[Ola Höglund]

Ola Höglund’s Romcom project

What I learned from doing this assignment is that I’m not sure what needs they fulfill for each other and how that connects with the theme. i also learned that I'm not ready to summarize the characters in few words. I'm still searching with a lot of words.

• Who is She?

She is an adoption agent/worker who wants to have a kid and find a man that would be a good father with a job that makes it easy to be a single parent every second week, since she doesn’t want to live with a man. She wants to have one week living a free single life and one week being a perfect and happy single mother, when the child gets older, the way she was brought up with parents who never fought around her and gave her full attention. That is opposite to what she demands, as an adoption agent, from adoption parents. That’s her lie. Then what would be the perfect occupation for that kind of man/father? Maybe a wedding photographer who only works outside his home on Saturdays… As an adopted child herself she wants a biological child to feel that her child is her own blood.

With parents who are both divorced and not her biological parents, Henna has this classic wall around her not letting any man get too close to her. Flirting is okay. But she ends up being friends with all men since she thinks no relationship will last. They all end sooner or later, so why not end it sooner. Fight or flight? She runs away before it heats up and becomes too emotional. Her long runs with music in her ears closes out deep feelings. She needs to learn to fight and learn to lose in order to win.

She is a generous, empathetic, spontaneous, helpful, charming woman who is afraid of heights. She wants a man that is unlike herself.

• Who is He?

Jasco is a speechwriter who decides to try to adopt a child before he gets too old since he has given up hope finding the right one to marry and have kids with.

Sensitive, passionate, who doesn’t want to compromise. He needs to find happiness in what he has instead in what he doesn’t have. He has to stop chasing love and let go. He wants too much.
He wants a woman that is like himself.

• What makes them lovable?

Both spontaneous and full of dynamic temperament, weird and self-deprecating humor, wanting the best for other people, good at thinking from other people’s perspective which is rare in today’s society. They are not afraid of being childish in front of each other and in front of other people. Kind and happy on the outside, but melancholy on the inside.

• What attracts them to each other?

She is attracted to him because he is secure within himself not afraid to make a fool of himself. He is not afraid of losing, even though he has had enough of bad dates for now.

He is attracted to her because she is considerate, spontaneous with weird humor that inspires him and makes him feel alive. For the first time in his life he is both romantically and sexually attracted at the same time. Before he has been romantically in love with beautiful women that matches his checklist, but he hasn’t felt the same sexual attraction. Or he has felt sexual attraction but not romantic attraction.

• What needs does each fulfill for the other?

He finds that he can fall in love with a woman that is not perfect according to his checklist. A woman with divorced parents and tattoos is a no-no for him, but he falls for her anyway because they just belong to each other when he holds her hand and giggles with her.
He needs someone that completes him, not someone who is only like him. But what does she have that he doesn’t have? Patience?
He needs to be more relaxed and patient when it comes to women he is attracted to, and this time he has something that stops him from chasing her when he has to stay uninterested in her due to her adoption decision. She has power over him. So he needs to be cool.

She needs someone that believes in love so much that she will also start believing in love and fall in love instead of just being friends with all men. She needs someone that won’t let her run away. Someone that dares to kiss her, not being afraid of her.

• This reply was modified 11 months ago by  Ola Höglund.

[Ola Höglund]

Ola Höglund’s Romcom project

What I learned doing this assignment is that their issues have to be clearer and connect to the theme in a clear way that I haven’t nailed yet. Can’t formulate my theme yet.

Just want to declare that my English is not very good, coming from Sweden. So feel free to question what I really mean when I might use the wrong words, and please feel free to correct me, so I learn.

• Two People Who Belong Together:

Speechwriter Jasco and adoption agent (social worker/adoption case manager?) Henna both have given up hope finding the right one to marry and have kids with.
Jasco decides to try to adopt a child before he gets too old.
Henna decides to find a man that can give her a biological child, without having to live with the child’s father, since Henna is adopted herself and needs to feel that her child is her own blood.
Jasco and Henna share the same weird humour, curiosity, melancholy and specific chocolate taste.
Jasco misses his deceased mother who he loved watching when she was drawing. Henna is good at drawing too, but Jasco doesn’t know that until the climax scene. (Only we see that, in the very first frame showing Henna.)
Henna misses her deceased biological father who has written a wedding speech for her to be opened and read at her wedding. But she has already read the speech which has made her sure that she will never find that kind of love that her father describes in the speech. Jasco happens to be a speechwriter who often write wedding speeches. And Henna’s father’s speech is supposed to be read out loud by Henna’s husband at her wedding dinner…

• How Are They Separated:

As a single man it’s a very small chance that you get to adopt a child on your own if the child is under 8 years old. Jasco wants to get an early connection with the child so it will feel like a real father-child relationship all the way. His goal is a kid around 1-2 years old. Your chances increase a lot if you are married. Fast track. So the couple that he shares an apartment with, Richard and Lara who also have become his best friends, are willing to help him. Lara pretends to be Jascos girlfriend and they plan to marry each other on paper to get through with the adoption, all three of them taking care of Jascos child as long as they share the same apartment.

Jasco and Henna first meet at the place where they are going on a hot air ballon tour above the beautiful landscape. Since the weather isn’t ready for lifting, they have to kill time in the village nearby until the weather is fine again. During these hours they get to know each other in a playful way until they get the message that there won’t be any lifting today, making them both long for the next chance to board the ballon, which will be one month from now. Little do they know each other’s occupations or adoption plans. So when Jasco and Lara turns up at the adoption agency they meet their case worker – Henna… In Hennas world that means Jasco is already taken and will marry Lara. 100% separation.

• What Forces Them together:

The adoption process makes them meet at different occasions. Especially when Henna has to do the usual workplace visit to see what Jascos work life is like from a child’s perspective. She does this unannounced when Jasco has his most important wedding speech assignment at a big expensive wedding with Lara and Richard as guests. This wedding becomes very complicated and romantic.

• Issues to be Resolved:

Jasco wants to fall in love and marry someone too much. Too eager. Too romantic. But now he has promised himself to give up his dream to not be disappointed anymore. He needs to learn to let go and let love come to him instead of him chasing love scaring it away. Fight or flight? He fights too much and loses everything. He will never go on a date again from now on.
Henna has this classic wall around her not letting any man get too close to her. Flirting is okay. But she ends up being friends with all men since no relationship will last. They all end sooner or later, so why not end it sooner. Fight or flight? She runs away as soon as it heats up and becomes too emotional. Her long runs with music in her ears closes out deep feelings. She needs to learn to fight and learn to lose in order to win.

Can a romantic with married faithful parents be together with an anti-romantic with divorced parents? Can that relationship last forever? Only if you give it a chance.

• On Their Journey of Love:

Jasco risks losing both the adoption and Hennas love if/when he gets caught lying during the adoption process. Will Henna decide to give an adoption to Jasco or not?

• Concept:

After giving up the dream of finding the right one, speechwriter Jasco wants to adopt a one year old child, even though single men have little chance of doing that. He gets help from his buddy's girlfriend who pretends to be Jasco's future wife. But Jasco falls in love with Henna, the adoption agent, at the risk of being exposed as a fraud and losing both the adoption and Hennas love.

What if you are a single man, and pretend that you are in a relationship going through with a fake marriage in order to be able to adopt a child, only to fall in love with the adoption case manager who will decide if you are to be trusted to adopt or not?

2.
• Experience of Falling In Love:

At their first meeting when they wait for a new balloon time slot they kill time by discovering the little village nearby and tries different glasses and different perfumes for each other, playing around and start giggling like they were in kindergarten, feeling that they just belong together with exactly the same humor, like coming home.

• The Journey of Love:

Jasco risks losing both the adoption and Hennas love if/when he gets caught lying during the adoption process. Will Henna decide to give an adoption to Jasco or not? Will she forgive him when she realizes who has been lying?

• Relationship Set-up:

Meet-Cute at the hot air balloon reception glancing at each other while waiting, and then they both walk straight over the dirt pile on their way outside the reception, both surprised that they are equally weird in doing so because they see the humour in that unnormal behaviour. That’s when they start talking.

• Issues each must Resolve:

Jasco needs to stop chasing things. Henna needs to stop running away from things.

• Separation:

First interview at the adoption centre.

• How will Comedy be Expressed:

Mostly within the situations where Jasco and his fake girlfriend Lara have to lie without being caught. Comedy of confusion and quick dialogue between Jasco and Henna. Plus Lara’s boyfriend Richard who is the comic relief character with all his strange and stupid ideas and arguments while being a lovable person only wanting the best for everyone. The one who wants to solve all problems, but only creates problems.

• This reply was modified 11 months ago by  Ola Höglund.

[Ola Höglund]

Hi everyone,

1. Ola Höglund

2. Around hundred episodes in different Swedish tv series and three screenplays I hope to sell.

3. I hope to learn how to make my romcom story work.

4. Sweden’s biggest tennis nerd.

• This reply was modified 11 months, 1 week ago by  Ola Höglund.

[Ola Höglund]

I Ola Höglund agree to the terms of this release form:

As a member of this group, I agree to the following:
1. That I will keep the processes, strategies, teleconferences, communications, lessons, and models of the class confidential, and that I will NOT share any of this program either privately, with a group, posting online, writing articles, through video or computer programming, or in any other way that would make those processes, teleconferences, communications, lessons, and models of the class available to anyone who is not a member of this class.
2. That each writer’s work here is copyrighted and that writer is the sole owner of that work. That includes this program which is copyrighted by Hal Croasmun. I acknowledge that submission of an idea to this group constitutes a claim of and the recognition of ownership of that idea.
I will keep the other writer’s ideas and writing confidential and will not share this information with anyone without the express written permission of the writer/owner. I will not market or even discuss this information with anyone outside this group.
3. I also understand that many stories and ideas are similar and/or have common themes and from time to time, two or more people can independently and simultaneously generate the same concept or movie idea.
4. If I have an idea that is the same as or very similar to another group member’s idea, I’ll immediately contact Hal and present proof that I had this idea prior to the beginning of the class. If Hal deems them to be the same idea or close enough to cause harm to either party, he’ll request both parties to present another concept for the class.
5. If you don’t present proof to Hal that you have the same idea as another person, you agree that all ideas presented to this group are the sole ownership of the person who presented them and you will not write or market another group member’s ideas.
6. Finally, I agree not to bring suit against anyone in this group for any reason, unless they use a substantial portion of my copyrighted work in a manner that is public and/or that prevents me from marketing my script by shopping it to production companies, agents, managers, actors, networks, studios or any other entertainment industry organizations or people.
This completes the Group Release Form for the class.

[Ola Höglund]

Ola Höglund’s Thriller Map Version 1

What I learned is that this story is too long for a feature. It will end up as a 145 pages screenplay. Therefore, it has to be a mini-series in 3 episodes. I know where I could put the two cliffhangers. Reading the assignment, I realized now the outline should be 3-4 pages. That will take me a lot of time to shorten it that much. Hopefully someone is prepared to exchange feedback with me anyway until next version? (If you want, please feel free to correct my English and suggest better or more clear words.)

Title: “MANDALA”

Logline: A psychiatry researcher and a detective suspect each other of being “the element killer”, with both claiming to be subject to a setup, while trying to save their marriages in this university town of the desert where all the money and psychopaths of power gather.

1. INT – UNIVERSITY LIBRARY – EVENING

Two men in their fifties, psychiatrist researcher NOEL BOROWIAK and detective CLAY ROSTAGNO, discover each other between the bookshelves, but Borowiak notices that Rostagno tries to avoid him. They observe each other like two spies in the deserted dome building, with only a couple of students and a face deformed librarian around, putting back books.

Rostagno is on his way out when Borowiak surprises him on the other side of the bookshelf. “Why do you avoid me?” Rostagno wonders what Borowiak is doing here in this university town. Borowiak says a headhunter recruited his wife as the chief librarian here. But why has Rostagno moved from his beloved New York to this desert town when he hates wind? Rostagno answers vaguely that he is divorced, and he moved here “because of what you and I talked about in our meeting in New York…”

Rostagno investigates stolen books. It turns out it’s the same books that Borowiak borrowed when he wrote his controversial articles about a changed America, about a society gone psychopathic, and how the digital world affects our brains with no freedom left when your cell phone is your closest friend and biggest enemy. Why are the books stolen? Were the articles too sensitive for the psychopaths in power in this kind of “Silicon Valley moved to Palm Springs-town”?

Borowiak plans to write a book about “the difference between psychopaths and psychopaths – if they can change their behavior”. Borowiak tells pensive Rostagno about the brain scans that can discover whether you have the brain of a psychopath or not. They mention that Borowiak interviewed Americas worst serial killer and Rostagno interrogated him.

The dumb librarian points out that the library is closing now. The truth seeker Borowiak and the more prestigious Rostagno, who only met each other twice in New York, concludes that it’s an extremely strange coincidence that they both have ended up in this town at the same time…

2. EXT – DESERT/INT – POLICE CAR – MORNING

11 months later. Rostagno and wannabe partner DWIGHT listens to Chief of Police PIPER’s directive. Be careful. The ranch belongs to the town’s most influential businessman, MORENO.

3. EXT/INT – RANCH – MORNING

Rostagno investigates the explosion with Moreno’s body blown up in pieces. Moreno owns companies within oil, security and aviation, starting out as a dynamite company. Accident or suicide?

4. INT – BEDROOM – MORNING

Candles in the dark. Colored grains of sand from the pointed mouth of the pipe are carefully distributed in an artistic circular pattern. It’s Borowiak who tries to make a Buddhist mandala. But his wife, CARMEL, pulls up the blinds with a bang. Daylight dazzles. Carmel informs that a carpenter will examine the kitchen ceiling’s moisture damage and Borowiak’s literary agent is downstairs. Borowiak doesn’t want to have anything to do with neither his agent nor a carpenter.

The agent enters the bedroom full of empty ice cream packages. He asks why Borowiak is depressed according to Carmel who says he only leaves his room to get more ice cream. Borowiak denies that he is depressed. What is Borowiak’s problem then? The agent cancels the book contract. The advance must be paid back, but Borowiak has used all the money and can’t pay it back.

5. INT – POLICE STATION – DAY

Dwight complains to Piper about Rostagno being a bad detective with a weird behavior. For example he didn’t do his job on the stolen books. Piper informs that it was her decision to not investigate the stolen books any further. Why? She doesn’t answer. Dwight has discovered that Rostagno was fired from the NYPD. Piper responds that Rostagno is the one who caught Americas worst serial killer in New York. The killer with the scary nickname no one wants to say? Yes. Dwight impressed.

6. EXT/INT – VILLA – DAY

Rostagno investigates a garage where a researcher in the environmental chemistry industry is found dead in her car due to a deadly gas. Looks like suicide. Two suicides the same week? Rostagno suspicious. What do the two victims have in common?

7. INT – BOROWIAK’S HOUSE – NIGHT

Borowiak walks down the stairs in his home during the worst skyfall, checking out the sound from the kitchen. Someone in his house? No, it’s just the carpenter’s provisional roof blowing away – or? Borowiak throws kitchen utensils into the pool that his flooded kitchen has turned into. He lays down in the “pool” as if he was a backstroker, being photographed by his son.

8. INT – POLICE STATION – DAY

Rostagno calls Borowiak, but he doesn’t answer.

Rostagno tries to get a date with Piper, but he doesn’t succeed.

9. INT – BOROWIAK’S HOUSE – DAY

Borowiak kidnaps the carpenter responsible for the roof leak until the roof is fixed.

10. INT – POLICE STATION – DAY

Rostagno interrogates Borowiak about the kidnapping. Borowiak pleads guilty while eating ice cream. Rostagno asks about the two suicides/murders since Borowiak helped him out with profiling in New York and Borowiak wrote about Moreno’s company in his controversial articles. But Borowiak doesn’t want to help him. Instead, he tells the classic story about the boat with five experienced sailors who just disappeared with the boat found intact in the perfect weather. What had happened? Rostagno can’t solve that riddle. Borowiak says “it is suicide to be careless”.

Rostagno asks Borowiak how reliable the brain scans are. Why does Rostagno ask all these questions about psychopaths? Rostagno ask more questions about Borowiak’s life. Finally, Borowiak wonders if he is a suspect in some other way. Rostagno tells him to get a lawyer.

Rostagno comments on Borowiak’s meticulous way of scraping the last ice cream out of the package. Borowiak doesn’t think Rostagno is meticulous. Rostagno asks “if that was what Borowiak wrote in his statement…” Mysterious Borowiak just leaves.

11. INT – BOROWIAK’S HOUSE – DAY

Borowiak and his wife Carmel argues about the photo of her and her father, the Greenpeace captain. It’s 30 years today since her father died. She has to stop thinking of how her father died on that boat.

12. INT – UNIVERSITY LOUNGE – NIGHT

Big party. Carmel with a new hairstyle is introduced to Piper who is also invited unexpectedly. Carmel asks why Piper moved from New York to the desert to become chief of police. They state that money and power people from all over America finds its way to this booming research and startups town with a university being run almost like the mafia with almost no crimes committed. Carmel believes everyone working there is somehow monitored. She has had her computer checked for spyware by her librarian colleague. Carmel asks why the police didn’t follow up on the stolen books. She also asks about the town’s big daddy Moreno who got killed in the explosion. Piper marks that Carmel asks many questions. Carmel answers that she should have become a detective. Both ladies want to change the world: Carmel instinctively based on conscience, Piper logically based on reason.

The chief of research at the university, Mrs DIBLEY, talks to the newspaper publisher Mr SAND when the catering waiter ELTINGH creates a situation ending up with Eltingh being thrown out. Eltingh is a former employee at the university who got fired by Dibley.

13. EXT – DESERT/INT – CAR – NIGHT

Borowiak is stalked by Rostagno when driving through the wind turbines to a bar.

14. INT – BAR – NIGHT

Borowiak overhears some basketball players talking about how the New York Serial Killer (NYSK) escaped prison during his mother’s funeral, with the help of a small gun hidden in the dead mother’s vagina. Borowiak explains that the mother took her life facing a cancer verdict, leaving this special legacy that no one discovered. The basketball players don’t believe that Borowiak has met NYSK. They don’t want to talk anymore about NYSK since they are afraid of nightmares.

Borowiak starts humming like the Buddhist monks to take away the dark energy. He explains that a true mandala is a work of art, a masterpiece, that you don’t sign and the world will never see because you destroy it as soon as it is complete, just like you will never see what Picasso drew in the sand on the beach before the waves washed over it. The only thing that has changed, during the making of the masterpiece, is your inner self. No applause. A mandala is about making no mistakes. “Just like a serial killer works” one of the players adds, comparing it to basketball with no team or crowd.

15. INT – UNIVERSITY LOUNGE – NIGHT

The newspaper publisher Sand gets a call from an anonymous informer with a distorted voice to meet at the bar Borowiak visits.

16. INT/EXT – BAR – NIGHT

Rostagno watches Borowiak from the Pizza hut opposite the bar. Borowiak leaves.

17. EXT – VILLA – MORNING

Sand is found drowned in his swimming pool with things symbolizing money/power thrown into the pool, looking like the kitchen pool Borowiak dealt with. A third suicide? No, definitely three murders now. Dwight notices some green sand on the bottom of the pool. Rostagno tells Dwight to not ask the witness any questions. Rostagno is the one asking questions. No one else.

18. EXT – BOROWIAK’S HOUSE – MORNING

Borowiak almost crashes into Carmel with his car, not recognizing her with the new hairstyle. They both arrive home, both asking each other: Where have you been all night?

19. INT – POLICE STATION – DAY

Rostagno wants to call in the FBI. He wants to prove himself to the FBI as well. Piper wants them to solve the potential murders themselves, not involving FBI. Why? She gives in.

20. EXT – BOROWIAK’S HOUSE – DAY

Borowiak with plastic gloves oils the wooden shaft on his kitchen knife that he threw into his kitchen pool. When he walks away, we see the newspaper covering the table from oil. It headlines the three murders. A hand with a plastic glove takes Borowiak’s knife from the paper. Borowiak’s hand?

21. INT – UNIVERSITY LIBRARY – DAY

Carmel is warned by the dumb librarian that she could be questioned by Dibley for doing wrong. Psychopathic Dibley humiliates Carmel in front of all the staff. The librarian gives Carmel support.

22. INT – POLICE STATION – DAY

Two FBI AGENTS arrive, profiling the killer. A killer who doesn’t like violence, letting the victims kill themselves probably under gun threat. Explosion – fire, gas – air, drowning – water. Next murder has to do with soil? An “Element killer” that is some sort of a climate/societal terrorist with a message. Otherwise, the killer wouldn’t let them all commit suicide the same week.

Rostagno risks his reputation in front of FBI when he launches Borowiak as the prime suspect based on Borowiak’s articles, the stolen books, all Borowiak said during the kidnapping interrogation, and Sand’s pool looking like Borowiak’s kitchen pool, with Sand going to the same bar Borowiak went to, even though Sand came to the bar after Borowiak left.

FBI with their data comes up with another possible suspect fitting with the profiling: Eltingh – the waiter who was fired from the university two years ago.

23. EXT – ELTINGH’S HOUSE – DAY

Rostagno and FBI ends up in a shooting with Eltingh. Dwight is very close to shoot Rostagno.

24. EXT – TENNIS CLUB – DAY

Rostagno needs to talk to Dibley about Eltingh. He notices a peculiar forehand technique while watching Dibley play tennis with colleagues Carmel, the dumb librarian and one of the librarians who saw Dibley humiliate Carmel in the library. Where has he seen that special forehand before?

While waiting for Dibley to join the other players in the clubhouse, Dwight brings up the shooting at Eltinghs house. Rostagno says he shot a colleague in New York who died when they were chasing NYSK. He knows how easy it is to make the wrong decisions and reactions when you are really scared. Dwight asks if Rostagno is afraid of NYSK coming back. Rostagno says NYSK will never go back to the US. His face is as well known as any Hollywood celebrity.

25. INT – POLICE STATION – DAY

Rostagno is sure Eltingh is not the killer, but Piper wants him to to do his best in front of the FBI. Rostagno risks his reputation interrogating Eltingh in a tough manner, with Rostagno’s self-hate cracking out between the lines as if Rostagno himself could be a killer with revenge as his fuel in life.

Eltingh had the same job as Carmel now have. But strange things happened his last year as if someone, maybe Dibley, manipulated situations. Dibley abused Eltingh who believes he got fired because he researched how the university is financed etc. He is sick of all the unfairness. “If democracy doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to, then you have to follow your own moral code.” But Eltingh says he would never seek revenge. It would never give him back his dead wife and never make his son healthy. In revenge there is nothing to gain. Rostagno convinced Eltingh is no killer.

26. INT – UNIVERSITY LIBRARY – DAY

Dibley scares the shit out of Carmel outside her library office window when Carmel reads about the murders on her computer. Carmel instinctively clicks off the browser.

27. INT – BOROWIAK’S HOUSE – DAY

Carmel resents her job situation. But Borowiak doesn’t listen to his wife when he finds surveillance microphones in their damaged kitchen… He doesn’t say anything to Carmel about his findings. Who has installed the microphones? What does this mean?

28. EXT – FLOWER SHOP – DAY

Borowiak tells the flower shop to send flowers to his wife every birthday after he has died…

29. INT – BOROWIAK’S HOUSE – DAY

Inspired Borowiak babbles about the sunflower field he has seen today. Carmel doesn’t get his attention. She is surprised by the wall of roses Borowiak has created for her. But she is so sick of his egoism. Roses is not the solution. She wants a divorce.

30. EXT – AVIATION GRAVEYARD – NIGHT

Rostagno and Piper investigate a tip in the scary aviation graveyard in the desert, until she realizes that Rostagno has lured her into a date with dinner under the stars, served by a butler. They dance close to the edge risking falling down. Romance in the air.

31. EXT – BOROWIAK’S HOUSE/UNIVERSITY/DIBLEY’S HOUSE – DAY

Rostagno’s car follows Borowiak’s car – which follows Dibley’s car…

32. EXT – SUNFLOWER FIELD – DAY

Borowiak lures Rostagno in a soil pit he can’t get out of when Rostagno pursues Borowiak by foot. Rostagno fears for his life. Borowiak tells Rostagno the solution to the riddle about how the sailors disappeared according to the tall tale. Or were the sailors forced to jump into the water by someone else threatening them? Rostagno responds: Just like Sand was forced to jump into his pool with the sinking rucksack? Borowiak agrees: Interesting coincidence. He adds: The one of us who is careless/sloppy… loses. Borowiak rescues Rostagno out of the pit and disappears.

33. EXT/INT – AIRPORTS – DAY

Rostagno chases Borowiak to the airport, boarding the same flight – he thinks – but it’s the wrong flight. Borowiak NY, Rostagno LA.

34. INT – POLICE STATION – DAY

Rostagno tells Piper that Borowiak more or less admitted he is the killer when he used a soil pit and told the story about a boat where the crew disappeared. We have to find what ship Borowiak refers to.

35. INT – NEW YORK POLICE BUILDING – DAY

Borowiak steals a police badge in the police locker room in New York pretending to be a carpenter.

36. INT – NEW YORK CAFÉ – DAY

Borowiak googles Rostagno. A wedding picture shows that Piper is Rostagno’s ex-wife. But Borowiak is interested in who is the best man.

37. INT – PIPER’S HOUSE – DAY

Lunch date. Piper says that she wanted to date Rostagno earlier, but she thought it was better if Rostagno could solve the murders first, getting his confidence back. She wants Rostagno to become strong again, being able to be loved, and stop punishing himself for what happened in New York. She has tested him while evaluating her feelings, but now she believes in him. They kiss for the first time since they were married. Rostagno in heaven.

38. INT – NEW YORK POLICE BUILDING – DAY

Borowiak interviews Rostagno’s best friend while the computer shows him being wanted for police badge theft. Borowiak says that Rostagno is investigated in a triple murder case. He learns that a headhunter has called the friend asking questions about Rostagno some years ago when Rostagno applied for a police job that Rostagno said he never applied for. Rostagno’s biggest fear being a loser.

Why did Piper divorce him? According to Rostagno he didn’t become the star she wanted him to be. The only reason Rostagno became a cop was because of Piper. He was completely obsessed with her. Piper would never have married Rostagno if she knew that.

Why would Rostagno be considered a loser if he was the one who caught NYSK? Rostagno thought it wasn’t his merit. Their psychologist profiled NYSK and the colleague he shot found NYSK.

Why was Rostagno fired from NYPD? Borowiak says the police psychologist wrote a statement after Rostagno shot his colleague, saying that Rostagno should continue working as before. So there has to be another reason. Could Rostagno have shot his colleague deliberately? Because of corruption, competition or jealousy? Borowiak learns that Rostagno was back in New York just after they met in the university library. Why? Rostagno’s friend asks if Piper could be in danger?

39. INT – PIPER’S HOUSE – DAY

Piper, in bed with Rostagno, gets a call from Rostagno’s best friend telling her about Rostagno. With both of them naked, she brings her gun out. Is Rostagno a psychopathic killer? Rostagno defends himself with just declaring his love for her. He says that this is evidence against Borowiak if he tries to set Rostagno up looking like Rostagno is the killer. Piper wonders what really happened between Rostagno and Borowiak in New York?

40. INT – NEW YORK POLICE HEADQUARTERS – DAY

Borowiak finds Rostagno’s file at the Internal Affairs office. He is shocked when he looks at the brain scan with Rostagno’s name on it. He can also see that someone has looked at the file a week after they met in the library. Borowiak searches by his own name and finds another brain scan confirming his fear. The search also warns about Borowiak being wanted for triple murder. He escapes the police building with cops looking for him.

41. INT – BOROWIAK’S HOUSE – DAY

House search by FBI. Microphones found. Plus small bottles with colored sand. Four bottles missing?

42. EXT/INT – BRONX – DAY

Borowiak buys a gun from the threatening Bronx mafia. Teenagers teach him to shoot.

43. EXT – JFK – DAY

The FBI agents arrive in New York to investigate, now that Borowiak is in NY.

44. INT/EXT – MULTIPLE LOCATIONS – DAY

Borowiak calls his wife Carmel from NY knowing that FBI and Rostagno listens to their conversation.

Borowiak says that he has misplaced their brain scans. Rostagno was scanned because of the splits he might have gotten in his head during the shootings when they caught NYSK. At the same time Borowiak scanned his own brain in his research work. He saw that he had the brain of a psychopath. In shock he must have mixed their scans. Borowiak’s brain scan ended up in Rostagno’s file when Borowiak as the police psychologist investigated Rostagno’s psychological status after the shootings.

NYPD has then seen “Rostagno’s scan” and fired him without telling him about the scan since that would have been illegal as a reason to fire someone. But Rostagno went to New York after we met in the library. He got hold of his file, discovering the real reason for him being fired. Therefore, he accuses me of lying to him when I told him he was alright and could continue to work. Borowiak realizes he is responsible for Rostagno losing his career and marriage, giving Rostagno motive to set him up and kill psychopaths to get his career and wife back.

Rostagno has for eleven months wrongfully been thinking that he has the brain of a psychopath. How does that affect a human being? You play the role you are given. Borowiak knows how affected he himself has been knowing that he has the brain of a psychopath. It is quite difficult even for a psychopath if you’re looking for the truth, even though psychopaths don’t care. But not even a psychopath wants to be called a psychopath, or especially not psychopaths. Being a psychopath always ends in darkness, sooner or later, more or less, just like revenge. Borowiak fears he could be violent, even though he has never in his life hit anyone. The reason for Borowiak’s “depression” has been his fear of Carmel knowing she is married to a psychopath. Now that she has decided to divorce him, he can admit the truth. He begs her to take him back.

Carmel notes that the killer has bugged them and mapped their whole lives in setting up Borowiak. She is scared. She wishes Borowiak never kidnapped that carpenter. But Borowiak claims that the roof leak and finding the microphones might have been their salvation, since Rostagno couldn’t plan for that. Scared Borowiak tells her this could be the last time they talk.

45. INT – POLICE STATION – DAY

Rostagno defends himself by explaining that this is Borowiak’s plan to set him up. Rostagno is relieved he doesn’t have the brain of a psychopath, but he feels betrayed by Piper when he learns that she never told him that she knew about the brain scan. That’s why she divorced him?

She demands him to stop pursuing Borowiak now that Rostagno has a motive. He can’t be involved in this case anymore.

46. EXT – DESERT – DAY

Carmel calls the headhunter that made her move from NY to the desert. She finds out there has never been a firm or a name like that. The headhunter seems to never have existed. Carmel leaves her cell phone in the desert to be sure no one can follow her or listen to her conversations. But first she texts the dumb librarian that she won’t come back to the library until after they’ve closed. No one can reach her on her phone from now on. Librarian responds with happy emoji.

47. EXT – HAMPTON HOUSE – EVENING

WILL GRAEBNER comes home, only to be directed under gun threat to the soil pit dug for his new swimming pool by someone in a motorcycle helmet with a distorted voice. He lies down in the pit together with today’s newspaper, as directed. He is buried under all the soil from the truck.

48. INT – FBI OFFICE NEW YORK – DAY

Photos from the Hampton soil incident. One photo shows the newspaper – dated 1999. The fourth element killing already took place 22 years ago? FBI discovers that Carmel was one of the witnesses the police talked to about possible scenarios of the accident. Carmel worked for Graebner in his house 1999, cleaning. Is Borowiak’s wife involved in the murders? They find out that Carmel’s father died mysteriously on a Greenpeace ship just the way Borowiak told Rostagno. Graebner, a true psychopath, was the chairman of the board in the bank financing the oil project that Greenpeace protested against. The same bank financing the university. The bank used a security company owned by the first explosion victim Moreno. Could this desert town with no crimes be the epicenter of evil?

49. INT – POLICE STATION/UNIVERSITY LIBRARY – DAY

Rostagno calls the library to see if Carmel is there. The dumb librarian texts to the other librarian taking the call, that she will be here at closing time.

50. INT – FBI OFFICE NEW YORK – DAY

FBI in NY discusses which one of them is the killer setting the other one up? Borowiak or Rostagno? If Rostagno knew about the soil accident and Carmel working for Graebner, Rostagno could use that to set up Borowiak. If the FBI can find out all of this about the Borowiak family, Rostagno could too. It doesn’t matter if Graebner was an accident or a murder. The only thing that matters is how it looks now with the three murders today.

One of the agents conclude that for the first time in his career he feels scared. If a killer sets up this whole climate Greenpeace terrorist façade just to get personal revenge, then the world has really gone mad. Is that how egotistical we all are? We don’t give a damn when it comes to the crunch.

The real key is why Borowiak moved to the desert after Rostagno moved there. It can’t be a coincidence. The killer must be behind that. The only common denominator is NYSK who Borowiak profiled and Rostagno caught. That’s the only two times they met, when Borowiak offered his profiling and when Borowiak investigated Rostagno’s psychological status after the shootings.

51. EXT – DESERT AIRPORT – DAY

Disguised Borowiak arrives at the desert airport, goes to Fedex and picks up his package with the gun in it. Does anyone of Rostagno’s airport tipsters see him?

52. INT – UNIVERSITY LIBRARY – EVENING

The librarian is about to close the library main entrance when Rostagno enters, leaving Dwight outside in the police car watching who might arrive.

Rostagno sees the librarian going into Carmel’s office space, placing four sand bottles in her cupboard. Rostagno hides in the closet. Is the dumb librarian involved in some way?

Rostagno texts Piper about the sand found on the murder scenes. Was there any colored sand around the soil pit in 1999? No, nothing in the reports about that. But yellow (fire) sand found at the explosion, blue (air) sand in the car with the gas, and green (water) sand in Sand’s pool.

Someone cuts Styrofoam with Borowiak’s knife.

Carmel comes to get her computer and picture of her dad that she has moved from their house to her office. Rostagno hides in the closet again, but he forgets his phone on the desk when he puts back the examined sand into the bottle. She sees the phone, but decides to not touch it, leaving it there.

53. EXT/INT – POLICE CAR/UNIVERSITY LIBRARY – EVENING

Borowiak kidnaps Piper to make Rostagno confess in her presence. They drive to the library in her police car.

Borowiak calls the library from Piper’s police phone. The librarian picks the phone up wondering who calls the library after closing, but he can’t answer with his voice. Borowiak understands it is the dumb librarian, so he asks him to text to this number if his wife is in the building. Librarian texts that Borowiak’s wife is here. It seems everyone will be in the library soon.

54. INT – UNIVERSITY LIBRARY – EVENING

Rostagno goes to the librarian’s office space and looks at his tennis rackets. He realizes where he has seen that forehand before…

In his shock a scared Rostagno backs away, dropping his phone in the dark while texting to bring in the task force. The librarian enters. Rostagno hides with his gun. The librarian sees the vibrating phone on the floor when Dwight outside in the car texts and calls. He takes it, reads Rostagno’s unsent message, and texts that Rostagno is coming soon. Now Rostagno is also without a phone.

55. EXT – PARKING LOT – EVENING

After cutting the library telephone line, the librarian goes out and kill Dwight with Borowiak’s knife, takes the gun, police radio and cell phone from Dwight. And fills the victim’s blood in a bottle.

56. INT – FBI OFFICE NEW YORK – EVENING

FBI watches the interview that Borowiak did with NYSK after he was prisoned. We learn that NYSK didn’t want to kill his hated mother. He wanted her to suffer, knowing her son was a serial killer hating her. Only if she would be a threat to his freedom, he would kill her. Besides, he doesn’t want to kill anyone where he could be a natural suspect. It’s all about not getting caught, not making mistakes. The mother was ashamed that her son got caught, being prisoned, not ashamed of his killings. NYSK says Rostagno is the only one hitting him, except his mother. “You were just lucky to catch me.” NYSK asks Borowiak a lot of questions: “It’s my time profiling you now.” Borowiak asks about the killings. NYSK describes one of them:

57. EXT – NEIGHBORHOOD – DAY

A young mother with a baby in a baby carriage talks on her cell phone while watching the smoke from Manhattan. Two airplanes have crashed into World Trade Center. She is on her way home to watch the news. But she is attacked by NYSK who brutally kills her, cutting off her head, smashing the head against the wall in rage. NYSK leaves the unaware baby in this sunlit idyllic neighborhood.

58. INT – UNIVERSITY LIBRARY – EVENING

Rostagno looks for both Carmel and the librarian with his gun ready. Borowiak and Piper enters the library from the backdoor.

Borowiak and Rostagno sneaks up on each other in the dark library. Carmel sneaks up and hits Rostagno’s hand with the frame of her father’s picture. His gun goes off. Borowiak reacts by shooting towards Rostagno in the dark, but the bullet hits his wife.

Carmel confesses to Borowiak that she researched her father’s death, taking the cleaning job at Graebner’s house to see if a natural accidental situation would occur. She killed Graebner in the soil pit 1999 since he was the one deciding the Greenpeace crew should drown, but she hasn’t killed anyone else. Borowiak shocked that his non-psychopathic wife has killed someone. She says her “headhunter” must be the killer. She dies. Devastated Borowiak handcuffs himself to his dead wife, screaming “I want you to kill me. You won.”

Rostagno tells Borowiak about the librarians forehand that Rostagno saw in New York without him knowing that… The dumb librarian is NYSK with a new face, the one setting them both up. Borowiak realizes the librarian stole the books to make them meet in his library. He could be up in the library lift.

Rostagno finds the librarian/NYSK looking dead in the library lift with a knife in his bleeding stomach and close to his mouth on the floor lies Dwight’s gun. Although Rostagno is careful, the librarian/NYSK overpowers him. He says he can now kill Rostagno with Borowiak’s knife and kill Borowiak with Rostagno’s gun. Rostagno pushes the button to make the lift go up in the air.

Borowiak lies handcuffed with his dead wife without the key, blaming himself, devastated. He can’t escape from the librarian/NYSK now.

Borowiak carries his dead wife between the bookshelves to surprise the librarian/NYSK when the lift comes down to the floor, shoots the librarian/NYSK, saving Rostagno’s life.

Borowiak and Rostagno are even. They outsmarted and overpowered NYSK as a team. Rostagno gets his self-respect and wife back. The meticulous truth-seeker Borowiak who is always right and never sloppy learns the truth, not only being wrong about Rostagno, his wife and the villain, but also learning the truth about himself. He is not the person he thought he was.

[Ola Höglund]

Ola Höglund’s Thriller Map Version 1

What I learned is that this story is too long for a feature. It will end up as a 145 pages screenplay. Therefore, it has to be a mini-series in 3 episodes. I know where I could put the two cliffhangers.

Title: “MANDALA”

Logline: A psychiatry researcher and a detective suspect each other of being “the element killer”, with both claiming to be subject to a setup, while trying to save their marriages in this university town of the desert where all the money and psychopaths of power gather.

1. INT – UNIVERSITY LIBRARY – EVENING

Two men in their fifties, psychiatrist researcher NOEL BOROWIAK and detective CLAY ROSTAGNO, discover each other between the bookshelves, but Borowiak notices that Rostagno tries to avoid him. They observe each other like two spies in the deserted dome building, with only a couple of students and a face deformed librarian around, putting back books.

Rostagno is on his way out when Borowiak surprises him on the other side of the bookshelf. “Why do you avoid me?” Rostagno wonders what Borowiak is doing here in this university town. Borowiak says a headhunter recruited his wife as the chief librarian here. But why has Rostagno moved from his beloved New York to this desert town when he hates wind? Rostagno answers vaguely that he is divorced, and he moved here “because of what you and I talked about in our meeting in New York…”

Rostagno investigates stolen books. It turns out it’s the same books that Borowiak borrowed when he wrote his controversial articles about a changed America, about a society gone psychopathic, and how the digital world affects our brains with no freedom left when your cell phone is your closest friend and biggest enemy. Why are the books stolen? Were the articles too sensitive for the psychopaths in power in this kind of “Silicon Valley moved to Palm Springs-town”?

Borowiak plans to write a book about “the difference between psychopaths and psychopaths – if they can change their behavior”. Borowiak tells pensive Rostagno about the brain scans that can discover whether you have the brain of a psychopath or not. They mention that Borowiak interviewed Americas worst serial killer and Rostagno interrogated him.

The dumb librarian points out that the library is closing now. The truth seeker Borowiak and the more prestigious Rostagno, who only met each other twice in New York, concludes that it’s an extremely strange coincidence that they both have ended up in this town at the same time…

2. EXT – DESERT/INT – POLICE CAR – MORNING

11 months later. Rostagno and wannabe partner DWIGHT listens to Chief of Police PIPER’s directive. Be careful. The ranch belongs to the town’s most influential businessman, MORENO.

3. EXT/INT – RANCH – MORNING

Rostagno investigates the explosion with Moreno’s body blown up in pieces. Moreno owns companies within oil, security and aviation, starting out as a dynamite company. Accident or suicide?

4. INT – BEDROOM – MORNING

Candles in the dark. Colored grains of sand from the pointed mouth of the pipe are carefully distributed in an artistic circular pattern. It’s Borowiak who tries to make a Buddhist mandala. But his wife, CARMEL, pulls up the blinds with a bang. Daylight dazzles. Carmel informs that a carpenter will examine the kitchen ceiling’s moisture damage and Borowiak’s literary agent is downstairs. Borowiak doesn’t want to have anything to do with neither his agent nor a carpenter.

The agent enters the bedroom full of empty ice cream packages. He asks why Borowiak is depressed according to Carmel who says he only leaves his room to get more ice cream. Borowiak denies that he is depressed. What is Borowiak’s problem then? The agent cancels the book contract. The advance must be paid back, but Borowiak has used all the money and can’t pay it back.

5. INT – POLICE STATION – DAY

Dwight complains to Piper about Rostagno being a bad detective with a weird behavior. For example he didn’t do his job on the stolen books. Piper informs that it was her decision to not investigate the stolen books any further. Why? She doesn’t answer. Dwight has discovered that Rostagno was fired from the NYPD. Piper responds that Rostagno is the one who caught Americas worst serial killer in New York. The killer with the scary nickname no one wants to say? Yes. Dwight impressed.

6. EXT/INT – VILLA – DAY

Rostagno investigates a garage where a researcher in the environmental chemistry industry is found dead in her car due to a deadly gas. Looks like suicide. Two suicides the same week? Rostagno suspicious. What do the two victims have in common?

7. INT – BOROWIAK’S HOUSE – NIGHT

Borowiak walks down the stairs in his home during the worst skyfall, checking out the sound from the kitchen. Someone in his house? No, it’s just the carpenter’s provisional roof blowing away – or? Borowiak throws kitchen utensils into the pool that his flooded kitchen has turned into. He lays down in the “pool” as if he was a backstroker, being photographed by his son.

8. INT – POLICE STATION – DAY

Rostagno calls Borowiak, but he doesn’t answer.

Rostagno tries to get a date with Piper, but he doesn’t succeed.

9. INT – BOROWIAK’S HOUSE – DAY

Borowiak kidnaps the carpenter responsible for the roof leak until the roof is fixed.

10. INT – POLICE STATION – DAY

Rostagno interrogates Borowiak about the kidnapping. Borowiak pleads guilty while eating ice cream. Rostagno asks about the two suicides/murders since Borowiak helped him out with profiling in New York and Borowiak wrote about Moreno’s company in his controversial articles. But Borowiak doesn’t want to help him. Instead, he tells the classic story about the boat with five experienced sailors who just disappeared with the boat found intact in the perfect weather. What had happened? Rostagno can’t solve that riddle. Borowiak says “it is suicide to be careless”.

Rostagno asks Borowiak how reliable the brain scans are. Why does Rostagno ask all these questions about psychopaths? Rostagno ask more questions about Borowiak’s life. Finally, Borowiak wonders if he is a suspect in some other way. Rostagno tells him to get a lawyer.

Rostagno comments on Borowiak’s meticulous way of scraping the last ice cream out of the package. Borowiak doesn’t think Rostagno is meticulous. Rostagno asks “if that was what Borowiak wrote in his statement…” Mysterious Borowiak just leaves.

11. INT – BOROWIAK’S HOUSE – DAY

Borowiak and his wife Carmel argues about the photo of her and her father, the Greenpeace captain. It’s 30 years today since her father died. She has to stop thinking of how her father died on that boat.

12. INT – UNIVERSITY LOUNGE – NIGHT

Big party. Carmel with a new hairstyle is introduced to Piper who is also invited unexpectedly. Carmel asks why Piper moved from New York to the desert to become chief of police. They state that money and power people from all over America finds its way to this booming research and startups town with a university being run almost like the mafia with almost no crimes committed. Carmel believes everyone working there is somehow monitored. She has had her computer checked for spyware by her librarian colleague. Carmel asks why the police didn’t follow up on the stolen books. She also asks about the town’s big daddy Moreno who got killed in the explosion. Piper marks that Carmel asks many questions. Carmel answers that she should have become a detective. Both ladies want to change the world: Carmel instinctively based on conscience, Piper logically based on reason.

The chief of research at the university, Mrs DIBLEY, talks to the newspaper publisher Mr SAND when the catering waiter ELTINGH creates a situation ending up with Eltingh being thrown out. Eltingh is a former employee at the university who got fired by Dibley.

13. EXT – DESERT/INT – CAR – NIGHT

Borowiak is stalked by Rostagno when driving through the wind turbines to a bar.

14. INT – BAR – NIGHT

Borowiak overhears some basketball players talking about how the New York Serial Killer (NYSK) escaped prison during his mother’s funeral, with the help of a small gun hidden in the dead mother’s vagina. Borowiak explains that the mother took her life facing a cancer verdict, leaving this special legacy that no one discovered. The basketball players don’t believe that Borowiak has met NYSK. They don’t want to talk anymore about NYSK since they are afraid of nightmares.

Borowiak starts humming like the Buddhist monks to take away the dark energy. He explains that a true mandala is a work of art, a masterpiece, that you don’t sign and the world will never see because you destroy it as soon as it is complete, just like you will never see what Picasso drew in the sand on the beach before the waves washed over it. The only thing that has changed, during the making of the masterpiece, is your inner self. No applause. A mandala is about making no mistakes. “Just like a serial killer works” one of the players adds, comparing it to basketball with no team or crowd.

15. INT – UNIVERSITY LOUNGE – NIGHT

The newspaper publisher Sand gets a call from an anonymous informer with a distorted voice to meet at the bar Borowiak visits.

16. INT/EXT – BAR – NIGHT

Rostagno watches Borowiak from the Pizza hut opposite the bar. Borowiak leaves.

17. EXT – VILLA – MORNING

Sand is found drowned in his swimming pool with things symbolizing money/power thrown into the pool, looking like the kitchen pool Borowiak dealt with. A third suicide? No, definitely three murders now. Dwight notices some green sand on the bottom of the pool. Rostagno tells Dwight to not ask the witness any questions. Rostagno is the one asking questions. No one else.

18. EXT – BOROWIAK’S HOUSE – MORNING

Borowiak almost crashes into Carmel with his car, not recognizing her with the new hairstyle. They both arrive home, both asking each other: Where have you been all night?

19. INT – POLICE STATION – DAY

Rostagno wants to call in the FBI. He wants to prove himself to the FBI as well. Piper wants them to solve the potential murders themselves, not involving FBI. Why? She gives in.

20. EXT – BOROWIAK’S HOUSE – DAY

Borowiak with plastic gloves oils the wooden shaft on his kitchen knife that he threw into his kitchen pool. When he walks away, we see the newspaper covering the table from oil. It headlines the three murders. A hand with a plastic glove takes Borowiak’s knife from the paper. Borowiak’s hand?

21. INT – UNIVERSITY LIBRARY – DAY

Carmel is warned by the dumb librarian that she could be questioned by Dibley for doing wrong. Psychopathic Dibley humiliates Carmel in front of all the staff. The librarian gives Carmel support.

22. INT – POLICE STATION – DAY

Two FBI AGENTS arrive, profiling the killer. A killer who doesn’t like violence, letting the victims kill themselves probably under gun threat. Explosion – fire, gas – air, drowning – water. Next murder has to do with soil? An “Element killer” that is some sort of a climate/societal terrorist with a message. Otherwise, the killer wouldn’t let them all commit suicide the same week.

Rostagno risks his reputation in front of FBI when he launches Borowiak as the prime suspect based on Borowiak’s articles, the stolen books, all Borowiak said during the kidnapping interrogation, and Sand’s pool looking like Borowiak’s kitchen pool, with Sand going to the same bar Borowiak went to, even though Sand came to the bar after Borowiak left.

FBI with their data comes up with another possible suspect fitting with the profiling: Eltingh – the waiter who was fired from the university two years ago.

23. EXT – ELTINGH’S HOUSE – DAY

Rostagno and FBI ends up in a shooting with Eltingh. Dwight is very close to shoot Rostagno.

24. EXT – TENNIS CLUB – DAY

Rostagno needs to talk to Dibley about Eltingh. He notices a peculiar forehand technique while watching Dibley play tennis with colleagues Carmel, the dumb librarian and one of the librarians who saw Dibley humiliate Carmel in the library. Where has he seen that special forehand before?

While waiting for Dibley to join the other players in the clubhouse, Dwight brings up the shooting at Eltinghs house. Rostagno says he shot a colleague in New York who died when they were chasing NYSK. He knows how easy it is to make the wrong decisions and reactions when you are really scared. Dwight asks if Rostagno is afraid of NYSK coming back. Rostagno says NYSK will never go back to the US. His face is as well known as any Hollywood celebrity.

25. INT – POLICE STATION – DAY

Rostagno is sure Eltingh is not the killer, but Piper wants him to to do his best in front of the FBI. Rostagno risks his reputation interrogating Eltingh in a tough manner, with Rostagno’s self-hate cracking out between the lines as if Rostagno himself could be a killer with revenge as his fuel in life.

Eltingh had the same job as Carmel now have. But strange things happened his last year as if someone, maybe Dibley, manipulated situations. Dibley abused Eltingh who believes he got fired because he researched how the university is financed etc. He is sick of all the unfairness. “If democracy doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to, then you have to follow your own moral code.” But Eltingh says he would never seek revenge. It would never give him back his dead wife and never make his son healthy. In revenge there is nothing to gain. Rostagno convinced Eltingh is no killer.

26. INT – UNIVERSITY LIBRARY – DAY

Dibley scares the shit out of Carmel outside her library office window when Carmel reads about the murders on her computer. Carmel instinctively clicks off the browser.

27. INT – BOROWIAK’S HOUSE – DAY

Carmel resents her job situation. But Borowiak doesn’t listen to his wife when he finds surveillance microphones in their damaged kitchen… He doesn’t say anything to Carmel about his findings. Who has installed the microphones? What does this mean?

28. EXT – FLOWER SHOP – DAY

Borowiak tells the flower shop to send flowers to his wife every birthday after he has died…

29. INT – BOROWIAK’S HOUSE – DAY

Inspired Borowiak babbles about the sunflower field he has seen today. Carmel doesn’t get his attention. She is surprised by the wall of roses Borowiak has created for her. But she is so sick of his egoism. Roses is not the solution. She wants a divorce.

30. EXT – AVIATION GRAVEYARD – NIGHT

Rostagno and Piper investigate a tip in the scary aviation graveyard in the desert, until she realizes that Rostagno has lured her into a date with dinner under the stars, served by a butler. They dance close to the edge risking falling down. Romance in the air.

31. EXT – BOROWIAK’S HOUSE/UNIVERSITY/DIBLEY’S HOUSE – DAY

Rostagno’s car follows Borowiak’s car – which follows Dibley’s car…

32. EXT – SUNFLOWER FIELD – DAY

Borowiak lures Rostagno in a soil pit he can’t get out of when Rostagno pursues Borowiak by foot. Rostagno fears for his life. Borowiak tells Rostagno the solution to the riddle about how the sailors disappeared according to the tall tale. Or were the sailors forced to jump into the water by someone else threatening them? Rostagno responds: Just like Sand was forced to jump into his pool with the sinking rucksack? Borowiak agrees: Interesting coincidence. He adds: The one of us who is careless/sloppy… loses. Borowiak rescues Rostagno out of the pit and disappears.

33. EXT/INT – AIRPORTS – DAY

Rostagno chases Borowiak to the airport, boarding the same flight – he thinks – but it’s the wrong flight. Borowiak NY, Rostagno LA.

34. INT – POLICE STATION – DAY

Rostagno tells Piper that Borowiak more or less admitted he is the killer when he used a soil pit and told the story about a boat where the crew disappeared. We have to find what ship Borowiak refers to.

35. INT – NEW YORK POLICE BUILDING – DAY

Borowiak steals a police badge in the police locker room in New York pretending to be a carpenter.

36. INT – NEW YORK CAFÉ – DAY

Borowiak googles Rostagno. A wedding picture shows that Piper is Rostagno’s ex-wife. But Borowiak is interested in who is the best man.

37. INT – PIPER’S HOUSE – DAY

Lunch date. Piper says that she wanted to date Rostagno earlier, but she thought it was better if Rostagno could solve the murders first, getting his confidence back. She wants Rostagno to become strong again, being able to be loved, and stop punishing himself for what happened in New York. She has tested him while evaluating her feelings, but now she believes in him. They kiss for the first time since they were married. Rostagno in heaven.

38. INT – NEW YORK POLICE BUILDING – DAY

Borowiak interviews Rostagno’s best friend while the computer shows him being wanted for police badge theft. Borowiak says that Rostagno is investigated in a triple murder case. He learns that a headhunter has called the friend asking questions about Rostagno some years ago when Rostagno applied for a police job that Rostagno said he never applied for. Rostagno’s biggest fear being a loser.

Why did Piper divorce him? According to Rostagno he didn’t become the star she wanted him to be. The only reason Rostagno became a cop was because of Piper. He was completely obsessed with her. Piper would never have married Rostagno if she knew that.

Why would Rostagno be considered a loser if he was the one who caught NYSK? Rostagno thought it wasn’t his merit. Their psychologist profiled NYSK and the colleague he shot found NYSK.

Why was Rostagno fired from NYPD? Borowiak says the police psychologist wrote a statement after Rostagno shot his colleague, saying that Rostagno should continue working as before. So there has to be another reason. Could Rostagno have shot his colleague deliberately? Because of corruption, competition or jealousy? Borowiak learns that Rostagno was back in New York just after they met in the university library. Why? Rostagno’s friend asks if Piper could be in danger?

39. INT – PIPER’S HOUSE – DAY

Piper, in bed with Rostagno, gets a call from Rostagno’s best friend telling her about Rostagno. With both of them naked, she brings her gun out. Is Rostagno a psychopathic killer? Rostagno defends himself with just declaring his love for her. He says that this is evidence against Borowiak if he tries to set Rostagno up looking like Rostagno is the killer. Piper wonders what really happened between Rostagno and Borowiak in New York?

40. INT – NEW YORK POLICE HEADQUARTERS – DAY

Borowiak finds Rostagno’s file at the Internal Affairs office. He is shocked when he looks at the brain scan with Rostagno’s name on it. He can also see that someone has looked at the file a week after they met in the library. Borowiak searches by his own name and finds another brain scan confirming his fear. The search also warns about Borowiak being wanted for triple murder. He escapes the police building with cops looking for him.

41. INT – BOROWIAK’S HOUSE – DAY

House search by FBI. Microphones found. Plus small bottles with colored sand. Four bottles missing?

42. EXT/INT – BRONX – DAY

Borowiak buys a gun from the threatening Bronx mafia. Teenagers teach him to shoot.

43. EXT – JFK – DAY

The FBI agents arrive in New York to investigate, now that Borowiak is in NY.

44. INT/EXT – MULTIPLE LOCATIONS – DAY

Borowiak calls his wife Carmel from NY knowing that FBI and Rostagno listens to their conversation.

Borowiak says that he has misplaced their brain scans. Rostagno was scanned because of the splits he might have gotten in his head during the shootings when they caught NYSK. At the same time Borowiak scanned his own brain in his research work. He saw that he had the brain of a psychopath. In shock he must have mixed their scans. Borowiak’s brain scan ended up in Rostagno’s file when Borowiak as the police psychologist investigated Rostagno’s psychological status after the shootings.

NYPD has then seen “Rostagno’s scan” and fired him without telling him about the scan since that would have been illegal as a reason to fire someone. But Rostagno went to New York after we met in the library. He got hold of his file, discovering the real reason for him being fired. Therefore, he accuses me of lying to him when I told him he was alright and could continue to work. Borowiak realizes he is responsible for Rostagno losing his career and marriage, giving Rostagno motive to set him up and kill psychopaths to get his career and wife back.

Rostagno has for eleven months wrongfully been thinking that he has the brain of a psychopath. How does that affect a human being? You play the role you are given. Borowiak knows how affected he himself has been knowing that he has the brain of a psychopath. It is quite difficult even for a psychopath if you’re looking for the truth, even though psychopaths don’t care. But not even a psychopath wants to be called a psychopath, or especially not psychopaths. Being a psychopath always ends in darkness, sooner or later, more or less, just like revenge. Borowiak fears he could be violent, even though he has never in his life hit anyone. The reason for Borowiak’s “depression” has been his fear of Carmel knowing she is married to a psychopath. Now that she has decided to divorce him, he can admit the truth. He begs her to take him back.

Carmel notes that the killer has bugged them and mapped their whole lives in setting up Borowiak. She is scared. She wishes Borowiak never kidnapped that carpenter. But Borowiak claims that the roof leak and finding the microphones might have been their salvation, since Rostagno couldn’t plan for that. Scared Borowiak tells her this could be the last time they talk.

45. INT – POLICE STATION – DAY

Rostagno defends himself by explaining that this is Borowiak’s plan to set him up. Rostagno is relieved he doesn’t have the brain of a psychopath, but he feels betrayed by Piper when he learns that she never told him that she knew about the brain scan. That’s why she divorced him?

She demands him to stop pursuing Borowiak now that Rostagno has a motive. He can’t be involved in this case anymore.

46. EXT – DESERT – DAY

Carmel calls the headhunter that made her move from NY to the desert. She finds out there has never been a firm or a name like that. The headhunter seems to never have existed. Carmel leaves her cell phone in the desert to be sure no one can follow her or listen to her conversations. But first she texts the dumb librarian that she won’t come back to the library until after they’ve closed. No one can reach her on her phone from now on. Librarian responds with happy emoji.

47. EXT – HAMPTON HOUSE – EVENING

WILL GRAEBNER comes home, only to be directed under gun threat to the soil pit dug for his new swimming pool by someone in a motorcycle helmet with a distorted voice. He lies down in the pit together with today’s newspaper, as directed. He is buried under all the soil from the truck.

48. INT – FBI OFFICE NEW YORK – DAY

Photos from the Hampton soil incident. One photo shows the newspaper – dated 1999. The fourth element killing already took place 22 years ago? FBI discovers that Carmel was one of the witnesses the police talked to about possible scenarios of the accident. Carmel worked for Graebner in his house 1999, cleaning. Is Borowiak’s wife involved in the murders? They find out that Carmel’s father died mysteriously on a Greenpeace ship just the way Borowiak told Rostagno. Graebner, a true psychopath, was the chairman of the board in the bank financing the oil project that Greenpeace protested against. The same bank financing the university. The bank used a security company owned by the first explosion victim Moreno. Could this desert town with no crimes be the epicenter of evil?

49. INT – POLICE STATION/UNIVERSITY LIBRARY – DAY

Rostagno calls the library to see if Carmel is there. The dumb librarian texts to the other librarian taking the call, that she will be here at closing time.

50. INT – FBI OFFICE NEW YORK – DAY

FBI in NY discusses which one of them is the killer setting the other one up? Borowiak or Rostagno? If Rostagno knew about the soil accident and Carmel working for Graebner, Rostagno could use that to set up Borowiak. If the FBI can find out all of this about the Borowiak family, Rostagno could too. It doesn’t matter if Graebner was an accident or a murder. The only thing that matters is how it looks now with the three murders today.

One of the agents conclude that for the first time in his career he feels scared. If a killer sets up this whole climate Greenpeace terrorist façade just to get personal revenge, then the world has really gone mad. Is that how egotistical we all are? We don’t give a damn when it comes to the crunch.

The real key is why Borowiak moved to the desert after Rostagno moved there. It can’t be a coincidence. The killer must be behind that. The only common denominator is NYSK who Borowiak profiled and Rostagno caught. That’s the only two times they met, when Borowiak offered his profiling and when Borowiak investigated Rostagno’s psychological status after the shootings.

51. EXT – DESERT AIRPORT – DAY

Disguised Borowiak arrives at the desert airport, goes to Fedex and picks up his package with the gun in it. Does anyone of Rostagno’s airport tipsters see him?

52. INT – UNIVERSITY LIBRARY – EVENING

The librarian is about to close the library main entrance when Rostagno enters, leaving Dwight outside in the police car watching who might arrive.

Rostagno sees the librarian going into Carmel’s office space, placing four sand bottles in her cupboard. Rostagno hides in the closet. Is the dumb librarian involved in some way?

Rostagno texts Piper about the sand found on the murder scenes. Was there any colored sand around the soil pit in 1999? No, nothing in the reports about that. But yellow (fire) sand found at the explosion, blue (air) sand in the car with the gas, and green (water) sand in Sand’s pool.

Someone cuts Styrofoam with Borowiak’s knife.

Carmel comes to get her computer and picture of her dad that she has moved from their house to her office. Rostagno hides in the closet again, but he forgets his phone on the desk when he puts back the examined sand into the bottle. She sees the phone, but decides to not touch it, leaving it there.

53. EXT/INT – POLICE CAR/UNIVERSITY LIBRARY – EVENING

Borowiak kidnaps Piper to make Rostagno confess in her presence. They drive to the library in her police car.

Borowiak calls the library from Piper’s police phone. The librarian picks the phone up wondering who calls the library after closing, but he can’t answer with his voice. Borowiak understands it is the dumb librarian, so he asks him to text to this number if his wife is in the building. Librarian texts that Borowiak’s wife is here. It seems everyone will be in the library soon.

54. INT – UNIVERSITY LIBRARY – EVENING

Rostagno goes to the librarian’s office space and looks at his tennis rackets. He realizes where he has seen that forehand before…

In his shock a scared Rostagno backs away, dropping his phone in the dark while texting to bring in the task force. The librarian enters. Rostagno hides with his gun. The librarian sees the vibrating phone on the floor when Dwight outside in the car texts and calls. He takes it, reads Rostagno’s unsent message, and texts that Rostagno is coming soon. Now Rostagno is also without a phone.

55. EXT – PARKING LOT – EVENING

After cutting the library telephone line, the librarian goes out and kill Dwight with Borowiak’s knife, takes the gun, police radio and cell phone from Dwight. And fills the victim’s blood in a bottle.

56. INT – FBI OFFICE NEW YORK – EVENING

FBI watches the interview that Borowiak did with NYSK after he was prisoned. We learn that NYSK didn’t want to kill his hated mother. He wanted her to suffer, knowing her son was a serial killer hating her. Only if she would be a threat to his freedom, he would kill her. Besides, he doesn’t want to kill anyone where he could be a natural suspect. It’s all about not getting caught, not making mistakes. The mother was ashamed that her son got caught, being prisoned, not ashamed of his killings. NYSK says Rostagno is the only one hitting him, except his mother. “You were just lucky to catch me.” NYSK asks Borowiak a lot of questions: “It’s my time profiling you now.” Borowiak asks about the killings. NYSK describes one of them:

57. EXT – NEIGHBORHOOD – DAY

A young mother with a baby in a baby carriage talks on her cell phone while watching the smoke from Manhattan. Two airplanes have crashed into World Trade Center. She is on her way home to watch the news. But she is attacked by NYSK who brutally kills her, cutting off her head, smashing the head against the wall in rage. NYSK leaves the unaware baby in this sunlit idyllic neighborhood.

58. INT – UNIVERSITY LIBRARY – EVENING

Rostagno looks for both Carmel and the librarian with his gun ready. Borowiak and Piper enters the library from the backdoor.

Borowiak and Rostagno sneaks up on each other in the dark library. Carmel sneaks up and hits Rostagno’s hand with the frame of her father’s picture. His gun goes off. Borowiak reacts by shooting towards Rostagno in the dark, but the bullet hits his wife.

Carmel confesses to Borowiak that she researched her father’s death, taking the cleaning job at Graebner’s house to see if a natural accidental situation would occur. She killed Graebner in the soil pit 1999 since he was the one deciding the Greenpeace crew should drown, but she hasn’t killed anyone else. Borowiak shocked that his non-psychopathic wife has killed someone. She says her “headhunter” must be the killer. She dies. Devastated Borowiak handcuffs himself to his dead wife, screaming “I want you to kill me. You won.”

Rostagno tells Borowiak about the librarians forehand that Rostagno saw in New York without him knowing that… The dumb librarian is NYSK with a new face, the one setting them both up. Borowiak realizes the librarian stole the books to make them meet in his library. He could be up in the library lift.

Rostagno finds the librarian/NYSK looking dead in the library lift with a knife in his bleeding stomach and close to his mouth on the floor lies Dwight’s gun. Although Rostagno is careful, the librarian/NYSK overpowers him. He says he can now kill Rostagno with Borowiak’s knife and kill Borowiak with Rostagno’s gun. Rostagno pushes the button to make the lift go up in the air.

Borowiak lies handcuffed with his dead wife without the key, blaming himself, devastated. He can’t escape from the librarian/NYSK now.

Borowiak carries his dead wife between the bookshelves to surprise the librarian/NYSK when the lift comes down to the floor, shoots the librarian/NYSK, saving Rostagno’s life.

Borowiak and Rostagno are even. They outsmarted and overpowered NYSK as a team. Rostagno gets his self-respect and wife back. The meticulous truth-seeker Borowiak who is always right and never sloppy learns the truth, not only being wrong about Rostagno, his wife and the villain, but also learning the truth about himself. He is not the person he thought he was.

[Ola Höglund]

Ola Höglund’s Thriller plot

What I learned is that this model can make the outline look like the midpoint and second turning point arrives at the wrong page/scene number. Act 3 with shorter scenes and more revelations looks longer in the outline than in the screenplay.

STRUCTURE OVERVIEW

OPENING:

Borowiak notices that Rostagno tries to avoid him in the library where they watch each other and sneak around between the bookshelves like two spies. Why? What happened in New York between them? Is it only a coincidence that they both have moved to this desert town?

BOROWIAK’S INCITING INCIDENT:

Mentally “dead” Borowiak has to deal with the roof leak at the same time he loses his book contract and have to pay back his advance that is gone.

ROSTAGNO’S INCITING INCIDENT:

Disrespected Rostagno has to investigate an explosion with the town’s most influential businessman blown up in pieces. Is he murdered? Suicide? Accident?

TURNING POINT 1:

Borowiak is interrogated by Rostagno about the carpenter kidnapping. Borowiak becomes a murder suspect with Rostagno investigating him from now on.

MIDPOINT:

Borowiak finds microphones in his damaged kitchen while “not listening” to his wife’s work problem. Evidence Rostagno tries to set him up? His focus on the microphones instead of her, leads to his wife deciding to divorce him.

TURNING POINT 2:

Borowiak finds out about his mistake mixing up his own and Rostagno’s brain scans causing Rostagno’s loss of career and marriage, giving Rostagno motive to set him up and kill psychopaths to get his career and wife back.

CLIMAX:

A: Borowiak accidentally kills his wife, learning that she has killed her father’s killer. Devastated, in damnation, he wants the villain to kill him.

B: But he saves Rostagno’s life by killing the villain, after Rostagno finally has solved who the real killer is.

RESOLUTION:

Now Borowiak and Rostagno are even. At the end they outsmart and overpower the villain as a team. Rostagno gets his self respect and wife back. Truth-seeker Borowiak learns the truth, not only being wrong about Rostagno, his wife and the real villain, but also learning the truth about himself. He is not the person he thought he was.

STRUCTURE SCENES

OPENING:

1. Borowiak doesn’t let Rostagno avoid him in the university library.

MAIN MYSTERY 1. Why is Rostagno avoiding Borowiak in the library?

2. The librarian/villain listens to Borowiak’s and Rostagno’s conversation in the library about Borowiak’s book project “Changing a psychopath”. They mention the New York Serial Killer (NYSK) that they caught in NY without knowing he is very close in the library.

VILLAIN’S PLAN 1. Make Borowiak and Rostagno bump into each other in the university library where the Villain works as a dumb librarian with a new plastic surgery face. The librarian has stolen the books that Borowiak borrowed to write his controversial articles about how psychopathic our digital society has become criticizing the psychopaths in power. The librarian also is the one discovering that the books are gone. Rostagno investigates the stolen books, interviewing Borowiak’s wife who works as the chief librarian.

3. Ten months later. Borowiak lies still in his bed naked. Is he dead? Crosscut with police sirens in the desert. But Borowiak is only “mentally dead”. Borowiak’s wife calls it depression but Borowiak says he is not depressed.

ROSTAGNO’S INCITING INCIDENT:

4. Rostagno investigates the crime scene where the town’s most influential businessman has been blown up in pieces. Could there be more bombs exploding in the hangar?

MAIN MYSTERY 2A. Is the explosion an accident, suicide or homicide?

VILLAIN’S PLAN 2. First accident/suicide. Explosion. The victim owns different companies within oil, dynamite, security, aviation. (The security team that made the Greenpeace crew drown worked for his security company, but we will not find out about that until act 3.)

BOROWIAK’S INCITING INCIDENT:

5. Borowiak has to pay back the money he got in advance when he can’t write the book he was supposed to write. Money gone. Is he losing it? (His secret is that he is scared his wife will leave him if she finds out that he has the brain of a psychopath, but we will not find out about his secret until act 3.) Borowiak also has to deal with carpenters due to the roof leak and damage caused by damp. Not good for his mental health.

6. Rostagnos boss (who we will find out later is also his ex-wife) tells Rostagno’s police partner that Rostagno caught NYSK, the killer with the scary nickname you don’t want to say. The respect for Rostagno changes completely knowing how dangerous and brutal NYSK was/is.

7. Rostagno investigates the murder scene where the second victim is found dead in her car in her garage.

MAIN MYSTERY 2B. Who is the killer and why are the victims killed?

VILLAIN’S PLAN 3. Second accident/suicide. Gas. The victim being a researcher in the environmental chemistry industry.

8. Borowiak walks down the stairs in his home during skyfall checking out the sound from the kitchen. Is there someone in his house? No, it’s just the provisional roof blowing away – or?

9. Borowiak kidnaps the carpenter responsible for the roof leak, risking being prisoned.

TURNING POINT 1:

10. Borowiak is interrogated by Rostagno about the carpenter kidnapping. The interrogation develops into a conversation about the killings and about psychopaths with Borowiak unwilling to help Rostagno with the profiling. Due to his odd answers Borowiak becomes a murder suspect with Rostagno investigating him from now on.

MAIN MYSTERY 3. Is Borowiak the killer?

VILLAIN’S PLAN 4. The villain hopes that Rostagno will contact Borowiak about profiling, but instead Rostagno has to interrogate Borowiak about the kidnapping. A bonus or problem for the villain? Both.

11. Borowiak and his wife talks about her father being killed this day 25 years ago. (She is scared her secret will be revealed, but we and Borowiak don’t know that yet.)

12. Borowiak is stalked by Rostagno when he drives to a bar. Borowiak tells some basketball players about NYSK. They don’t want to listen since they are afraid of nightmares.

13. A newspaper publisher goes to meet an informer at the bar Borowiak visits. The publisher is found dead in his pool looking like the “pool” in Borowiak’s kitchen after the skyfall.

VILLAIN’S PLAN 5. Third accident/suicide. Water. The villain calls the publisher to meet an anonymous informer at the same bar Borowiak eats at with Rostagno watching Borowiak from the Pizza hut opposite the bar.

14. FBI enters the scene on Rostagno’s initiative. He wants to prove himself to the FBI as well. They start with the three autopsies. But why is Rostagno’s boss reluctant to bringing in FBI?

15. Borowiak reads about the murders in the newspaper while oiling his knife. A hand takes Borowiak’s knife.

VILLAIN’S PLAN 6. Steals Borowiak’s knife to use it if he needs to.

16. Borowiak’s wife is humiliated in the library by her psychopathic university research boss. Gets support from the librarian/villain pretending being on her side.

17. Rostagno risks his reputation in front of FBI when he launches Borowiak as the prime suspect.

18. Rostagno and FBI raid a profiled suspect’s house. Very close Rostagno is shot by his police partner (just like Rostagno shot his partner in NY).

19. Rostagno watches the research boss and the librarian play tennis while waiting to ask the boss about the suspect they have. Where has he seen that special forehand technique before?

Rostagno’s partner asks at the tennis club if Rostagno is afraid of NYSK coming back, when the librarian listens from the table next to them. We learn that NYSK escaped prison during his mother’s funeral with the help of a small gun in the dead mother’s vagina. (The mother was ashamed that her son got caught, not ashamed of his killings as long as he was not caught. She took her life facing a cancer verdict, leaving a special legacy.)

20. Rostagno risks his reputation in front of FBI when he interrogates a suspect in a tough manner, with Rostagno’s self-hate cracking out between the lines.

21. The university research boss scares the shit out of Borowiak’s wife in the library.

MIDPOINT:

22. Borowiak finds the surveillance microphones in his damaged kitchen while “not listening” to his wife’s work problem. Evidence he is set up. Only Rostagno could do this?

23. Borowiak tells the flower shop to send flowers to his wife every birthday after he has died. As if he will die soon.

24. Borowiak’s wife wants a divorce when she doesn’t get his attention due to the setup.

25. Rostagno and his boss/ex-wife investigates a tip at night in the aviation graveyard in the desert, scary environment, until she and we realize that Rostagno has lured her into a date with dinner under the stars with a butler. They dance close to the edge risking falling down.

26. Borowiak lures Rostagno in a soil pit he can’t get out of when Rostagno pursues Borowiak. Rostagno fears for his life, but Borowiak rescues him.

MAIN MYSTERY 3B. Is Rostagno right about suspecting Borowiak being the “element killer”?

27. Rostagno chases Borowiak to the airport, boarding the same flight – he thinks – but it’s the wrong flight. Borowiak NY, Rostagno LA.

28. Rostagno is overpowered by the bus driver when he’s complaining about the AC.

29. Borowiak steals a police badge in the police locker room in NY pretending to be a carpenter.

30. Borowiak interviews Rostagno’s best friend while the computer shows him being wanted for triple murder. He learns that a headhunter (Villain) has called the friend asking questions about Rostagno some years ago. We learn that Rostagno’s boss is his ex-wife. No one at the police station knows that secret.

31. Rostagno’s ex-wife learns (in bed with Rostagno) from Rostagno’s best friend that Rostagno stalked her before they became a couple. She brings her gun out when they are both naked. Is he a psychopathic killer? Rostagno defends himself with just declaring his love for her.

TURNING POINT 2:

32. Borowiak finds Rostagno’s file at the Internal Affairs office, shocked that he has misplaced their brain scans. Borowiak realizes he is responsible for Rostagno losing his career and marriage, giving Rostagno motive to set him up and kill psychopaths to get his career and wife back. Rostagno has for ten months been thinking that he has the brain of a psychopath.

MAIN MYSTERY 4. Is Rostagno the killer?

33. Wanted Borowiak escapes the police building with cops looking for him.

34. FBI finds the sand bottles searching Borowiak’s house, with four colors missing. FBI also finds the surveillance microphones, confronting Rostagno who says he has not put them there.

35. Borowiak tries to buy a gun from the Bronx mafia threatening him.

36. Borowiak phones his wife from New York knowing that FBI listens to their conversation. Borowiak tells everything about Rostagno and about himself being a psychopath according to the brain scans.

37. Rostagno defends himself by explaining that this is Borowiak’s plan to set him up. Rostagno is relieved he doesn’t have the brain of a psychopath, but he feels betrayed by his ex-wife when he learns that she never told him that she knew about the brain scan. That’s why she divorced him? She demands him to stop pursuing Borowiak now that Rostagno has a motive.

38. Borowiak’s wife realizes after the phone call from Borowiak that someone knows about her past. Rostagno? She leaves her cell phone in the desert to be sure no one can follow her or listen to her conversations. But first she texts the librarian/villain that she won’t come back to the library until after they’ve closed. Villain responds with glad emoji.

39. We see the soil pit murder in NY 25 years ago, but we can’t see under the motorcycle helmet who the killer is, and we don’t understand that it’s 25 years ago until the end of the scene, as if it was a present murder taking place.

40. FBI, now in NY, finds out about the soil pit accident long ago, discovering Borowiak’s wife was one of the witnesses the police talked to about possible scenarios of the accident.

MAIN MYSTERY 5. Is Borowiak’s wife involved in the murders?

41. Rostagno calls the library to see if Borowiak’s wife is there. Villain texts to the other librarian taking the call, that she will be here at closing time.

42. FBI in NY discusses which one of them is the killer setting the other one up? Borowiak or Rostagno?

43. Disguised Borowiak arrives at the desert airport, goes to Fedex and picks up his package with the gun in it. Does anyone of Rostagno’s airport tipsters see him?

44. The librarian/villain closes the library for the night knowing that Rostagno has just entered the library with Borowiak’s wife on her way there.

45. Rostagno sees the librarian going into Borowiak’s wife’s office space, placing four sand bottles in her cupboard. Rostagno hides in the closet.

MAIN MYSTERY 6. Is the dumb librarian the killer?

VILLAIN’S PLAN 7. He plants the four missing sand bottles in Borowiak’s wife’s office cabinet when he knows Rostagno is looking for Borowiak’s wife in the library. Rostagno finds them there.

46. Rostagno texts his boss/ex-wife about the sand found on the murder scenes. Was there any colored sand around the soil pit 25 years ago? No, nothing in the reports about that.

47. Someone cuts Styrofoam with Borowiak’s knife.

48. Borowiak’s wife goes to the library to get her work computer and picture of her dad, scared that someone has or will connect the dots about her killing. Rostagno hides in the closet again, but his phone is left on the desk when he puts back the examined sand into the bottle. She sees the phone, but decides to not touch it, leaving it there.

49. Borowiak kidnaps Rostagno’s boss/ex-wife to make Rostagno confess in her presence. They drive to the library in her police car.

50. Borowiak calls the library from her police phone. The villain picks the phone up wondering who calls the library after closing, but he can’t answer with his voice. Borowiak understands it is the dumb librarian, so he asks him to text to this number if his wife is in the building. Villain texts that Borowiak’s wife is here. Now the villain knows everyone will be in the library.

51. Rostagno goes to the librarian’s office space and sees his tennis rackets, and now he realizes where he has seen that forehand before… The librarian is NYSK with a new face.

52. In his shock a scared Rostagno backs away, dropping his phone in the dark while texting to bring in the task force. The librarian enters. Rostagno hides with his gun ready. The librarian sees the quiet but vibrating phone on the floor when the policeman outside in the car texts and calls. He takes it and texts that Rostagno is coming soon. (Rostagno also without a phone now.)

53. The librarian cuts the library telephone line, goes out and kill the policeman with Borowiak’s knife, takes the gun, police radio and cell phone from the policeman. And fills the victim’s blood in a bottle.

VILLAIN’S PLAN 8. Kills Rostagno’s police partner with Borowiak’s knife when he realizes that Rostagno has understood who the real killer is.

54. FBI watches the interview that Borowiak did with NYSK after he was prisoned. We learn why NYSK didn’t want to kill his hated mother (subtext: why he doesn’t want to kill Borowiak and Rostagno unless they are a threat to his freedom). Borowiak asks about the killings. NYSK starts talking:

55. We see one of the killings from NYSK, very brutal rage. This is an evil animal we are dealing with.

MAIN MYSTERY 7. Is the NY serial killer caught by Borowiak and Rostagno behind the setup?

56. Rostagno looks for both Borowiak’s wife and the librarian/villain with his gun ready. Borowiak and Rostagno’s boss/ex-wife enters the library from the backdoor.

CLIMAX A:

57. Borowiak and Rostagno sneaks up on each other in the dark library. Borowiak’s wife sneaks up and hits Rostagno’s hand with the frame of her father’s picture. His gun goes off. Borowiak reacts by shooting towards Rostagno in the dark, but the bullet hits his wife.

58. Borowiak’s wife confesses that she killed her father’s killer in the soil pit. Borowiak shocked that his non-psychopathic wife has killed someone. She dies. Devastated Borowiak handcuffs himself to his dead wife, screaming “I want you to kill me. You won.”

59. Rostagno tells Borowiak about the librarians forehand… He is NYSK with the name you don’t want to say. Borowiak thinks NYSK could be up in the library lift.

CLIMAX B:

60. Rostagno finds the librarian looking dead in the library lift with a knife in his bleeding stomach and close to his mouth on the floor lies the policeman’s gun. Although Rostagno is careful, the librarian overpowers him. Rostagno pushes the button to make the lift go up in the air.

VILLAIN’S PLAN 9. Uses the blood, knife and gun to overpower Rostagno. He can now kill Rostagno with Borowiak’s knife and kill Borowiak with Rostagno’s gun.

61. Borowiak lies handcuffed with his dead wife without the key, blaming himself, devastated. He can’t escape from the villain now.

62. Borowiak carries his dead wife between the bookshelves to surprise the villain when the lift comes down to the floor, shoots the villain, saving Rostagno’s life.

RESOLUTION:

Now Borowiak and Rostagno are even. At the end they outsmart and overpower the villain as a team. Rostagno gets his self respect and wife back. Truth-seeker Borowiak learns the truth, not only being wrong about Rostagno, his wife and the real villain, but also learning the truth about himself. He is not the person he thought he was.

[Ola Höglund]

Ola Höglund’s Life Threatening Sequence

What I learned is

actually it is some kind of real or false danger in almost every scene, even the ones that is about love and marriages. The only dangers on the list that this story doesn’t have is “Thugs or professionals hired to hurt them” and “Other parties who want the villain dead”. So this assignment was a good test. Maybe I’ve misunderstood the assignment since my list is so long? I learn once again it’s not easy to write everything in short sentences. The more time you have, the shorter you can write.

VILLAIN’S PLAN

Revenge. He wants Borowiak to be prisoned like he was. He wants to prove that Rostagno was just lucky in catching him. This time Rostagno will catch the wrong guy. He wants them both to suffer, not die. But if they are on to him, he has to kill them, preferably making it look like they killed each other.

DANGER SEQUENCE

1. Rostagno wants to avoid Borowiak, but Borowiak doesn’t let him avoid him. Rostagno could lose his new job or reputation if Borowiak, as the police psychologist, was the one responsible for firing him in NY. Rostagno don’t want to be reminded of what happened in NY when he shot a colleague chasing the New York Serial Killer (NYSK).

2. The librarian/villain listens to Borowiak’s and Rostagno’s conversation in the library. They mention NYSK without knowing he is very close.

3. Borowiak lies still in his bed naked. Is he dead? Crosscut with police sirens in the desert. (This is 10 months later than their library meeting. Borowiak starts his journey here by being “mentally dead”.)

4. Rostagno investigates the murder scene where the first victim is blown up in pieces. Could there be more bombs exploding in the hangar?

5. Borowiak loses the money he got in advance when he can’t write the book he was supposed to write about psychopaths. Is he losing it? (His secret is that he is scared his wife will leave him if she finds out that he has the brain of a psychopath.) Borowiak also has to deal with carpenters due to the damage caused by damp. Not good for his mental health.

6. Rostagnos boss/ex-wife tells Rostagno’s police partner that Rostagno caught the New York Serial Killer (NYSK) with the scary nickname you don’t want to say. The respect for Rostagno changes completely knowing how dangerous and brutal NYSK was/is.

7. Rostagno investigates the murder scene where the second victim is found dead in her car in her garage.

8. Borowiak walks down the stairs during the skyfall checking out what the sound is from the kitchen. Is there a killer in his house? No, it’s just the provisional roof blowing away – or?

9. Borowiak kidnaps the carpenter responsible for the roof leak, risking being prisoned.

10. Rostagno interrogates Borowiak who risks being jailed. Is Borowiak also the killer?

11. Borowiak and his wife talks about her father being killed 25 years ago. She is scared her secret will be revealed, but we don’t know that yet.

12. Borowiak is stalked by Rostagno when he drives to a bar. Borowiak tells some basketball players about NYSK. They don’t want to listen since they are afraid of nightmares.

13. Newspaper publisher goes to meet an informer at the bar Borowiak visits. The publisher is found dead in his pool looking like the “pool” in Borowiak’s kitchen after the skyfall.

14. FBI enters the scene on Rostagno’s initiative. He wants to prove himself to the FBI as well. They start with the three autopsies.

15. A hand takes Borowiak’s knife.

16. Borowiak’s wife is humiliated in the library by her psychopathic university research boss. Gets support from the librarian/villain pretending being on her side.

17. Rostagno risks his reputation in front of FBI when he launches his murder theory about Borowiak.

18. Rostagno and FBI raid a profiled suspect’s house. Very close Rostagno is shot by his police partner (just like Rostagno shot his partner in NY).

19. Rostagno watches the research boss and the librarian play tennis while waiting to ask the boss about the suspect they have. Where has he seen that special forehand technique before?

Rostagno’s partner asks at the tennis club if Rostagno is afraid of NYSK coming back, when the librarian listens from the table next to them. We learn that NYSK escaped prison during his mother’s funeral with the help of a small gun in the dead mother’s vagina. (The mother was ashamed that her son got caught. She took her life facing a cancer verdict, leaving a special legacy.)

20. Rostagno risks his reputation in front of FBI when he interrogates a suspect in a tough manner, with Rostagno’s self-hate cracking out between the lines.

21. The university research boss scares the shit out of Borowiak’s wife in the library.

22. Borowiak finds the surveillance microphones in his kitchen. Evidence he is set up.

23. Borowiak tells the flower shop to send flowers to his wife every birthday after he has died. As if he will die soon.

24. Borowiak’s wife wants a divorce when she doesn’t get his attention due to the setup.

25. Rostagno and his boss/ex-wife investigates a tip at night in the aviation graveyard in the desert, scary environment, until she and we realize that Rostagno has lured her into a date with dinner under the stars with a butler. They dance close to the edge risking falling down.

26. Borowiak lures Rostagno in a pit he can’t get out of when Rostagno pursues Borowiak. Rostagno fears for his life, but Borowiak rescues him.

27. Rostagno chases Borowiak to the airport, boarding the same flight – he thinks – but it’s the wrong flight. Borowiak NY, Rostagno LA.

28. Rostagno is overpowered by the bus driver when he’s complaining about the AC.

29. Borowiak steals a police badge in the police locker room in NY pretending to be a carpenter.

30. Borowiak interviews Rostagno’s best friend while the computer shows him being wanted for triple murder. He learns that a headhunter (Villain) has called the friend asking questions about Rostagno some years ago. (We learn that Rostagno’s boss is his ex-wife. No one at the police station knows that secret.)

31. Rostagno’s ex-wife learns (in bed with Rostagno) from Rostagno’s best friend that Rostagno stalked her before they became a couple. She brings her gun out when they are both naked. Is he a psychopathic killer? Rostagno defends himself with just declaring his love for her.

32. Borowiak finds Rostagno’s file at the Internal Affairs office, shocked that he has misplaced their brain scans. He is responsible for Rostagno losing his career and marriage. This is evidence why Rostagno wants to set him up.

33. Wanted Borowiak escapes the police building with cops looking for him.

34. FBI finds the sand bottles searching Borowiak’s house. FBI also finds the microphones, confronting Rostagno who says he has not put them there.

35. Borowiak tries to buy a gun from the Bronx mafia threatening him.

36. Borowiak phones his wife from New York knowing that FBI listens to their conversation. Borowiak tells everything about Rostagno and about himself being a psychopath according to the brain scans. Rostagno is relieved he doesn’t have the brain of a psychopath. He also tries to explain that this is Borowiak’s plan to set him up.

37. Rostagno feels betrayed by his ex-wife when he learns that she never told him that she knew about the brain scan showing him to have the brain of a psychopath. That’s why she divorced him? She demands him to stop pursuing Borowiak now that Rostagno has a motive.

38. Borowiak’s wife realizes that someone knows about her past. Rostagno? She leaves her cell phone in the desert to be sure no one can follow her or listen to her conversations. But first she texts the librarian/villain that she won’t come back to the library until after they’ve closed. Villain responds with glad emoji.

39. We see the soil pit murder in NY 25 years ago, but we can’t see under the motorcycle helmet who the killer is, and we don’t understand that it’s 25 years ago until the end of the scene, as if it was a present murder taking place.

40. FBI now in NY finds out about the soil pit accident long ago, discovering Borowiak’s wife was one of the witnesses the police talked to about possible scenarios of the accident.

41. Rostagno calls the library to see if Borowiak’s wife is there. Villain texts to the other librarian taking the call, that she will be here at closing time.

42. FBI in NY discusses which one of them is the killer setting the other one up? Borowiak or Rostagno?

43. Disguised Borowiak arrives at the desert airport, goes to Fedex and picks up his package with the gun in it. Does anyone of Rostagno’s airport tipsters see him?

44. The librarian/villain closes the library for the night knowing that Rostagno has just entered the library with Borowiak’s wife on her way there.

45. Rostagno sees the librarian going into Borowiak’s wife’s office space, placing four sand bottles in her cupboard. Rostagno hides in the closet.

46. Rostagno texts his boss/ex-wife about the sand found on the murder scenes. Was there any colored sand around the soilpit 25 years ago? No, nothing in the reports about that.

47. Someone cuts Styrofoam with Borowiak’s knife.

48. Borowiak’s wife goes to the library to get her work computer and picture of her dad, scared that someone has or will connect the dots about her killing. Rostagno hides in the closet again, but his phone is left on the desk when he puts back the examined sand into the bottle. She sees the phone, but decides to not touch it, leaving it there.

49. Borowiak kidnaps Rostagno’s boss/ex-wife to make Rostagno confess in her presence. They drive to the library in her police car.

50. Borowiak calls the library from her police phone. The villain picks the phone up wondering who calls the library after closing, but he can’t answer with his voice. Borowiak understands it is the dumb librarian, so he asks him to text to this number if his wife is in the building. Villain texts that Borowiak’s wife is here. Now the villain knows everyone will be in the library.

51. Rostagno goes to the librarian’s office space and sees his rackets, and now he realizes where he has seen that forehand before… The librarian is NYSK with a new face.

52. In his shock a scared Rostagno backs away, dropping his phone in the dark while texting to bring in the task force. The librarian enters. Rostagno hides with his gun ready. The librarian sees the phone on the floor when the policeman outside in the car texts. He takes it and texts that Rostagno is coming soon. Rostagno also without a phone now.

53. The librarian cuts the library telephone line, goes out and kill the policeman with Borowiak’s knife, takes the gun, police radio and cell phone from the policeman. And fills his blood in a bottle.

54. FBI watches the interview that Borowiak did with NYSK after he was prisoned. We learn why NYSK didn’t want to kill his hated mother (subtext: why he doesn’t want to kill Borowiak and Rostagno). Borowiak asks about the killings. NYSK starts talking:

55. We see one of the killings from NYSK, very brutal rage. This is an evil animal we are dealing with.

56. Rostagno looks for Borowiak’s wife and for the librarian/villain with his gun ready.

Borowiak and Rostagno’s boss/ex-wife enters the library from the backdoor.

57. Borowiak and Rostagno sneaks up on each other in the dark library. Borowiak’s wife sneaks up and hits Rostagno’s hand with the frame of her father’s picture. His gun goes off. Borowiak reacts by shooting towards Rostagno in the dark, but the bullet hits his wife.

58. Borowiak’s wife confesses that she killed her father’s killer in the soilpit. Borowiak shocked that his non-psychopathic wife has killed someone. She dies.

59. Rostagno tells Borowiak about the librarians forehand… He is NYSK with the name you don’t want to say. Borowiak thinks NYSK could be up in the library lift.

60. Rostagno finds the librarian looking dead in the library lift with a knife in his bleeding stomach and close to his mouth on the floor lies the policeman’s gun. Although Rostagno is careful, the librarian overpowers him. Rostagno pushes the button to make the lift go up in the air.

61. Borowiak lies handcuffed with his dead wife without the key, blaming himself, devastated. He can’t escape from the villain now.

62. Borowiak carries his dead wife between the bookshelves to surprise the villain when the lift comes down to the floor, shoots the villain, saving Rostagno’s life.

[Ola Höglund]

Ola Höglund’s mystery sequence

What I learned is

that maybe my structure is too complicated. My story has two protagonists who are each other’s antagonists, similar to “Heat” where we root for both DeNiro and Pacino. Or similar to a romcom. Who is the main protagonist in “Heat”? Who is the main protagonist in my story?

Since Borowiak is the one most subject to setup he is in my book the main protagonist who in the end kills the villain and saves Rostagno’s life after accidentally killing his wife who he loves. He has most screen time.

But Rostagno is the one acting on the first mystery, both the mystery between the two of them, and the first accident/homocide. Rostagno is also the one realizing who the villain is, telling Borowiak that.

So the question is: Can I break the rules, as long as the audience has a character who immediately tries to solve the first mystery? Can Borowiak and Rostagno be like a team in the end where one of them realizes who the villain is, and the other one kills the villain?

(Not sure about the difference between question 2 and 4 in this assignment.)

1. VILLAINS BIG SECRET

The villain is the killer who sets up Borowiak as revenge.

2. MAIN MYSTERIES

Why is Rostagno avoiding Borowiak in the library?

Who is the “element killer” and why are the victims killed?

Is Borowiak the killer, or who is setting him up and why?

Is Rostagno right about suspecting Borowiak or is Rostagno the killer himself?

Is Borowiak’s wife involved in the murders?

Is the NY serial killer that was caught by Borowiak and Rostagno behind the setup?

Is the dumb librarian the killer?

3. FIRST MYSTERY

BOROWIAK’S FIRST RED HERRING MYSTERY that he does NOT act on:

Why is Rostagno avoiding him in the library?

ROSTAGNO’S FIRST RED HERRING MYSTERY that he acts on OFF screen:

He goes to NY to find out if Borowiak recommended the police to fire him. (We get to know that at plot point 2 making Rostagno a suspect.)

BOROWIAK’S FIRST MYSTERY to act on:

Is someone setting him up? Who? Why?

(That happens gradually from the interrogation scene about the kidnapping of the carpenter. Plot point 1)

ROSTAGNO’s FIRST MYSTERY to act on:

Is the first accident a homicide or not? He wants to prove himself to his boss/ex-wife, hoping it’s a homicide in a town where there have been no homicides for many years.

4-5. SEQUENCE & MYSTERY CHAINS

1. Who is the “element killer” and why are the victims killed?

Business mogul found blown up in his hangar with door locked from the inside.

Researcher in the environmental chemistry industry found dead from gas in garage.

Newspaper publisher found drowned in his pool with things floating around like they did in Borowiak’s “kitchen pool”.

Autopsies confirm murders.

Motives are discussed from a “Greenpeace terrorist” perspective.

2. Is Rostagno right about suspecting Borowiak or is Rostagno the killer? RED HERRING

Rostagno asks Borowiak about the murders during kidnap interrogation. Borowiak answers in a way that attracts his attention.

The drowned publisher was to meet an informer at the bar Borowiak visited that night. Rostagno saw Borowiak at the bar when he was following him.

Rostagno launches his theory about why Borowiak is the killer, knowing about the stolen books and Borowiak’s articles.

Borowiak lurks Rostagno in a pit he can’t get out of (when Rostagno pursues Borowiak) to show Rostagno that he is on to him trying to set him up, but Rostagno perceives that as the evidence that Borowiak is the killer.

Borowiak learns in New York that Rostagno got fired, he finds Rostagnos internal affairs file and realizes that he is the cause of Rostagno losing his career and marriage. To Borowiak that is evidence for Rostagno trying to set him up.

Rostagno tries to explain that this is Borowiaks plan to set him up.

Borowiak phones his wife from New York knowing that FBI listens to their conversation. Borowiak tells everything about Rostagno and about himself being a psychopath according to the brain scans.

FBI goes to NY focusing their attention entirely on Borowiak and Rostagno. FBI finds out about the soilpit accident 25 years ago with Borowiak’s wife as one of the witnesses.

Rostagno wants to talk to Borowiak’s wife about the accident, going to the library.

Borowiak’s wife goes to the library to get her work computer and photo of her dad, scared that someone has or will connect the dots about her killing.

Borowiak kidnaps Rostagno’s boss/ex-wife to make Rostagno confess in her presence.

Borowiak and Rostagno sneaks up on each other in the library. Borowiak’s wife sneaks up and hits Rostagno’s hand. His gun goes off. Borowiak reacts by shooting towards Rostagno in the dark, but the bullit hits his wife.

Borowiak’s wife confesses that she killed her father’s killer in the soilpit. Borowiak shocked that his non-psychopathic wife has killed someone. She dies.

3. Is the NY serial killer that was caught by Borowiak and Rostagno behind the setup?

New York Serial Killer (NYSK) is mentioned in the first scene between Borowiak and Rostagno while we see the librarian in the background.

Rostagno’s boss/ex-wife tells Rostagno’s partner that Rostagno is the one who caught NYSK. The reaction from the policemen says it all. The worst devil. Suddenly they respect Rostagno.

Borowiak tells some basketball players in a bar about NYSK. They don’t want him to talk about that since they are afraid of nightmares.

Rostagno sees the librarian play tennis. Rostagno’s partner asks if Rostagno is afraid of NYSK coming back? We learn that NYSK escaped prison during his mother’s funeral.

Rostagno tells his partner about a mother. His own mother or NYSK’s mother?

FBI watches the interview that Borowiak did with NYSK after he was prisoned. We learn why NYSK didn’t want to kill his hated mother (subtext: why he doesn’t want to kill Borowiak and Rostagno).

Rostagno realizes where he has seen that signature forehand before… NYSK doesn’t know Rostagno saw him play tennis when they chased him in NY.

4. Is the dumb librarian the killer?

The librarian stole the books to make Borowiak and Rostagno bump in to each other.

The librarian helps Borowiak’s wife with her computer.

The suspect that FBI finds tells them about how his job changed when the librarian started working there.

The librarian closes the library for the night knowing that Rostagno has just entered the library with Borowiak and Borowiak’s wife separately on their way there.

Rostagno sees the librarian going into Borowiak’s wife’s office space, placing four sand bottles in her cupboard.

Rostagno goes to the librarian’s office space and sees his rackets, and now he realizes where he has seen that forehand before… The librarian is NYSK with a new face.

In his shock a scared Rostagno backs away, dropping his phone in the dark while texting to bring in the task force. The librarian comes. Rostagno hides with his gun ready. The librarian sees the phone on the floor when the policeman outside in the car texts. He takes it.

The librarian goes out and kill the policeman with Borowiak’s knife.

Rostagno finds the librarian looking dead in the library lift with a knife in his bleeding stomach. Although Rostagno is careful, the librarian overpowers him.

Borowiak lies handcuffed with his dead wife without the key, blaming himself, devastated. He can’t escape from the villain now.

Borowiak carries his dead wife between the book shelves to surprise the villain when the lift comes down to the floor, shoots the villain, saving Rostagno’s life.

[Ola Höglund]

Ola Höglund’s Villain has a great plan!

What I learned is that it is delicate to balance what is according to the villain’s plan and what is happening that the villain couldn’t know would happen. The villain sometimes has to improvise and I have to show/tell the audience somewhere in the story when it’s planned and when it’s improvised. Otherwise I could lose the audience’s trust. I changed a few things in my story thanks to this assignment. Very rewarding.

1. GOAL

He wants Borowiak to be prisoned like he was. He wants to prove that Rostagno was just lucky in catching him. This time Rostagno will catch the wrong guy. He wants them both to suffer, not die.

This psychopath is all about prestige and having this project to feed from. Now it’s his time to profile Borowiak. He only kills them both if there is a risk getting caught. If so, he wants to make it look like they killed each other.

If he would just kill Borowiak and Rostagno separately as soon as he can, he would automatically be on the suspect list and he can’t risk revealing his new identity after all the work creating it. He wants to show himself, his dead mother, and them, that he can get away with murdering people this time. That’s his pleasure. Pure evil.

2. HOW TO ACCOMPLISH THE GOAL

Make sure both Rostagno and Borowiak end up living in the same town (the key being Borowiak’s wife) where he can control them in a better way than in New York.

Frame Borowiak for the element murders with Rostagno suspecting him.

Use their personalities knowing that Borowiak is always curious to find the truth, knowing Rostagno wants to impress his ex-wife and prove he is capable of catching the element killer.

Use all the information the villain has gathered through research and spyware since he moved back to the US from Mexico with a new plastic surgery face, pretending to be dumb as the new librarian.

3. COVER UP

Do the element murders in a complete different way than his previous violent killings. (The way Borowiak’s wife did it 25 years ago when she killed her fathers’s killer, making it look like an accident. The villain can’t know that she actually killed him, but he has connected the dots. Even if she didn’t do it, it will now look as if she or Borowiak did it.)

Chose victims from the perspective of Borowiak and Borowiak’s wife and wife’s father – the Greenpeace captain. As if the killer has a message to the world. But the villain is just making that up to hide his true revenge scheme. He not only knows about Borowiak’s wife and how her Greenpeace father died. He also knows that Borowiak has written articles about how psychopathic our society has become. That’s why all the victims are psychopaths of power.

The villain has also left a trace on each murder scene, a little bit of sand in different colors that he has taken from Borowiak’s house where Borowiak is trying to make a real mandala like the monks in Bhutan. Another “statement clue”.

(How the villain can know everything about the characters is revealed through the investigations and discussions of the two FBI agents when they consider Rostagno being the possible killer setting up Borowiak. If Rostagno could know and plan all this, then also the real villain could do that.)

4. SEQUENCE

1. Make Borowiak and Rostagno bump in to each other in the university library where the Villain works as a librarian. The villain has stolen the books that Borowiak borrowed to write his debate articles. He also discovers the books are gone. Rostagno investigates stolen books, interviewing Borowiak’s wife who works as the chief librarian.

2. First accident. Explosion. The victim being one of the towns richest and most important persons who own different companies within oil, dynamite, security, aviation. The security team that made the Greenpeace crew drown worked for his security company.

3. Second accident/suicide. Gas. The victim being a researcher in the environmental chemistry industry.

4. The villain hopes that Rostagno will contact Borowiak about profiling, but instead Rostagno has to interrogate Borowiak when Borowiak kidnaps the carpenter who hasn’t done his job with their roof, causing a flood in the kitchen after the greatest skyfall in the towns history. A bonus or problem for the villain?

5. Third accident. Water. The victim being the publisher of important newspaper. The villain calls the publisher to meet an anonymous informer at the same bar Borowiak eats at with Rostagno watching Borowiak from the Pizza hut opposite the bar. The next morning the publisher is found dead in his pool looking like the “skyfall pool” in Borowiak’s kitchen.

6. Steals Borowiak’s knife to use it if he needs to.

7. Plants the sand bottles in Borowiak’s wife’s office cabinet when he knows Rostagno is looking for Borowiak’s wife in the library. Rostagno finds them there.

8. Kills Rostagno’s police partner with Borowiak’s knife when he realizes that Rostagno has understood who the real killer is. Fills a bottle with the victim’s blood. Takes his gun.

9. Uses the blood, knife and gun to overpower Rostagno. He can now kill Rostagno with Borowiak’s knife and kill Borowiak with Rostagno’s gun.

[Ola Höglund]

Ola Höglund’s BI Stacking Suspense

What I learned doing this assignment is that

It is great to have these checkpoints for every scene you write. I also need these examples to differ intrigue from mystery and suspense which I still have to think about every time I analyze which is which. Many years ago I studied Basic Instinct, Silence of the lambs, Seven, The Fugitive, LA Confidential and Heat. I wrote down what every scene was about, but I didn’t do it this way with the MIS-model.

Ola Höglund’s SOTL Stacking Suspense

I learned that I could not go through with formulating every scene in SOTL because I just started thinking of my own story all the time. So it helps my story enormously, but I’ve given up trying to accomplish this assignment before deadline. I have to use my time for the next assignment, so I don’t fall behind again.

I also learn a lot from all the other students’ comments. Sorry I’m not giving back right now. It would have been great if we all could share our SOTL charts to see the different ways we fill it in.

[Ola Höglund]

Ola Höglund’s world and characters

What I learned doing this assignment is

that both psychiatrist Borowiak and detective Rostagno can be seen as the hero and each other’s red herring. Must Borowiak, in addition to killing the villain and save Rostagno’s life, also be the one who realize that the librarian is the serial killer before Rostagno realize that, to make Borowiak a true hero? Or can Rostagno get the credit for revealing the librarian to win his ex-wife back? I also learned that I have a hard time formulating the intrigue.

Concept:

A psychiatry researcher and a detective suspect each other of being “the element killer”, with both claiming to be subject to a setup, while trying to save their marriages in this university town of the desert where all the research money and psychopaths of power gather.

Mystery:

Who is the “element killer” and why are the victims killed?

Intrigue:

A convicted serial killer takes revenge by setting up Borowiak and Rostagno against each other after mapping and manipulating their lives, including their wives’ lives.

Suspense:

Will Borowiak be killed by Rostagno? Will Borowiak kill Rostagno? Will Borowiak and/or Rostagno be killed by the real murderer? Will their wives be killed?

Intriguing world:

Our new digitally monitored world that has become more psychopathic than the psychopaths controlling not only this “Silicon Valley moves to Palm Springs-university”, but the whole market.

Hero:

Psychiatrist BOROWIAK

Mystery:

Is he the killer or who is setting him up and why?

Intrigue:

While doing all he can to win the psychopathic game the killer plays, Borowiak finds out the truth not only about Rostagno, the killer and his wife’s past, but himself too. After scanning his own brain finding out that he has the brain of a psychopath, Borowiak fears losing his wife, fears becoming violent, fears being sloppy. At the end the meticulous truth seeker Borowiak has first lost his wife before telling her the truth about his behavior, then accidentally killed his wife, and even he can be sloppy mixing the brain scans so that Rostagno loses his career and wife.

Suspense:

Will he be killed by Rostagno? By the real killer? Can he win back his wife who is tired of his behavior?

Red Herring:

Detective ROSTAGNO

Mystery:

Is he right about suspecting Borowiak or is he the serial killer himself?

Intrigue:

He has found out the real reason why he got fired in NY, now wrongfully believing he has the brain of a psychopath. Therefore, he doesn’t trust Borowiak and he fears Borowiak will ruin his new detective career in the desert as well if his ex-wife who is also the police chief finds out about the brain scan. He is obsessed with Borowiak and that increases when too many things point in the direction of Borowiak as the element killer. He fears being a loser.

Suspense:

Will he solve the element murders and get his self-respect back? Will he get his ex-wife back?

Villain:

THE LIBRARIAN – Americas worst serial killer in 20 years with too dark nickname to say

Mystery:

What happened when he got caught in New York by Rostagno with the help of Borowiak’s profiling? What is his plan? Why does he kill in a completely different way now than he did before?

Intrigue:

He has undergone plastic surgery and waited for a long time to execute the perfect plan to let Borowiak and Rostagno destroy each other. The key to bring them on a collision course has been Borowiak’s wife who has a dark past with her father being killed on a Greenpeace mission. She has no idea that the headhunter who phoned her in NY and recruited her to this desert town is the same dumb man who works in the library. He taps their phones and homes, research and manipulates their lives. He will make it look like Borowiak and Rostagno has killed each other.

Suspense:

Will he succeed in his plan?

Hero’s supporting character:

Borowiak’s wife

Mystery:

Why did she change jobs and move from NY to this desert town? What happened when her father, the captain of a Greenpeace ship, died during a mission?

Intrigue:

It turns out that she 25 years ago killed the man who gave order to kill her father. She made it look like an accident, ironically by chance looking like “the accident” that happened to her father. And now the killer uses that background in his killings to frame Borowiak, making all the murders look like accidents or suicides committed by a “Greenpeace terrorist”. Even a complete non-psychopathic person like Borowiak’s wife can kill someone.

Suspense:

Will she be killed?

Red Herring’s supporting character:

Rostagno’s ex-wife, the new police chief of the university desert town

Mystery:

Why did she move from NY to this desert town? Why doesn’t she want FBI to help them solve the murders when Rostagno suggests that?

Intrigue:

She secretly knows about Rostagno’s brain scan showing him having the brain of a psychopath. Can she trust Rostagno now that she has given him a second chance as a detective? Is she prepared to take him back as a husband? She tests him to evaluate her feelings. Her biggest fear is that Rostagno is dangerous. She also fears losing her job in this town where psychopaths control her destiny giving her the chance to become police chief when she didn’t get that chance in NY.

Suspense:

Will she be killed?

[Ola Höglund]

What I learned doing this assignment is that everything in my story sounds like clichés and maybe the whole story is too complicated. I also question if this plot works concerning who we root for.

Logline:

A psychiatry researcher and a detective suspect each other of being “the element killer”, with both claiming to be subject to a setup, while trying to save their marriages in this university town of the desert where all the research money and psychopaths of power gather.

Unwitting but resourceful hero:

BOROWIAK. The psychiatry researcher and ex NYPD psychologist. The meticulous Borowiak’s big mistake is that he has in shock misplaced his own brain scan, showing the brain of a psychopath, so that the internal police in NY think that the scan belongs to detective ROSTAGNO who they therefore fire. Rostagno later finds out about the scan and wrongfully thinks that he has the brain of a psychopath. At PP2 Borowiak realizes that he has mixed his scan with Rostagnos scan, believing this is the key to why Rostagno pursues him and sets him up, since Rostagno has lost his career and wife because of that.

Dangerous Villain:

Americas worst serial killer in the last 20 years with the NICKNAME no one wants to say. Caught 15 years ago in New York by detective Rostagno with the help of Borowiak’s profiling. Escaped prison during his mother’s funeral 10 years ago. Plastic surgery in Mexico. He now wants revenge setting up both Borowiak and Rostagno against each other so that he can’t get caught this time. They don’t recognize his new face and he pretends he is dumb working in the university library, where also Borowiak’s wife now works.

High stakes:

Borowiak and Rostagno risk being killed by each other, or killed by the serial killer. They both risk losing the woman they love, and the women they love risk being killed too.

Life and death situations:

When Borowiak lurks Rostagno in a pit he can’t get out of when Rostagno pursues Borowiak.

When Rostagno raid a suspect’s house.

When Borowiak is chased by the police inside the NYPD internal affairs office.

When Borowiak wants to buy a gun from the Bronx mafia.

When Borowiak kidnaps the city police chief who is Rostagno’s ex-wife and love interest.

When Borowiak accidentally kills his wife while mistakenly shooting at Rostagno.

When Borowiak and Rostagno realize at the final showdown in the university library that they are both up against the serial killer they once caught.

This story is thrilling because we don’t know who the killer is until the end. Borowiak? Rostagno? Or someone else? We don’t know why these victims are killed in the way they are killed with each “suicide” connected with fire, air, water and earth. We don’t know why Borowiak and Rostagno has such a tensed relationship when they happen to meet in the university library in the first scene. Why did Rostagno try to avoid meeting Borowiak when Rostagno saw him in the library? They and we wonder why they have both moved to the same desert town, or rather why both Rostagno’s ex-wife and Borowiak’s wife have moved there? We are afraid the real killer will kill Borowiak or Rostagno or their wives (wife/ex-wife).

Mystery:

Who is the “element killer” and why are the victims killed?

Intrigue:

A convicted serial killer takes revenge by setting up Borowiak and Rostagno against each other after mapping and manipulating their lives, including their wives’ lives.

Suspense:

Will Borowiak be killed by Rostagno? Will Borowiak kill Rostagno? Will Borowiak and/or Rostagno be killed by the real murderer? Will their wives be killed?

[Ola Höglund]

Ola Höglund

I AGREE to the terms of this release form:

GROUP RELEASE FORM

As a member of this group, I agree to the following:

1. That I will keep the processes, strategies, teleconferences, communications, lessons, and models of the class confidential, and that I will NOT share any of this program either privately, with a group, posting online, writing articles, through video or computer programming, or in any other way that would make those processes, teleconferences, communications, lessons, and models of the class available to anyone who is not a member of this class.

2. That each writer’s work here is copyrighted and that writer is the sole owner of that work. That includes this program which is copyrighted by Hal Croasmun. I acknowledge that submission of an idea to this group constitutes a claim of and the recognition of ownership of that idea.

I will keep the other writer’s ideas and writing confidential and will not share this information with anyone without the express written permission of the writer/owner. I will not market or even discuss this information with anyone outside this group.

3. I also understand that many stories and ideas are similar and/or have common themes and from time to time, two or more people can independently and simultaneously generate the same concept or movie idea.

4. If I have an idea that is the same as or very similar to another group member’s idea, I’ll immediately contact Hal and present proof that I had this idea prior to the beginning of the class. If Hal deems them to be the same idea or close enough to cause harm to either party, he’ll request both parties to present another concept for the class.

5. If you don’t present proof to Hal that you have the same idea as another person, you agree that all ideas presented to this group are the sole ownership of the person who presented them and you will not write or market another group member’s ideas.

6. Finally, I agree not to bring suit against anyone in this group for any reason, unless they use a substantial portion of my copyrighted work in a manner that is public and/or that prevents me from marketing my script by shopping it to production companies, agents, managers, actors, networks, studios or any other entertainment industry organizations or people.

This completes the Group Release Form for the class.

[Ola Höglund]

The Fugitive

What I learned doing this assignment is why this movie is so thrilling. See below.

Unwitting but resourceful hero: Dr Richard Kimble who has no idea he is subject to a setup

Dangerous villain: Kimbles friend/colleague who wants to make money from the new drug, and the one armed man the main villain hires to kill Kimbles wife

High stakes: Kimble is innocently sentenced to death penalty/life time prison for killing his wife.

Life and death situations: sentenced, bus crash, waterfall jump, Gerard shoots at Kimble, train fight with one armed killer, climax fight with main villain

This movie is thrilling because the protagonist is an innocent subject to a setup and he tries to escape the police chasing him constantly and thoroughly at the same time he is trying to solve who set him up and why.

Mystery: Who set Kimble up and why?

Intrigue: Kimble must disappear so he can’t stop the new drug the villain will make big money from.

Suspense: Will Kimble be free and find his wifes killer?

Both Kimble and Gerard are very good at their job, both very determined to win the battle, prepared to do anything (Gerard shooting, Kimble jumping waterfall). We like both of them, so we do not want anyone of them to die/lose, even if we don’t want Gerrard to catch Kimble. Also very efficient pacing with cutting between Kimble’s and Gerard’s scenes with no actual subplot.

[Ola Höglund]

Hi everyone,

1. Ola Höglund

2. Around hundred episodes in different Swedish tv series and three screenplays I hope to sell.

3. I hope to learn how to make my thriller story work.

4. Sweden’s biggest tennis nerd.

[Ola Höglund]

Hi Melanie! Would you like to exchange feedback with me? Here is my email if you want to send your latest version in word: hoglund.ola@telia.com

All the best from Ola Höglund

[Ola Höglund]

Jeff Bryce. I have emailed you my new outline and copied yours. Email me the new logline if it’s not in this version.

[Ola Höglund]

Jeff Bryce. Would you like to exchange feedback on our next versions? I’m exchanging with Jeff Gunther this version.

hoglund.ola@telia.com

• This reply was modified 3 years, 10 months ago by  Ola Höglund.

[Ola Höglund]

Great Jeff. Email me your outline in Word. I will change a couple of things in my outline tomorrow Monday.

hoglund.ola@telia.com

[Ola Höglund]

James, do you want to exchange feedback?

Here is my email if needed: hoglund.ola@telia.com

[Ola Höglund]

Hi John. Would you like to exchange feedback?

[Ola Höglund]

James, would you like to exchange feedback?

[Ola Höglund]

Thank you James! And I like your story. The brain scan is something that a neuroscientist did in real life, finding out that he had the brain of a psychopath. He thought that he had mixed the scans when he saw his own scan, but he didn’t mix any scans. So then I thought what would happen if he had actually mixed the scans…