICE – DAY
Her website crashes and her phone starts ringing off the hook as the need for help is high amongst children, welfare families and women who resent their forced babies. Many of the women don’t know how they can raise these mandatory unwanted children on 267.00 a month that the state gives them.
EXT. KARRAS GARDEN – DAY
Pam and Chloe discuss funds they’re trying to find to help people that have reached out to them, but the need is greater than they can raise as each year over 100,000 abused and neglected children in the state need her help. (Texas stats) and knowing 31,000 children in state foster care (2019, Texas stats) are now growing exponentially.
INT. ELIZABETH’S HOME OFFICE – EVENING
She dispatches three henchmen to harass, and create auto and home property damage for the three bounty hunters on her list who started a civil lawsuit right of action for the 10,000. .
EXT. MONTAGE – SAME
We’ll see the three attacks. One will go wrong and someone is killed.
INT. VERONICA’S KITCHEN – DAY
Veronica calls the number on the card.
INT. KARRAS HOME OFFICE – SAME
Pam’s volunteer Assistant DELORES SCHMIDT, tells Veronica of the one to two month back log. She will set the appointment immediately.
INT. KARRAS HOME OFFICE – SAME
Delores picks up the phone after her call with Veronica and makes the appointment for her.
INT. KARRAS DEN – NEXT MORNING
Pam sees a news clip of this group and is happy initially that other people are involved but the news clip then reveals that someone killed one of these deputized citizen’s turned bounty hunter.
INT. TRAFFIC INVESTIGATIONS BRIEFING ROOM – MORNING
The Police Chief commands an all hands on deck directive to find this group, excluding Pam because she could be one of the suspects since she is publicly for the same cause. Some of her fellow officers shun her.
INT. TRAFFIC INVESTIGATION UNIT – DAY
Using the state-wide database on the sly, Pam tries to find out the source and leadership of this secret group.
EXT. PARKING LOT – DAY
A man slips into Pam’s car while she is in the drivers seat. He has some information for her on the group.
INT. PARKING STRUCTURE – SAME
A bounty hunter gets attacked and beaten up by Steven Hays.
Second turning point at end of Act 2:
INT. KARRAS DINING ROOM – NIGHT
Being under-funded, slandered and falsely blamed of organizing the hits on citizens, along with being outcast from her family, Pam feels the odds are against her and thinks about quitting.
EXT. MALL – DAY
Veronica notices someone is following her. She flips the guy off calling him a puto. He turns around so she can’t see his face.
INT. TRAFFIC INVESTIGATION UNIT – DAY
Pam gets a phone call from an evangelical preacher. She writes down an address.
INT. EVANGELICAL CHURCH OFFICE – DAY
Pam meets the evangelical anti-abortionist crusading preacher who is now pro-choice. He tells her why. Which gives her the faith to continue in this uphill battle.
INT. VERONICA’S CAR – SAME
A car is following Veronica aggressively. She fumbles but finds a card that says ‘Target Practice’ on it. She calls and tells them where she is.
EXT. ELIZABETH’S HOME OFFICE – SAME
She tells Veronica to stay where she’s at and she’ll dispatch someone to her immediately.
INT. VERONICA’S CAR – SAME
Veronica waits for the guys who are going to help her get rid of the man who is following her. They arrive within minutes.
INT. TELEVISION STATION – DAY
The Governors wife had an abortion in her younger years.
INT. TELEVISION STATION – EVENING
Elias and Eliana give her moments of encouragement before she goes on air for the debate.
INT. SAME – LATER
One candidate finishes his speech, Pam is introduced and she starts her concerns.
INT. A BOUNTY HUNTER’S HOME – NIGHT
The couple leaves their house. Steven and his computer wiz friend break in. The friend goes to the computer and starts hacking past the password, while Steven finds a wall safe easily.
EXT. SAME HOME – SAME
The couple approaches their home and sees the front door open, the safe is open and empty. Their place has also been trashed.
INT. ELIZABETH’S HOME OFFICE – SAME TIME
Steven hands her the valuables and account numbers they got from the home. She is pleased.
INT. KARRAS KITCHEN – MORNING
Ten days later, Pam’s telephone rings. She is congratulated for winning the primary.
INT. SAME
The phone rings again, Pam has a smile on her face expecting another well-wisher. Her face soon turns to anger. She is threatened to pull out of the race. She slams the phone down resolutely.
INT. SAME
Pam heads to her keyboard and starts typing an Op Ed piece on the devastation of the state and the enablers too willing to keep the status quo.
INT. OPERATION LIFE LIST HEADQUARTERS – DAY
Pam serves the OLL president a court order to search the premises. She confiscates documents listing bounty hunters and their addresses.
LIST – of MONTAGE
Pam starts knocking on doors and checking cars out for any indication of wreckage. She finds none.
INT. THOMAS WELLES CHURCH – MORNING
Thomas sees that a few of his singers and church members are missing. Quizzically, he begins his sermon.
INT. SAME – LATER
While shaking members hands Thomas hears murmurs of ‘draft dodger’. One CHURCH MEMBER tells him of the rumors and let’s him know the church that some of his congregation are now going to instead.
EXT. BOUNTY HUNTER HOME – DAY
Steven hot-wires a decked out car. A dog barks at him ferociously. Steven gives him dog treats. He pets the dog and drives off as the owners charges out of his house shouting. The dog sits silently.
INT. KARRAS LIVING ROOM – EVENING
Pam’s Mother Patricia visits. Her purpose is to blame Pam for the ‘trouble’ she is causing her Father. Pam is clueless about the incident. Patricia leaves abruptly.
INT. TRAFFIC INVESTIGATION UNIT, PAM’S DESK – DAY
Pam gets an anonymous call from the passenger of the monster truck.
INT. ELIZABETH’S DINING ROOM – LATE AFTERNOON
She is counting lots of money. They’ll have funding for a year. She now lives in a better home, but nothing takes her sorrow away. She feels her Daughter with her when Steven is around.
INT. MONSTER TRUCK DRIVER – NIGHT
Pam is told by the redneck driver that she can’t do anything. There’s no way she can prove he caused the girl’s death. He tells her his lawsuits bought him a dandy truck. He warns her that she better back off.
INT. CELL PHONE – SAME
Driving home from her confrontation with the redneck, she gets a call on her cell phone.
INT. KARRAS DINING ROOM – NIGHT
Her husband has dinner ready for her. This is one respite moment for Pam.
INT. VERONICA HOME – SAME
She is called with the date and time for her abortion.
INT. KARRAS KITCHEN – BEFORE DAWN
The phone rings, it is the emergency room, a nurse tells Pam that Chloe has been beaten up and is unconscious, she is being notified as Chloe’s emergency contact.
INT. EMERGENCY ROOM – NIGHT
Seeing Chloe black and blue, swollen, and in a cast, Pam swears revenge for her.
EXT. MONSTER TRUCK REDNECK – NIGHT
Pam grabs the redneck’s collar and bangs his head on her knee. She uses a stun gun on him and curses him for hurting her friend. He screams about how he doesn’t know anything, she eventually is convinced.
INT. TRAFFIC INVESTIGATION UNIT – DAY
Pam’s file for the dead girl is missing from her desk. She finds a small piece of paper that has Chloe’s name, address, and a time on it, on Detective Salts desk. She runs out of the office.
EXT. POLICE DEPARTMENT BUILDING – DAY
As she is running towards her car she see Detective Salt with one of his friends. After roughing him up she finds out the contract came from the Governor’s office.
INT. TRAFFIC INVESTIGATION UNIT – SAME
Pam marches into the Chief’s office ignoring his meeting and tells him what happened. She wants to formally charge Detective Salt and wants to start an investigation into the Governor’s office of who requested the attack on Chloe.
EXT. KARRAS MAILBOX – MORNING
Pam starts making inroads and the opposition is nervous. Pam receives a threat in the mail that is a copy of her Father’s military record which shows her Father as a Draft Dodger. She is warned to pull out of the race.
Crisis:
INT. EVANGELICAL CHURCH OFFICE – DAY
Pam confides her challenge with the Preacher that she is torn between wanting to help her parents or helping to create a better life for her Daughter, and fighting for all women’s freedom of choice, she decides to continue in the fight.
INT. TELEVISION STATION – EARLY EVENING
Pam is very glad to see Ashley Lee again, this time there are other people within hearing distance.
INT. ELIZABETH HOME OFFICE – EVENING
Five new bounty hunters to hit. She saves a special one for Steven.
INT. TELEVISION STATION – EVENING
Debate night. Pam annihilates the Governor with current statistics. The state has dire financial needs but the Governor only cares about controlling women under the falsehood of saving heartbeats, which is in direct opposition to his and his conservative legislatures pro death penalty law.
INT. DELORES CAR – DAY
Delores takes Veronica to the pick up location, as they drive they are followed by bounty hunters.
INT. KARRAS KITCHEN – NEXT MORNING
The Governor falsely accuses Pam publicly as being a part of the vigilante group who are attacking the bounty hunters. Pam huffs and turns the television off.
INT. KARRAS KITCHEN – SAME
Pam reads the headline that another woman was found dead from an attempted self-abortion, which makes 112 now this year. Pam asks “at what point do the heartbeats of these women matter and the full lives they are living?” Her husband asks about the abortion pill.
EXT. MEETING LOCATION – SAME
They meet the pick up driver and the three other girls in the car going for the same purpose. A bounty hunter follows them for miles and then turns back.
INT. REDNECK’S HOME – MORNING
Steven goes after the redneck with a vengeance knowing that he is the guy who caused Karen’s death.
EXT. REDNECK’S FRONT YARD – SAME
Steven sets his red truck on fire, and then attempts to set the Redneck on fire. The cops arrest him.
INT. FATHER’S CHURCH – MORNING
The congregation thins out even more. Protesters chant ‘draft dodger and baby killer’ outside. A fire inspector tells Thomas he has been shut down for fire safety violations, and shouts to the congregation that everyone must leave.
EXT. KARRAS HOME – DAY
Pam and Eliana drive off in their car and are followed by the Operation Life List people.
INT. KARRAS KITCHEN – DAY
Pam’s husband’s state government contract was cancelled and he and his crew were locked out.
INT. TRAFFIC INVESTIGATION UNIT – DAY
Pam finds out who the leader is of the vigilante group attacking the bounty hunters. She goes out the door.
INT. ELIZABETH’S HOME – DAY
Pam confronts Elizabeth, Elizabeth blames Pam and her department for not carrying out justice for her Daughter. She’s gentle handcuffing Elizabeth after their exchange.
INT. KARRAS DEN – NIGHT
The newscaster relays the execution of another death row inmate, this makes 50 ‘heartbeats’ killed since 2015 on the Governor’s watch. The Governor proves himself a double-speak hypocrite.
EXT. REDNECK’S HOUSE – LATE AFTERNOON
Pam arrests the redneck.
INT. CONVENTION CENTER BALLROOM – NIGHT
Pam and her family arrive at the big ballroom. They are shown to the waiting room.
INT. WELLE’S HOUSE – NIGHT
Pam’s votes are far below the Governor’s in the race. Thomas feels he must support his Daughter he and Patricia leave to be with her.
INT. CONVENTION CENTER BALLROOM – NIGHT
Pam is nervous. Ashley Lee enters with her make-up kit. Pam picks up the phone and walks out the door.
INT. RITZY HOTEL BALLROOM – NIGHT
She threatens the Governor that she’ll use the information about his wife if his people don’t back off. Stop the threats and harassment of her and her family members or else.
EXT. CONVENTION CENTER BALLROOM – NIGHT
Without a pass Pam’s family try to enter the convention center where the celebration will be taking place, but is blocked by security detail, Patricia calls her Granddaughter.
INT. CONVENTION CENTER WAITING ROOM – NIGHT
The Granddaughter tells her Mother she’s going to run down to get the Grandparents and Uncle. Pam is surprised and pleased.
EXT. CONVENTION CENTER BALLROOM – NIGHT
The Granddaughter brings out three security badges for the Grandparents.
Climax:
INT. CONVENTION CENTER WAITING ROOM – NIGHT
Thomas lets Pam know how much they support her no matter their differing beliefs.
Resolution:
INT. CONVENTION CENTER BALLROOM – NIGHT
Pam is now in the lead. They are very excited but also know the votes can turn again. Chloe and John are introduced, they beam at each other and are a little flirty.
INT. CONVENTION CENTER WAITING ROOM – NIGHT
The final results come in. Thomas and Patricia are awoken out of their sleep when everyone begins cheering. Pam, and her husband and Daughter rush out to the Ballroom. The family follows.
INT. CONVENTION CENTER BALLROOM – NIGHT
Pam wins the election with a large number of the voters. In Pam’s acceptance speech she vows that her first line of business when she takes office is to obliterate the ‘heartbeat’ SB8 law.
INT. THOMAS’S CHURCH – MORNING
The Gospel choir is singing an upbeat song with the two singers who stuck with Thomas smiling at him. Thomas smiling back at them nods and then looks out at his full congregation again.
EXT. REPRODUCTIVE CLINIC – MORNING
The Governor’s Daughter exits a care clinic looking forlorn. The bounty hunters are waiting to start following her.
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Hi Jodi, I got terribly delayed in reviewing your older outline due to illness, so I will review this one instead and get back to you by Friday if not sooner. I just saw your critique of my older outline — thanks so much! (and yes, it’s a dark comedy) 🙂 — and will respond to that after I’ve critiqued your work here. I’m looking forward to reading your outline.
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What I learned from this assignment: keep your focus, you’ll get there
NB: note of apology to colleagues: please send your feedback requests… I will answer best I can… have been travelling last ten days, and so, just catching up now. I think Hal is AWESOME!! But living in Europe, interaction is a challenge.
Also never good at networking… so do not be shy about taking first step… Thanks!!! ESSENTIAL OUTLINE follows.
Working Title: Who killed Miss Nicaragua?
1: logline: the step-daughter of a South American dictator avenges his sexual abuse of her and her mother’s complicity in it after undeservedly winning the national beauty pageant.
2. Dramatic question: can Fanny overcome shame and humiliation to publicly speak the truth, liberating herself and her country, from its sick, psychotic rulers?
3. Main conflict: Rosario (Fanny’s mother) is complicit in covering up the horrors inflicted on her own daughter, and other young women.
4. Dilemma: Fanny will have to choose whether she publicly exposes herself as a victim. If she does, she risks burning all her bridges with the powerful couple running her country.
THEME: Abusers will be punished; justice will prevail.
1. INT. LUXURY HOTEL ROOM – NIGHT
A hooded, masked assailant leaps over the balcony and enters the room where a young woman is sleeping. Lifting her nightdress, he proceeds to violate her, whereupon she wakes. He strangles her into submission, leaving welts on her neck.
2. EXT. LUXURY HOTEL – SWIMMING POOL – NIGHT – CONTINUOUS
ROSARIO, FANNY’s mother, sees ORNIEGA, in a Ronald Reagan mask, climbing down from balcony. She berates him for not using a condom, he pulls up his cloak to expose bare buttocks and she lashes him, with relish. He moans a guttural, unmistakable moan.
3. EXT. LUXURY HOTEL – SWIMMING POOL, CABANAS – DAY
Morning of the Beauty Pageant. Distant sounds of protestors. Rosario and Fanny calmly have breakfast. Fanny complains she is having “those nightmares” again, and shows her bruises. Rosario gives her a Hermes silk scarf to wear.“You won’t be the only one wearing a scarf.”
4. EXT. ROAD TO HOTEL ENTRANCE – DAY
Anti-regime protestors are beaten back by heavily-armed guards to clear a path for smoke-windowed Mercedes etc. entering hotel. FRITO follows them in, in his dirty Toyota Jeep, as protestors scream slogans at them. FRITO smiles, nods.
5. EXT. LUXURY HOTEL – SWIMMING POOL – DAY
DJ starts music as MC begins live broadcast of national Miss Nicaragua pageant. First two contestants appear; conventionally “beautiful,” followed by Fanny, “fat and ugly” in comparison. All have Hermes scarves around their necks.
6. EXT. LUXURY HOTEL, ROOFTOP – DAY
A hooded sniper takes aim at contestants as they parade around the pool.
6.a EXT. LUXURY HOTEL – SWIMMING POOL – DAY
Audience, sitting under cabanas with dainty Cocktails, cheer. Among them: sniggering girls hooked to mobile phones, instagram feeds, chatter about Fanny: what’s she doing here? So “fat” and “ugly”… (but she isn’t)
7. EXT. ROAD TO HOTEL ENTRANCE – DAY
Military suppression of protests becomes extremely brutal, heads cracked open, legs broken with riot batons.
8. EXT. LUXURY HOTEL, ROOFTOP – DAY
Sniper shoots first most beautiful contestant with deadly precision. Then a second shot, killing no. 2, triggers pandemonium, below.
9. EXT. LUXURY HOTEL – SWIMMING POOL – DAY
Music stops. Amid cahos, FRITO rushes forward to grab Fanny and drag her to safety. Panicked guests run to Mercedes, leave.
10. EXT. LUXURY HOTEL, ROOFTOP – DAY
Sniper removes hood only revealing long hair: he’s a ”she”… but who?
11. EXT. LUXURY HOTEL – SWIMMING POOL – DAY
Rosario finds Fanny hiding with Frito. “I’ve been looking for you… everywhere.”
She orders Frito to protect Fanny: her life is in danger. He objects: he’s retired, but she insists. “You’re old enough to be her father, she’ll be safe with you.”
12. EXT. STREET TO HOTEL ENTRANCE – DAY
Fanny leaves in Frito’s Jeep as military clear bodies, throw them in a heap. Looks like another Revolution, he says. “And then what?”. “And then another, and another…” “No!” she says, “not going to happen! I’m going to break the chain…”
END ACT 1
13. EXT. PRESIDENTIAL COMPOUND – DAY
Frito drops Fanny off at presidential compound, gives her a switchblade. Don’t worry I’ll be sleeping in next room. Exposes history as escaped terrorst, hunted by Interpol, past relationship w. Rosario. “That’s her leverage, with me.”
14. INT. PSYCH’S OFFICE – DAY
Fanny weeps as Psycho consoles her. Her “complex” is common, fear of sex. And the welts are like stigmata on hands of medieval nuns, well-documented products of hysteria… but it’s all in her head, he says.
15. INT. FRITO’S HOME – DAY – CONTINUOUS
His wife and her children welcome him home, he warns he has an assignment with First Lady, I may be gone for awhile,,,
16. INT. PSYCH’S OFFICE – DAY – CONTINUOUS
Fanny objects to the myth woven around her childhood rapes. “But It’s not in my head, it’s in my body! I have his DNA… here… he left it in me, the bastard. Please find out who he is!”
17. EXT. FRITO’S HOME – DAY
Shootout with “Interpol” agents led by “ Sammy”. He runs, pursued by them, and is apprehended after desperate foot chase amid favela-like housing.
18. INT. LUXURY HOTEL, COMMAND POST – NIGHT
Sammy beats him nearly to death, just for fun, he says. “you can’t tell us anything we don’t already know.” So Frito is not there to defend her…
19. INT. PRES. COMPOUND, FANNY’s ROOM – NIGHT
… when rapist comes again… that night, in the compound!! She uses switchblade to expose him (Ronald reagan mask)… stabs him… But he escapes, bleeding… crashes over balcony into back-breaking fall
20. EXT. LUXURY HOTEL – SWIMMING POOL – DAY
President Orniega in wheelchair and Jimmy Carter mask as Rosario holds news conference on imposition of martial law due to attack on President. AND she announces that her daughter, Fanny, will be Miss Nicaragua, by default. (Orniega cannot speak since his tongue was cut out by previous dictator. Rosario: “So, I am the Voice of the Revolution!”)
21. EXT. LUXURY HOTEL – SWIMMING POOL – DAY
Girls snigger at announcement of “Miss” winner. I told you it was rigged, says one. Frito arrives bruised and bloodied, as Fanny holds knife to Rosario’s back:
We need to talk, Mama. She leads her inside.
22. INT. LUXURY HOTEL – DAY
Fanny confronts Rosario with her evidence. Including psych’s DNA report. Then plays instagram or tiktok videos of other girls, the two murdered aspirants to “Miss,” alleging rape by somebody wearing mask of JFK.
23. INT. LUXURY HOTEL – DAY
Fanny is about to cut her mom’s throat but Frito charges in and stops her: “That’s not how you ‘break the chain!’”
ACT 3
24. EXT. LUXURY HOTEL , swimming pool – DAY
DJ and MC set up for formal Announcment of MISS NICARAGUA winner. Rosario wheels out Orniega for set piece show. Today he wears George Bush Sr. mask.
Fanny goes to podium, begins to speak, as Rosario goes inside. Frito follows her.
25. EXT. LUXURY HOTEL, ROOFTOP – DAY
Frito chases Rosario to rooftop where she is setting up her weapons, as
26. EXT. HOTEL – STREET – DAY
Protestors gather on street, in massive numbers. Cops are nervous.
27. EXT. LUXURY HOTEL, ROOFTOP – DAY
Frito challenges Rosario to speak the truth about years of abuse. She trains her weapon on him instead, shooting him just above the heart, below clavicle.
28. EXT. LUXURY HOTEL , swimming pool – DAY
Fanny tells her story on LIVE TV. “I am a victim of years of sexual abuse, of rapes… my by OWN STEPFATHER, Your President…”
29. EXT. LUXURY HOTEL , STREET – DAY
Protestors go silent, listening to Fanny’s story. “He raped me as he is raping you.”
30. INT. LUXURY HOTEL, COMMAND POST
“Interpol” agent (Sammy) who beat up FRITO orders military to kill all protestors as Fanny continues her story.
31. EXT. LUXURY HOTEL – STREET ENTRANCE– DAY
But outside, nobody moves. Not even military, transfixed by Fanny on widescreen TV.
32. EXT. LUXURY HOTEL, ROOFTOP
Frito, mortally wounded lunges at Rosario to stop her from killing Fanny. They struggle. She says, sardonically, just like the old days, making love. As Fanny finishes her speech, she falls into the swimming pool.
33. EXT. LUXURY HOTEL, ROOFTOP – DAY
Frito shoots Rosario dead as she struggles to get out. Fanny sees him, rushes to rooftop, cradles him in her arms as he dies. He tells her, he’s her biological father.
34. EXT. HOTEL, street – DAY
Protestors riot, penetrate hotel. “Interpol” guys feign enthusiasm, support. Protestors rip off JFK mask from Orniega, we see his horrible disfigurement, face charred black, little yellow worms crawling in and out of his head; “interpol” guys whisk him away.
35. EXT. AIRSTRIP, MANAGUA -NiGHT
Sammy and Agents force Fanny onto private jet; it flies off..
36. INT. FRITO’S HOME – DAY
Scene in family room as TV announcer celebrates Frito’s heroism, saving Miss Nicaragua, killing the “FALSE Voice of the Revolution.” Wife in shock, mourning, tears… as children play with toy guns.. Picture of “Sammy” – “interpol” agent who beat Frito nearly to death – displayed as new “interim president.”
37. EXT. CAMPUS GEORGETOWN U. – DAY
Fanny, happy, walks towards Dean’s office, resolute, breathes in and exhales fresh air of freedom.
38. INT. GEORGETOWN U. DEAN’S OFFICE
Dean says “so unusual for us to have a “Miss” here as a freshman. But your story is amazing. Tell us, should we have hope for the new president? For your country?” “we have no choice…” “no choice?…” ”no choice…but to hope…” she says.
END ACT 3
3. 9 beats – structure:
1. Opening :
EXT. LUXURY HOTEL – DAY National beauty pageant in luxury hotel gets underway, as violent protesters, destitute and dark-skinned clash with armed soldiers outside
2. Inciting Incident:
EXT. LUXURY HOTEL, SWIMMING POOL – DAY
two lighter skinned beauty pageant finalists posing in swimsuits are shot and killed by an assassin as a third (Fanny, dictator’s “ugly duckling” step-daughter) appears to narrowly escape. Pandemonium, as guests flee and military violently disperse demonstators to clear a path for their Mercedes and BMWs…
INT. LUXURY HOTEL – NIGHT
That night a masked man (“Jimmy Carter”) sneaks into her room and rapes her as she sleeps
INT. LUXURY HOTEL – DAY
3. By p. 10 has Fanny engaged “Frito,” a former Red Brigades terrorist hiding out in South America and at one time her mother’s lover, to protect her and get to the bottom of it all. They hunt for clues together, much to the consternation of the “First Lady,” who summons him to a private meeting. She threatens to expose him to Interpol unless he stops helping Fanny…
l 1-661-513-0529.
EXT. LUXURY HOTEL — DAY
4. First turning point: at end Act One, and much to her embarassment, it is announced that Fanny has won the pageant “by default,” prompting social media speculation that the contest was rigged by her parents. She will be “crowned” in a ceremony in coming days. Protests erupt again.
INT. SECRET LOCATION — NIGHT
5. Mid-point – p 45-50 – Frito is arrested and beaten by “interpol” investigators, more interested in the beauty pageant than his past activity. They accuse him of murdering the two girls.
INT. LUXURY HOTEL – NIGHT
EXT. LUXURY HOTEL, SWIMMING POOL – NIGHT
6. second turning point, end act 2, A masked man sneaks into her room to rape her in her sleep, but this time Frito catches him in the act, chases down rapist, rips off his “Ronald Reagan” mask to reveal the hideously disfigured face of the dictator; … and gives Fanny a pistol to defend herself.
INT. LUXURY HOTEL – NIGHT
7. CRISIS: F confronts her mom and, at gunpoint, forces her to admit her complicity in these serial rapes, and murders of other girls, so they “couldn’t talk” because he raped them too!
8. Climax;
EXT. LUXURY HOTEL — DAY
Accepting the “crown” (carried live on TV), Fanny denounces both parents for rape and abuse not just of herself but of the entire country. Mom attempts to kill her but Frito takes the bullet. He dies, leaving F alone to finish the job. Which she does, exposing the hideous un-masked face of her stepfather and putting a bullet thru her mom’s head LIVE on national TV.
EXT. University Campus – DAY
9. resolution: F flees to USA and enrolls in Georgetown U, newly self-confident despite the shame of her public admissions. Meantime, the regime is overthrown, protesters appear to have won, but no, it’s just another cohort of corrupt “strongmen” (the mysterious “interpol agents”) who take power.
CHARACTER ARC
PART that needs to CHANGE and does: Fanny is victimized by her perverted step-father
BIGGEST FEAR: public humiliation over revelation of this “family secret:” abuse by step-father and complicit mom.
COMPLETION: F flees to USA and enrolls in university, newly self-confident despite the shame of her public admissions; having sacrificed her pride for the sake of the transformative revelation of truth, the corrupt regime is toppled,
Possible additional Plot events:
-Fanny finds her step-dad’s impressive mask collection of US presidents-he won’t be seen without one since his disfigurement under torture by previous dictator…otherwise we never see his face… in public; that’s why he rapes, he disgusts his own wife, who won’t sleep with him…
-“interpol” guys follow Frito; he “makes” one, beats him up.
-“Jappy” girlie-girls snigger over (“fat” and “ugly”) Fanny first as contestant, then as winner of national pageant…
– martial law declared; soldiers abuse powers to steal and rape…
– parents have convinced Fanny her stories of rape are fantasies, a version supported by her “therapist,” but Frito catching him in the act confirms they are not… she was drugged and asleep that’s all…
– Protesters ID Frito, cheer him on, he shuts them down, but they know he’s a hero…
– prospective beauty queens get training and cosmetic surgery, so as to compete internationally, from Cuban doctors, but it goes horribly wrong in at least one case…
-Interview with Dean of Admissions at Georgetown: it’s not often we let in someone like you… without SATs but: Miss Nicaragua! an honour for us!
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