[Warren Goldstein]

Day 5 LESSON 5 High Concepts and Elevator Pitches Assignment 2022-06-15 Friends in High Places

What I learned doing this assignment: To make the pitch concise, straightforward, and to offer interest so to attract talent and a sellable profitable genre.

1. The big picture explanation of your lead character’s journey is:

Based on certain true people and events a clairvoyant college student must allow a former Cognitive Research Lab scientist now professor use his “gift” to alter “memories of the future” to stop a murder, changing his mother-in-law’s fate, but makes his wife become the predicted victim instead protected by his unseen spiritual Friends in High Places.

2. How can you tell it in the most interesting way possible?

Dilemma – A clairvoyant alters pending visions of “memories of
the future” to stop the murder of his mother-in-law to change her lethal fate
but by doing so causes his wife instead now to become the envisioned
victim.<div>

<b style=”font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit;”>Main
Conflict – What if a clairvoyant changing
his mother-in-law’s lethal fate of getting murdered by a serial killer results
in having his wife instead become the envisioned victim?

<div><div>

What’s
at stake? If a clairvoyant is able to
stop his mother-in-law’s envisioned serial killer murder will it then
cause his wife to die instead?

Goal/Unique
Opposition How can a clairvoyant stop his
mother-in-law’s envisioned murder without making his wife become the
victim instead?

3. Using the 10 Components of Marketability, what is your Elevator Pitch?

Based on certain true events, a clairvoyant college student allows a former Cognitive Research Lab scientist use of his “gift” to alter “memories of the future” to prove his theory, “cause does not have to precede effect”, changing fate, preempting a murder, but instead his wife becomes the envisioned victim while protected by his unseen spiritual Friends in High Places.

Or,

“Dreamscape” (1984 – Kevin Bacon) meets “Zodiac” (2007 Jake Gyllenhaal) meets “Back to the Future” (1985 Michael J. Fox) meets “Somewhere in Time” (1980 Christopher Reeve).

4. Answer the question “What I learned doing this assignment is…?” and put it at the top of your work.

</div></div></div>

• This reply was modified 2 years, 11 months ago by  Warren Goldstein. Reason: needed to add known flicks meeting one another

[Warren Goldstein]

Day 13 LESSON 13 Misdirecting Your audience 2022-05-21 Friends in High Places

What I learned is that one of the big keys to misdirection is to use it sparingly.

I realized the importance of having a red herring in the story which I did not realize the importance of this before so added it in. It made all the difference in the world to keep the suspense and intrigue! Thanks.

It keeps our minds looking one way while the real clues are being presented.

The “Reality” that is a cover-up for each mystery.

1. The Villain has a secret.

2. He or she covers that secret with a lie or scheme.

3. That lie or scheme is presented to the audience as the truth or reality before we even suspect it.

The Villain’s plan

The Villain has a plan to accomplish some goal that they’re willing to kill to achieve. The chaplain’s plan is get even with socialite rich women without suspect upon himself. The plan and goal are hidden in an underhanded way. He is a man of the cloth and uses scripture to cover his deceitful acts of murder while pointing his finger as to Satan as the real “accuser”. The plan is devious and dangerous to anyone who gets in the way. The chaplain will do anything so no to be identified which is after he learns that a rake he has used to bury his victims has been missing and learns it has blood on it and it is in the garage of Warren’s in-laws and that Warren has had a vision of his mother-in-law being strangled in their garage.

Red Herring Character

1) This character is scheming for some reason other than the crime that is being investigated.

a) It is Lieutenant Bono who is envious that a young female has scored number one in the sergeant’s test and has been forced upon him to take her in his precinct and to use her.

b) He is a sexist and it is more important that she fail in solving the Socialite Strangler case than actually capturing the killer.

2) So they act and react as if they are hiding something.

a) Bono acts trying to be dominant above Detective Sue Hart in front of another man, the chaplain. He interrupts her speaking about the case to show he has dominance and more experience than some young woman. He says to the chaplain not realizing she’s in listening distance that he’s giving her more rope.

b) Then in another later scene complains to the chaplain alone that he isn’t happy the case hasn’t been solved by him and discredits Hart’s efforts when the chaplain asks for Warren’s number. He tells the chaplain it’s in protocol to give out Warren’s number because as a chaplain he has a badge. Most apparently, he wants the chaplain if he happened to learn something from Warren by doing this to not share it with Hart, and to get directly back to him, not her.

c) Bono realizing he can’t figure out the case intentionally turns the whole case over to Hart expecting her to take it on and fail as well.

d) In the denouement Bono’s attitude remains even though he no longer is a suspect after the chaplain having been shot having threatened to murder six people as witnesses to this in Warren’s in-laws’ garage. Bono tries to find flaws in proving the Chaplain is the Socialite Strangler.

Many clues point to their guilt. We believe they are guilty. It is not until we discover the real thing they are hiding that we realize they didn’t commit the crime. Only at the end we see that it’s just that Bono is a sexist asshole, not a murderer to his benefit!

FOURTH FORM OF
MISDIRECTION — WRITER MISDIRECTION

These are things that don’t fit into the previous categories that the writer deliberately adds to create misdirection. There are lots of ways to do this, but here are a few that will get you started.

CLUE MISDIRECTION

Misinterpreted clue.

Hart
seems more focused on the tear in the blanket missing concern of the blood
stain on the blanket, after all it was killing. The medical examiner gets
her back on track by presenting that the blood type of that blood on the
blanket doesn’t belong to the victim.
It was strangulation, no blood.

Clue that sends us to another potential Red Herring.

The
medical examiner makes note of the hyoid bone in the neck being crushed so
expertly and this killer definitely had military and or martial arts
training. Hart mentions all cops have some martial arts training but not
intended to kill. Perhaps she should rather be looking as a priority only
people with military training not focusing on cops only.

CHARACTER MISDIRECTION

A character we don’t believe who turns out to be telling the truth.

Warren
appears to the cops as someone who is just fanciful his admonitions not to
be trusted and they shine him off.
He doesn’t even get to give any details of his vision because both
Bono and Hart won’t take a report, no murder, no body, no investigation,
no report. It makes the viewer think perhaps Warren’s vision might be more
of his imagination and his own trepidation that a killer is in the
neighborhood where his wife to be is staying, at her parents. We see in
the end how Warren’s visions all made sense.

Characters jumping to conclusions.

Warren
comes up with a scenario as to why the killer wants to break into his
in-laws’ garage to get his rake back to avoid it being evidence as to his
identity.

Characters intentions are misunderstood.

Chaplain
doesn’t understand why Warren can’t share this vision of his mother-in-law
being strangled with his wife..

Character presented as one thing, but turns out to be another.

Obviously the chaplain is the first because he is a person of the cloth but ends up being the killer. The other is Bono who we dislike because he is a sexist but in the end is just an asshole.

[Warren Goldstein]

Day 12 LESSON 12 – Engaging Clue Trails 2022-05-19 Friends in High Places

What I learned is that:

We want the audience to be trying to solve the mysteries that the Hero is up against

A CLUE is anything that serves to guide or direct the audience toward the solution of a problem.

A clue has us think into the future of the script and try to solve the puzzle. A reveal could be the actual solution or it could have us understand something that has already happened

A clue could be something that feels insignificant in the moment, but becomes more important later.

<b style=”font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit;”>ASSIGNMENT

1) List out the three or four main mysteries in your story.

a) Who is the Socialite Strangler

2) Create a list of clues for each of the main mysteries in your story.

a) Only strangles rich single women.

b) Women died quickly, possible martial arts training

c) Bodies are buried in relatively close proximity to each other.

d) Bodies are wrapped in blankets sealed with duct tape.

e) Puncture holes in duct tape and tears in the blanket on victim #2

3) Decide which clues you want to use and sequence those into clue trails for each mystery.

4) Add the clue trails to your Thriller Map.

5) Give us the latest version of your Thriller Map.

Next clue: Professor’s class topic teachings.

1) List out the three or four main mysteries in your story.

a) Why does the Professor want to find a psychic to use to prove his theory, “cause does not have to precede effect”?

2) Create a list of clues for each of the main mysteries in your story.

a) Tells his class that he has been stopped in his tracks using his retro-intention to experiment and be his thesis for his doctorate.

b) Tests the class to find if anyone there is psychic.

Clue #2 Chaplain taking interest in Warren

1) List out the three or four main mysteries in your story.

a) Why is the chaplain taking particular interest in Warren’s psychic abilities”?

2) Create a list of clues for each of the main mysteries in your story.

a) Begins by trying to discredit Warren having visions as being against religious doctrine quoting various scriptures to scare Warren to stop. Accusation made

b) Appears to change his mind and invites Warren to come down to the precinct to talk with him. Things that have one meaning to help Warren when first heard, but the meaning turns out to be different when he questions Warren about the vision and what else he has seen.

c) Relates to Warren he has been a detective and Warren’s theory about the rake being left in his mother-in-law’s garage seems too unbelievable as to be the motive of the killer to end up killing his mother-in-law. The chaplain’s background as a detective becomes foreground to advise Warren which is used to milk Warren to find out if he has seen the face of the killer.

d) Clues that show up before we even know the mystery, the rake. Finding out what happened to his rake.

e)

[Warren Goldstein]

Day 11 LESSON 11 – Creating Demands for Reveals 2022-05-17 Assignment 2022-06-14

REVEAL: Something under the surface is discovered or brought to our attention in a dramatic way.

Something covered up.
Demand is created for us to
discover it (shown through mystery,
intrigue, or suspense).
Revealed
in a dramatic way that something which is being covered up.

create reveals by working backwards. Start with the reveal, then the cover up, and finally how you will create demand

1) What is the reveal? either a secret or some key piece of information or truth that changes our perspective on the story.

a) The biggest reveal occurs at the end of the story in that the Chaplain is the serial killer.

2) How did it get covered up? by presenting a different “reality” previously in the story

a) It got covered up because no one would suspect a man of the cloth to be a killer.

b) He was the chaplain for the Metro Police department where crime fighting takes place.

3) What M.I.S. was used to create demand to know the truth? Strangulation murders were continuing throughout the story, at least now six victims. The demand is to know who is doing this.

a) The mystery as to who is doing the murders continues throughout every scene involving the police until the end when the answer to this BIG mystery is revealed.

i) Why is there no molestation or rape of his victims? Answered afterwards post mortem because of the Chaplain’s anger against socialite women.

ii) Why no apparent sexual motive? Motive was different.

iii) How is it that the killer is able to get away without leaving any clues for the police to lead to his identity being unmasked? Because he was previously a detective he knew what could be discovered and avoided leaving such clues, going against the typical characteristics of a serial killer and being aware of the ongoing investigation having access to the police files.

b) Intrigue as the murders are being hidden, being done underhanded. Concealing his motive.

c) Suspense because death was continuing to be threatening to upper scale single women in the northwest area of Las Vegas.

4) When you reveal the truth, it must have dramatic impact

a) The truth is revealed dramatically with killer confronting Warren, Jodi, Sid, Irene, a cab driver, and Patty the security guard. Detective Hart in the denouement is able to answer all of the mysteries through police investigation of his past.

1) What is the reveal? The rake held the DNA blood evidence and which is found on the blanket as well which is to match which there is only circumstantial evidence for police at the time of the Chaplain being killed but only the viewer has seen how the blood on the rate got on to the blanket.

2) How did it get covered up?

a) The body with the blanket had been buried.

b) Detective didn’t notice it on the photos, only the tears in the blanket, but the other plain clothes officer brought it up for Hart to send in samples of the blood stain on the blanket for the lab.

c) The blood on the blanket hadn’t been analyzed as to blood type by the lab yet but the tears had been examined to reveal metal and holes in duct tape were small mentioning it could have been caused by a rake.

d) The medical examiner at the morgue got the results of the blood typing before Hart revealing blood type of victim and on the blanket didn’t match. No blood of victim because it was a strangulation.

e) The police have no idea about the rake until the end mystifying Bono and Hart. But now with Chaplain’s corpse it requires ongoing further lab work to compare the Chaplain’s blood type and DNA to that of the blanket and that found on the rake being able to match the two.

f) Bono as the red herring and Hart finding out his blood type evidently after Hart sends his old soiled bandage to the lab showing it to be the same as that as on the blanket intentionally isn’t revealed until almost the end before the Chaplain appears as the killer showing up at the in-laws’ garage. This was to enhance the suspense of the life threatening situation by the expectation that we were going to find out it was Bono as the killer. Great switch!

3) What M.I.S. was used to create demand to know the truth?

a) Mystery?

i) Whose blood is on the blanket?

ii) Who will discover this?

iii) Is this enough evidence to pin the murder on a person with this blood type?

b) Intrigue

i) The other police Detective notices the blood on the blanket not Hart

ii) Blood on the blanket was determined as AB negative, while the victim’s blood type was O negative

iii) This blood type mismatch with the victim had to be confirmed by the crime lab.

iv) The medical examiner in the morgue gets the results to which he first informs Detective Hart that there is a mismatch of the blood types.

v) Detective Hart proceeds to secretly submit Bono’s bandage to eliminate him as a suspect but when she privately learns he has the same blood type as found on the blanket he becomes a suspect because type AB negative is one in every hundred people.

vi) Lieutenant Bono happens to have blood type AB negative revealed only almost before the killer (the Chaplain) confronts the hero in his in-laws’ garage making the viewer believe he is the killer.

vii) Bono has had martial arts training as a cop, part of the killer’s profile.

viii) Bono has been divorced possible profile requirement with someone possibly having resentment against rich women.

ix) Bono has a domestic violence notation on in his file although dismissed.

x) Bono is a sexist making such belittling women.

xi) Bono appears wanting to not have Detective Hart solve the case because he had been forced to take her on because she rated number one in the department sergeant test against his own preference.

c) Suspense is that

i) If it is Bono, then he has police access to files which he can hide if there are any evidentiary clues pointing to him and the killer won’t get identified while the viewer won’t trust Bono’s actions which don’t seem sincere enough and he would be a vicious person to take down.

ii) Bono has made sly comments to Hart about why he doesn’t kill because he believes he would get caught. His comments appear on the surface to be threatening.

4) Dramatic impact –

a) This lets the viewer know that this will be a determining clue that can indict the killer to the murders.

b) There must be the other evidence of his blood on the rake which tore the blanket but will that rake be found by the police or will it be retrieved rather by the killer to remove that proof needed.

1) What is the reveal? Irene will “not” be the person home alone at the time the killer returns to get the rake so she won’t be murdered. This is Warren’s goal for telling lies to hide his vision because he can’t tell Jodi the truth about him having this vision of her mother’s forthcoming murder.

2) How did it get covered up?

a) Warren makes sure Irene won’t be there.

b) Warren promises Sid he’ll help him gamble in Aruba long distance by phone but he must take Irene with him but only Warren and the viewer knows this is plan B if the retro-intention experiment can’t stop the future memory of the killer gaining the knowledge of the rake being kept in the in-laws’ garage.

3) What M.I.S. was used to create demand to know the truth?

a) Mystery?

i) What will cause Irene not to be there away from the scene of the predicted crime? Warren’s plan B is used to get the in-laws out of their house at the impending time that the murder will take place.

ii) Will Sid fall for Warren’s ploy to get them out of the house because Sid is skeptical that Warren can do his magic long distance over the phone? What will Sid do when he discovers Warren cannot help him cheat at winning long distance with Warren trying to give him the numbers over the phone but can’t because Warren’s friends in high places are not being cooperative to give Warren the numbers like they did at the casino in Laughlin?

b) Intrigue

i) Sid changes his and Irene’s plans of staying longer in Aruba and he decides to come home early ruining Warren’s plan B to have them out of their house at Warren’s predicted time of the return of the killer to come get his rake.

ii) Patty doing surveillance of the house hasn’t been told by Warren that this is really about a predicted murder and to use the rake like cheese in a mousetrap to get the killer’s identity.

iii) Hart learns from the medical examiner at 49 minutes Minnie Movie 3 ACT II that if she can match the AB negative blood type to someone as a suspect as found to match that found on the blanket it can put them at the scene of the burial of the body and implement them in the crime itself as circumstantial evidence. Because Hart suspects Bono she wants to get his blood sample but without directly asking for it.

iv) Hart gets a pull on her sweater at 118 minutes in Minnie Movie 8 ACT IV, “learning”. Bono kids her after telling her his wound had come from the men’s room door handle, assuming she had pulled her sweater on that door ribbing her about using the men’s room and standing up to pee, although she had only gone in there to see if the door handle was defective and possibly Bono might have actually cut his arm on it.

v) Not knowing if Bono had told her the truth Hart knowing she needs to match Bono’s blood type to the killer she unsuccessfully searches for his bandage but doesn’t find it. Intent but switches. We never see her getting one his bandages but we “obtain” this knowledge that to prove Bono is the killer she must get one of his used bandages with blood on it. It’s not until ACT IV Minnie Movie 8 at 124 minutes we finally “learn” she must have found one of his used bandages because she is getting lab results from the crime lab which confirms Bono’s blood type is also AB negative, one chance in a hundred to match the blood type on the blanket.

vi) In case the Professor’s retro-intention innovation to preempt the future memories of the killer and remove his motive to be there at the garage and be forced into killing anyone there in his way won’t work plan B was created at Minnie Movie 7 at 93 minutes which has been suggested without any suspicion of the Chaplain being the killer.

vii) Detective hart has suspicion that the killer could be Lieutenant Bono fitting the profile and “obtaining” information at 35 minutes in ACT II Minnie Movie 3 when she notices he has a nasty cut on his arm for which he had told her occurred in the men’s room on a faulty door handle. The viewer is intentionally misdirected that Bono is the killer because this is right after we are shown Victim #2 being buried and the killer cuts his arm on the rake. She knows nothing about any of that, of course.

viii) Hart “learns” in ACT 4 at almost at the end of Minnie Movie 8 at 120 minutes that she may be on to something knowing the blood sample on the blanket doesn’t match the victim’s and we are misled by Bono not wanting to give Hart to throw out his old soiled bandage from his arm. We know as the viewer that she intends to run his blood type to see if it might match that found on the blanket.

c) Suspense –

i) Warren’s plan B is backfiring which means the killer will show up according to Warren’s vision although his subsequent vision under hypnosis no longer has Irene being strangled but now only is showing Jodi there on to the floor of the garage. Does this mean that Jodi will be killed by the killer? Will it be her death instead of her mother’s? Has Warren caused this to happen by getting involved trying to change Irene’s fate?

1) What is the reveal? either a secret or some key piece of information or truth that changes our perspective on the story.

a) The reveal concerning the Professor and why he is so intense on being able to use his retro-intention and to prove his theory that “cause does not have to precede effect”. The real answer occurs at the psych lab as Warren gets the answer to this from him. It was his former involvement at CSL, Cognitive Science Labs, at the end of the cold war using psychics, remote viewers, to unmask the plans of the Russians and he reveals to know the future as well and falling short of being able to change the future, but closed down in 1995 and declassified. The Professor wants to continue this work on his own but not acceptably to his university colleagues having threatened not give him his doctorate and to attain tenure.

2) How did it get covered up? by presenting a different “reality” previously in the story

a) The Professor used only the excuse of his academic colleagues to be in his way.

b) Claimed he needed a psychic to be able to quantify having to change the future.

c) He based his cover up on simply proving his own theory that “cause does not have to precede effect” but he was covering up that he really wanted to be able to change the future. This would be by physically changing “memories of the future” residing in the timeless collective unconscious where he would use retro-intention in changing what would “become” the future in the physical world and would result by implanting those new future memories resulting in effecting the present things which relatively would be the past of these future memories.

3) What M.I.S. was used to create demand to know the truth? Strangulation murders were continuing throughout the story, at least now six victims. The demand is to know who is doing this.

a) The mystery as to if this is possible.

i) Can a psychic enter the collective unconscious?

ii) Is this only permitted by the Friend in High Places to allow this to be done?

iii) By doing this will it have repercussions on the fates of other people as well?

iv) Is this in the favor of God’s province?

b) Intrigue as to the attainment of the ability for mortal men to be able to change fate of other people.

i) Reetha the psychic is used to parallel what the Professor is attempting to do. Her purpose telling Warren that there are no accidents in life but we’re not in charge of that. She recalls how she tried to change the fate of her husband dying in a plane crash by faking her health so he wouldn’t leave on the flight. It worked for a week, but then he had to go and rebooked his flight. It was the new flight that crashed in Chicago AA #191 in 1979. What she was doing was really to change her own fate so she wouldn’t become a widow to raise her daughter, Patty, on her own by trying to change the fate of someone else, her husband and it back fired on her. She warns Warren don’t be meddling in someone else’s life by trying to change someone else’s fate.

c) Suspense Using Warren’s gift to meddle in changing someone else’s fate is dangerous and doesn’t end well. Warren is told that we’re not in charge. Conclusion is that it’s our friends in high places. Or Sid has told Warren that God shuffles the deck.

audience is desperately wanting to solve the mystery, the reveal is much more satisfying. To do that, you plant mystery, intrigue, and/or suspense about what the real truth is.

look at the difference between the “cover-up reality” and the real truth. In the beginning, we believe the cover-up, but as the writer builds M.I.S. about discovering the real truth, we become interested, maybe even anxious, to know what the real truth is.

reveal the truth, it must have dramatic impact

Create drama around it. Set it up emotionally, then uncover the devastating evidence dramatically

Hero discovers the truth at the worst possible moment or in the worst possible way. It could be that discovering the truth to this mystery points to a bigger mystery which is who is the killer.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 11 months ago by  Warren Goldstein. Reason: additional information added, another very strategic reveal

[Warren Goldstein]

Power Players Lesson 4 Day The 10 most interesting things Assignment 2022-06-13

What I learned is having these particular things written out give a producer insight into the planning of the storyline and the key events which makes it intriguing.

A. What is most unique about your
villain and hero?

Villain – not revealed
until end – It’s a tremendous element of surprise. Chaplain Peter is in
wheel chair so couldn’t physically be a suspect as the sought after
at-large Socialite Strangler and of course his religious affiliation which
wouldn’t obviously prevent him to murder people.
Hero – Unexpectedly
learns of his clairvoyant ability to see the future at 21 and only
because of his taking a course in parapsychology as his last elective in
college..

B. Major hook of your opening
scene?

At
eight years old having fallen through a basement window ethereal spiritual
entities appear totally unexpectedly and mysteriously not knowing who and
what they are and if they appeared to save Warren’s life or perhaps to cause
this childhood head injury accident to take place. Would this be the way
that Warren could attain his later in life prophetic ability? This first
scene is without Warren seeing them or acknowledging them.

C. Any turning points?

PLOT POINT ONE
30 minutes
– Warren’s first unexpected vision to be followed by others but this first
one sets the precedent for Warren’s challenging obstacle in dealing with
his “gift” he never asked for. This vision is of the death of his soon to
be wife’s grand-mother which immediately comes to past the next day. His
initial attempts to deal with his clairvoyance fail, that is, sharing
this vision with Jodi who becomes frightened and enraged with Warren’s
clairvoyance.
PLOT POINT TWO 90
minutes
– Seems like this tension has resolved towards hope but suddenly swings
back towards fear as his fondest hopes are crushed. Warren believes as a
solution in stopping yet another horrid vision, his mother-in-law’s
future strangulation murder, he might use the Professor’s retro-intention
hypnosis protocol to go to the timeless collective unconscious to alter the
“future memories” residing there of the killer which have not yet taken
place in his physical brain’s memory yet. This will be in order for him
to know that the rake with his blood DNA evidence on it is located in
Warren’s mother-in-law’s garage and will become the motive for him to go
there and have to commit her murder wanting to hide the connection of him
to this evidence. The Professor suggests that Warren is blocking seeing the
killer’s identity in his vision because he actually knows who the killer
in his vision is. If Warren knows who the killer is it would act to
change his own fate in all this and its Warren’s getting involved in this
which is causing the murder of his mother-in-law to take place where if
he hadn’t meddling in this as a psychic none of this would have taken
place.

D. Emotional dilemma?

Warren
can’t let his soon to be wife Jodi know that he has had yet another
terrible vision, that is of her mother being killed by the Socialite
Strangler. This has been afterwards of having his seeing the unexpected
death of her grandmother. Warren has promised after this first one that
he wouldn’t share any more of his visions concerning their relatives or
friends in order for Jodi to go through with their upcoming marriage. If
he continues to share his visions then his marriage is threatened.

E. Major twists?

1) Irene and the location of the rake
which has the killer’s blood on it, DNA evidence.

Initial
Direction
– Irene finds a rake at the foot of her driveway believing it had been
left there by her gardener, so she picks it up to put it into her
garage.
The twist – Walking to
garage she answers her phone and must speak with the caterer for the
upcoming wedding instead of proceeding to put the rake into the garage,
so she leans the rake instead against the pool gate.

2) Warren picks up the rake and has the
vision of Irene’s strangulation murder.

Initial
Direction
– Warren needs to enter the pool in the backyard to clean it. Irene was
to put the rake into her garage to hold it for their gardener.
The twist – Now the
rake with the killer’s blood on it is leaning against the gate and
Warren has to move it to get into the pool location, inciting
psychometry allowing him to have the vision of Irene being strangled
which if the rake wouldn’t have been there the fate of everyone would
have been different.

3) The Chaplain wants to know if in
Warren’s vision he can identify the Socialite Strangler Serial Killer

Initial
Direction
– The chaplain asks Warren to come down to the police department because
he only wants to talk with Warren. His plan, however, is to learn if
Warren can actually identify the killer of his mother-in-law which
secretly of course is himself.
The twist – Warren
can’t see his face because of what the Professor describes as the
“critical faculty” related to an ability which blocks certain
information from being brought up under hypnosis which would be affecting
Warren’s subconscious preventing him from psychically seeing the face of
the killer. The professor states it’s because Warren knows him. However,
Warren lets the Chaplain know that he sees the killer coming to his
in-laws’ garage to retrieve a rake and guesses because it’s probably
incriminating evidence on it, like blood. The Chaplain, who is secretly
the killer, realizes that his own blood is on that rake because it
scrapped his arm during the burial which he must get back and which is
also on the blanket in which that victim had been wrapped. The Chaplain always
wears a black long sleeve shirt which would hide the wound which only
the viewers know.

4) Detective Hart meets with the Medical
Examiner concerning one of the victims.

Initial
Direction
– Hart is looking for clues about the victim’s body but there is only
strangulation marks and leather gloves’ oil detectable.
The twist – The medical
examiner remarks that there is however not on the body but on the
blanket someone’s blood, but none of the victim’s blood herself because
the blood types don’t match. This would be the killer’s blood when he
killed this victim and while burying her, he cut his arm on a bent tooth
on the rake. So, if the police get the rake which they don’t know about
it except later by the chaplain, because Warren only mentioned it to the
chaplain and not the Detective so only now at the end can the evidence
be led to prove the Chaplain was the killer. The cops need the rake with
his blood on it which they finally get after the Chaplain is shot
however. This will prove the connection as the required evidence to
posthumously have him indicted.

5) Professor and Warren engage in
retro-intention in the experiment to be able to change fate, stop the
killer from knowing where the rake with the evidence leading to him is
located.

Initial
Direction
– The Professor guides Warren under hypnosis to enter the non-local
universe so Warren can access the collective unconscious under the
Professor’s retro intention hypnosis protocol whereby containing all
memories past, present, and future of everyone who has ever lived or
will be born in the future. This is outside of time in order to retrieve
Irene’s present memory from her past which shows the circumstances of
the cause for her to have found the rake on the edge of her driveway
which series of events leads to her murder.
The twist – (this is of
major significance to the theme of the story in order for the Professor
to prove his theory that “cause does not have to precede effect”!!!)
This existing memory of Irene of the past event of picking up the rake
and putting it against the pool gate exists in both universes, in her
brain in the physical universe under the relativity factor of “time” to
mass and energy AND in the collective unconscious devoid of time because
there is no mass or energy there. So being able to change a memory
“simultaneously” in the collective unconscious at the same time as in
Irene’s physical brain replacing the original one with a “new desired
memory” created by Warren acting as a clairvoyant accesses the
collective unconscious under the Professor’s retro intention hypnosis
protocol, and this memory now appears of her “instead” as visualized by
Warren as her being scared by a cat.

6) The rake
scenario continues

Initial
Direction
– Because now Irene did not pick up the rake (in her memory of it)
because of the retro-intention experiment using Warren, the rake would
have remained there in physical memory.
The twist – (not known
until Sid mentions what he did telling Irene on the airplane trip back
to Las Vegas) Instead, Sid says that he noticed the rake lying there
(because the past event memory now never happened for Irene to have
picked up that rake) and so Sid’s memory takes precedent because Irene’s
memory of the past no longer exists. So Sid picked up the rake so not to
damage the tires on their car and it was instead him who placed the rake
against the pool gate instead so the gardener would see it assuming it
belonged to the gardener, not knowing it had bounced out of the killer’s
pickup. Sid’s unknown actions now in everyone’s memories allowed the
resulting sequence of events to still play out and to continue as before
not changing the physical past inciting events to follow so that Warren
still has his prophetic vision of Irene’s murder and so the killer will
still show up at the in-laws’ house to retrieve that rake.

7) Warren
promises to secretly help Sid gamble while they are in Aruba by giving
Sid the numbers psychically over the phone while Sid bets in the casino
there.

Initial
direction
– This is Warren’s plan B in case the Professor’s retro-intention
experiment to change the “cause” for Irene’s murder can’t be changed in
the future “not” proving the Professor’s theory. This is because of
Warren’s participation himself screwing up the sequence of events, changing
the causes referred to as “memories of the future”. This lure to get
Warren’s in-laws out of their house is because Warren knows from his
visions that the killer is going to be coming back there for the rake
and but doesn’t want anyone home at that time so no one will be murdered
by his retrieving the rake. Warren hires an armed security guard to
surveil his in-laws’ house and to catch the killer’s act of coming back
to get his rake back but Warren only wants the security guard to
photograph the killer, not actually catch him and place herself in
danger – after all Warren’s the hero and the good guy not wanting anyone
to die in this.
The twist – Sid changes
their plans and decides to fly home early, but which will be “prior” to
the killer getting to their house – not good, because both in-laws may
be killed by him in order to have no witnesses as to him getting the
rake which evidence will prove he’s the killer matching his blood to
that on the rake and on the blanket which was wrapped around the victim’s
corpse.

8) Sid and
Irene are going to Aruba to a casino so Sid can make bets using Warren
over the phone to tell him what numbers to bet on the roulette wheel.

Initial
Direction
– Sid and Irene would have not gone to Aruba in the first place and would
have been home when the serial killer would have gone there and would
have been murdered by him when getting his rake back with his blood
evidence on it to identify him.
The twist – Because
they were not going to be home Irene called their maid for her to show
up there instead, clean the house, and check on it. Because the maid had
been there when the killer goes there the first time, she instead was
murdered by the killer earlier, the killer posing as a new gardener to
get the rake. Although the caveat
is that the killer did not get the rake because the steel door to the
garage had been locked and he has no tools to break in. The security
code on the garage outside door had been changed by Sid upon Warren’s
recommendation earlier to his in-laws at a dinner at their house. We
don’t see Sid doing this however to plant the element of surprise when
the killer can’t get into the garage the first time when he has to kill
the maid to shut her up. This means the killer will have to return again
when Sid, Irene, or perhaps Jodi, all knowing the code, would be there.

9) Irene cannot
reach the maid by phone while they’re away in Aruba (because she’s been
murdered by the serial killer)

Initial
direction
– The maid should be there but has been murdered by the killer.
The twist – Irene
instead calls Jodi and asks “her” to go to the house and check on why
the maid hasn’t returned her call and, as well, because they’re coming
home early she suggest they’ll meet Jodi there at the house and have
dinner when they return.

10) Warren is
to exchange his pool cleaning truck for Jodi’s car at her school so he
can pick her parents up at the airport as originally planned.

Initial
Direction
– While Jodi is half asleep when Warren gets back at night after working
his job in Laughlin, he tells her he needs to switch cars with her at
her school in order so he can get her parents at the airport when they
will arrive, coming home a day early.
The twist – Jodi has
that school day end early, forgets to tell Warren that while he’s
planning to go to her school to switch cars. Warren heads over to the
school parking lot to switch cars, but Jodi’s car isn’t there because
unknown to Warren she’s at the house where the killer is expected to
arrive. This causes Warren to do a mad drive to get to the house to
protect Jodi knowing from his vision that the killer will go there, More
so, Warren has had a subsequent vision while under hypnosis with the professor
where he sees his first vision of Irene’s death not happening but
instead seeing Jodi there in the garage and him throwing her to the
floor, BUT not seeing why he would be doing this.

11) Warren has
secretively hired an armed security guard he meets while working at the
Laughlin casino. She’s a female, Patty, who is too short for the police
department, who is now staked out down the street of the in-laws’ house.

Initial
direction
– Patty is there so as to see all the cars which will come to the in-laws’
house coming up their driveway and to photograph who comes there so when
it will be the killer they have a description of him for the police to
use to identify and arrest him.
The twist – the
security guard loses one of her earrings which falls on the floor of her
car, tries to get it but in doing so spills her soft drink on herself
while bending over down to the floor and by doing this at that moment
misses seeing the killer’s truck going up the driveway and also not
knowing Jodi is already there in the house. Jodi is now coming out of
the swimming pool and having arranged to meet her parents there coming
home early.

12) The killer
arrives impersonating a detective to get into the house and into the
garage because he has the tools to break the lock to get into the garage
and to get the rake.

Initial
Direction
– the killer impersonating a detective tells Jodi he’s following up on
her husband having made a police report. First he asks to use the
restroom. Jodi wet from the pool, points down the hall towards the
garage inside door now “unlocked” because she had the code to unlock and
did so earlier without being seen doing it.
The twist – The killer
goes down the hall past the restroom and enters the garage steel inside
door which is now “unlocked” but we don’t see him going in. We do see
from inside the garage the door opening. It’s Jodi hurriedly entering
the garage. She suspicious, questions the supposed detective, “How
did you know about my husband trying to put in a police report.” The
detective replies faking his answer, “It says so right here in the
notes.” Jodi continues, “You need to leave immediately. This is not our
home; it’s my parents’ home”. The killer now with the rake in his
hand comes at Jodi. Warren has just arrived and bursts through the door
throwing Jodi to the floor to protect her. (the last of his visions,
btw) The killer is known because Warren knows him as the chaplain. the
chaplain pulls his gun and the security standing on the tail gate of
Warren’s truck in front of the garage shoots him dead. (FYI) Most
importantly, reiterated so the viewers understand why Warren couldn’t
identify the killer in his visions, Warren remarks in the denouement to
the Detective,” Now I know why I couldn’t identify the killer when I
first came to the police station to report a murder,… before it
happened, it was because I was going to become his friend and was going
to meet him in the future. I guess subconsciously I knew that and
because he was to become my friend it would have been too traumatic for
me to see him as the killer. Wait until Professor Keller hears about
that.” Detective Hart questions, “Who’s that?”

13) Sid and
Irene arrive home by cab but Sid, forgetting his key to get in, while
Jodi had not answered the front door:

Initial direction – Sid was to
open the front door with his house keys and would have come through the
front, not having to enter using the outside garage entry code to get
in.
The twist – Sid has
forgotten his house keys so instead he does have to enter the outside
garage door using his code and the locked garage door opens. This causes
Sid and Irene to interrupt the Chaplain about to shoot Warren and Jodi.
The chaplain turns to parents. “Good thing I have five bullets in this
revolver.” (Meaning he can kill all five of them with his 38 Saturday
night special which holds five rounds) Patty the security guard is now
standing up on the tail gate of Warren’s truck with her gun pointed at
the Chaplain. The Ethereal Spirit is behind her holding up her arms to
aim her gun for her at the Chaplain. She yells, “Drop it or I’ll shoot.
I have all the bullets “I” need to get the job done!” The Chaplain
instead points the gun at Patty and says, “I’ll just have to strangle
one of you. Sorry”. Patty fires and kills him. Wow!

14) The
denouement. Detective Hart is speaking outside the house; the police
having arrived and securing the crime scene. Their conversation is
interrupted by who was the red herring as established earlier in the
script, Lieutenant Bono.

Initial
direction
– “We have several problems here. We have a security guard who shot a
Chaplain with an unregistered gun though with four witnesses to
substantiate she did it. We have an old rake with somebody’s blood on it
which proves nothing. We have a nice pair of new leather gloves which
probably could fit O.J.’s hands but proves nothing, and most of all
there’s no corpse of anyone you say he could have killed by
strangulation and which would have to have his blood on the corpse which
I know the Chaplain wouldn’t have been so careless to leave as a former
detective himself.” “All this doesn’t prove anything that our Chaplain,
who does seem to be missing his wheelchair at the moment, however, could
be the Socialite Strangler”. Lieutenant Bono just arrogantly walks away.

§ The twist – Detective Hart, however apologizes for her boss’ crassness and says to Warren that she should have listened to Warren and that in future she’ll be more open minded about using psychics to get leads on a crime. The Ethereal Spirit stands next to Warren as he says, “Let’s just thank my friends in high places, at least the good ones.” “By the way, if you let your boss know, that if they dig up there, next to the adjoining new home their building, my Friend in High Places just showed me, you’ll find the body Lieutenant Bono says is needed to link the Chaplain to the last couple of killings. In fact, that corpse is dressed in a maid’s uniform.”

F. Reversals?

Lieutenant
Bono is bandaging a bad cut on his arm after the audience just prior seeing
the scene in which the Socialite Strangler cuts himself with a bent fork
on his rake while burying a body. The rake with his blood on it has
bounced out of his truck and lands on Warren’s mother-in-law’s driveway.
She picks it up and leaves it leaning against her pool gate entrance.
This is how Warren has his vision of his mother-in-law’s murder upon touching
the rake, psychometry. That same blood as on the rake had gotten on to
the blanket which wrapped one of his victim’s bodies. The police don’t
have the rake of course but do have the blanket. Sergeant Hart must check
all leads and the police suspect that the killer might be a cop. The crime
lab determines that the blood on the blanket, AB negative, does not match
victim’s blood type O positive. AB negative is one in one hundred. Sergeant
Hart gets Lieutenant Bono’s bandage out of the trash without him knowing
and sends it to the lab after she learns from the coroner about the blood
mismatch. She secretly suspects Bono might be the killer fitting the killer’s
profile as to being a cop which has been divorced. Her suspicions are
further aroused when Lieutenant Bono’s blood type also happens to be AB
negative, the same as found on the blanket meaning it could have been
Bono’s blood on the blanket making Bono the red herring for the story.
Only at the end where the Chaplain is shot stealing back his rake do we
realize that Bono can’t be the killer.

G. Character betrayals?

Unbeknownst
and totally unexpected by the audience the Chaplain is betraying Warren
by getting Warren to give him the location of the rake which has his
blood DNA evidence on it, not expecting the Chaplain to be the Socialite
Strangler.

H. Or any big surprises?

The
setup is that the Chaplain appears to be helping Warren to prevent Warren’s
mother-in-law’s murder, but because the Chaplain secretly is the killer,
it’s only because of that help that sets into motion the events that lead
the Chaplain to Warren’s mother-in-law’s garage to retrieve his rake with
his blood DNA evidence on it. The
same blood is also found on the blanket of this one murder victim tying
the chaplain to the murder and establishes his motive in finding the
rake.

2. Make a list of any other things in your script that could interest a producer.

· Based on true events and real characters.

· Is a comedy, a sci fi theme dealing with time, and a thriller using a clairvoyant being able to identify and catch a serial killer unknowingly the circumstance baiting him in order for his capture.

· The sci fi element of a Professor’s theory which is proven that “cause does not have to precede effect”. This provocative and skeptically challenged postulate disrupts the substantiation of the supposedly constant fixed measurement relationship of time in Einstein’s e=mc squared equation. In hypnosis the Professor shows time not to be an element in the theoretical concept of Carl Jung’s collective unconscious. In our story under hypnosis our hero allows himself to go there and alter and eliminate past memories of the future murder through the documented phenomenon of retro-intention. This is where it is already know that our current thoughts have been shown to have directed past events to have happened. The twist is that the Professor’s theory is proven by a psychic uncovering future memories of a killer located in the timeless collective unconscious prior to these future thoughts and motives not having yet manifested in his physical brain in order to incite this last murder of his. The essence of fate itself is challenged meaning we can amend our own fate by being involved in a psychic being able to see that future event and by their actions becoming involved in it.

[Warren Goldstein]

Warren Dan Goldstein Producer/Manager Lesson 3

1. How will you present yourself and your project to the producer?

Based on a true story. Comedy – Sci Fi – Thriller, Challenges Einstein’s theory of relativity, author is a proven clairvoyant and master clinical hypnotherapist, and ordained in the Catholic Church as a healer

2. How will you present yourself and your project to the manager?

Based on a true story. Comedy – Sci Fi – Thriller, Challenges Einstein’s theory of relativity, author is a proven documented clairvoyant and master clinical hypnotherapist, and ordained in the Catholic Church as a healer, credit as a starring actor in Paramount’s $70 million National Lampoon film in 1991 Arrive Alive.

I learned nothing “new” from this lesson.

[Warren Goldstein]

“Dreamscape” (1984 – Kevin Bacon) meets “Zodiac” (2007 Jake Gyllenhaal) meets “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” (1947 Danny Kaye, 2013 Ben Stiller) meets “Back to the Future” (1985 Michael J. Fox) meets “Somewhere in Time” (1980 Christopher Reeve).

A college research professor promotes a contending theory which is devoid of the influence of time which goes beyond Einstein’s 20^th century physical world theory of relativity as a clairvoyant student of his must put the professor’s theory to task in order to stop a vision of a serial killer murder of his mother-in-law coming to pass.

This theory is that “Cause does not have to precede effect” superseding the “what if” as to Einstein’s previous 20^th century science frontier.

The proving of this postulate uses this prophetic clairvoyant under hypnosis to be able to enter the timeless collective unconscious, so-named by Carl Jung the father of psychology.

Based on certain documented witnessed true events and a real cutting edge new hypnosis technique called “retro-intention”, which allows memories of past events to be altered or even totally erased in one’s physical brain’s memory.

The unique difference in this story is in using this same technique employing a psychic who is going to alter and eliminate what this professor claims as “memories of future events” that have not happened yet in the physical world, the “local universe”.

The goal of the science fiction theme is in order for a psychic to change or eliminate thoughts and memories of the past and yet those of the future employing yet conscious physical brain creations of new visions under a cutting edge retro-intention hypnosis protocol. This is in order to selectively replace these future memories, coined by the professor, which are memories of past, present, and future events existent in the collective unconscious devoid of time and containing every thought of every person who has lived and who is to be born in the future to explain the scriptural “book of life”. Such memories of these thoughts are able to be affected for alteration or elimination but only in the collective unconscious through a clairvoyant who uniquely can engage both the physical local universe world and the non-local collective unconscious simultaneously.

How is it that one becomes psychic?

The author is a master clinical hypnotherapist, scientific theorist, and a documented proven prophetic clairvoyant and a healer, so much as ordained in the American Catholic church relying on his real events of his life.

This goes beyond the realm of existing hypnosis being employed traditionally.

This story reveals how a psychic’s personal involvement itself brought on by seeing a horrific vision of a future crime can result in perpetuating the actual crime as to a murder of his mother-in-law seen in his prophetic vision which is what the lead character is trying to avert.

No one has attempted revealing this in any other film.

Questioning Einstein’s sole reliance on e=mc squared, Carl Jung’s theory of inherited memories, and quantum physics’ sub atomic theories of particle existences locations –finally! No other sci fi has ever attempted this; cutting edge.

To prove this it’s implemented in a secret university scientific hypnosis experiment to enter the theorized yet unproven “collective unconscious” so-named by Carl Jung, father of psychology.

It’s by using a clairvoyant student rather whose only goal and without the help of the police or with his wife’s knowledge however which is to avert a serial killer’s murder of his new mother-in-law which he envisions to tragically take place soon attempting to change her fate.

In the tradition of but reaching beyond Arthur C Clark, Jeremiah Setchin, H.G.Wells, Issac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, Michael Crichton.

This story in Friends in High Places is based on real events and real people and has been created by a scientifically trained research theorist, a master clinical hypnotherapist who also happens to be a proven prophetic clairvoyant, and also because of his miraculous healings he credits to God and His angels and has been ordained in the American Catholic Church of Malabar, founded by the apostle Thomas, the healer, also known as doubting Thomas, fyi.

Structured as an ongoing miniseries as well.

The story is considered either as a:

1. sci fi thriller comedy.

2. Thriller sci fi comedy

3. Comedic sci fi thriller.

Ghost Busters type of animation for the friends in high places.

alternative title – Back into the bottle

alternative title – Beyond the Genie

alternative title – Some Gift

Our lives are the battlefield for the spirit world.

How do we, get the genie,… back in the bottle?

[Warren Goldstein]

Friends in High Places Lesson #1 Project and Market

What I learned is,… marketing is most imperative to be done correctly

Sci fi thriller, Friends in High Places,

Concept: A new theory to be presented that “Cause does not have to precede effect” in the arena of quantum physics through an autobiographical storyline of being able to prevent a serial killing by going into the “collective unconscious” to change “future memories” before they exist in the physical world and to change the events which result from them to save a life.

Most attractive things about the story are that it is based on a real proven prophetic clairvoyant and events in his life in which he used scientific cutting edge retro-intention hypnosis for him to enter the world of the “non-local universe” to alter data information in the theoretical “collective unconscious”, every thought past, present, and even those which will occur in the physical world future in order to solve a mystery but without the help of the police.

My goal is to continue contact to Norman Golightly, Nick Cage’s production partner for interest in playing the professor. I already had the late Jerry Lewis contact Nick by phone for me and he referred me directly to Mr. Golightly. I want to make sure my presentation will be concise and appealing to get Nick Cage to consider this role. I also have two other stars for this role and have direct access for the presentation to them, Sly Stallone and Brad Garret and want my presentation to them to be powerful and enticing. Lastly, for the same role I have spoken with Chris Lemmon about the role and he awaits my getting a production company’s interest “first” and then I might move forward with him. I have two other scripts, Ruse 1964 about an American female physician immigrant who goes to Argentina for her mother’s funeral and realizes like herself her mother was a healer who had attended to Hitler after his exile to Argentina after the war and ends up killing him herself. She ironically falls in love with a Mosad agent secretly working to capture twelve remaining Nazi officers hiding there, after having already capturing Eichman. I also have a racing script, Gasoline Alley, action, mystery, country music soundtrack. I need a country star or stars for this. Another project is a low budget kidnapping thriller, We Have Yoru Daughters, which takes place in a woods based on a true story in Georgia. I wish to continue to get, on the screen, a previously staged musical, Here’s to the Winners, already acclaimed as a live show in L.A. during the 84 Olympics. It’s about a Latino band leader who swoons a college gymnast on her way to the Olympics. It already had been slated by Universal in 83 as a film but never produced by them in time. It already has great L.A. Times reviews from back then and has been updated and rewritten. I wish to gain the right interest. Two of the songs had been selected by the late Allan Carr for Travolta and Olivia Newton John back then so there is a market for the right age group and genre and for the millions of young girls who year after year partake in gymnastics in this country and around the world and their families – a great G rated longevity film. I need to market this correctly to get production interest. I already have the endorsement of the United States Gymnastic Federation and a former US Olympic coach and Cathy Rigby’s interest for the coach, so… I need help in directing the marketing of this.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 12 months ago by  Warren Goldstein. Reason: typos
• This reply was modified 2 years, 12 months ago by  Warren Goldstein. Reason: forgot to include reason for taking the course
• This reply was modified 2 years, 12 months ago by  Warren Goldstein.

[Warren Goldstein]

Lesson 10 Trust and Betrayal – Friends in High Places

“What I learned doing this assignment is…?” Trust and betrayal build tension which is “hope” versus “fear” creating suspense to the story structure. So, by diminishing trust between characters this increases suspense which keeps the viewer on edge and the pages turning.

Make a list of the main characters.

1) Hero: Warren – Clairvoyant college student

a) Basic state – trusted

b) How might they really be trustable, but appear not trustable –

i) Dedicated in a relationship with his utmost desire to please his partner and make her happy, Jodi.

(1) Although he appears at times to be marginally dishonest in that he is only doing the things to attempt to become a doctor but doesn’t have his heart in it, only doing it so he can keep Jodi interested in him for her to marry him.

(2) This he believes is because she wouldn’t be content if he had chosen a different curriculum major other than pre-med or would be attempting to go into a different profession, such as music which he enjoys.

ii) He’s very caring about Jodi’s family but feels he must fudge it a bit around them.

(1) He’s not 100% trustworthy because he wants to rather believe that Jodi’s desire to only marry a doctor is from her upbringing, and because they are critical of him actually able to become a doctor and have too much of a hold over her. She confirms this about her being spoiled when she comments, “I have a car payment?”

(2) They are skeptical and unaccepting of his unbelievable psychic abilities’ endeavors, so Warren tries to hide those things until he turns everyone off when he rightly predicts the death of Jodi’s grandmother the day before it happens.

c) The circumstance that might cause him to switch from trustworthy would be:

i) He proposes to Jodi knowing he can’t afford an engagement ring and uses the excuse to her parents that it’s rather because he and Jodi want to pick it out together, forcing Jodi to save face for them both and go along with his excuse. She often comments to hide her shame of his behavior covering his ass by her saying, “Details, details”.

ii) if someone is skeptical of him, diminishing his self-worth, he must act accordingly.

(1) to defend himself and by putting himself in a better light regardless of how.

(2) He feels it’s all right for him to bend the truth not to cause embarrassment or discomfort in what he does or may do.

(a) When he has the vision of Jodi’s mother being strangled by the Socialite Strangler, he instead refers to his vision rather that it is one of his pool servicing customers than to make Jodi think he’s crazy and dispassionate in telling he about it.

(b) He doesn’t tell Jodi the truth about why he has gone to the police to report a murder and says rather it’s one of his pool cleaning customers instead of to report the murder was to be that of her mother in his vision.

(c) He neglected to tell Jodi at first that he after his first night at the Laughlin piano bar gig that he went back to a cocktail waitress’ apartment even though it honestly was only to drive her car for her while she drove another inebriated cocktail waitress’ car for her to get her home so not to drive dangerously intoxicated.

(d) He doesn’t tell her when he drove the car for the cocktail waitress that he saw her crashing and dying in a car accident. He only tells her about it after learning that girl Loraine died within a few days in a car accident as he envisioned.

(e) He doesn’t tell Jodi he is participating as a subject in his professor’s behavioral science experiment which is relying on his clairvoyant ability to know the future not wanting to upset her after he promised her not to see things for their family or friends.

(f) He doesn’t tell Jodi the truth about why he’s seeing the Professor.

(g) He doesn’t tell Jodi the purpose of which he’s being the subject for the experiment which is to change her mother’s fate because he has already seen her being strangled by the Socialite Strangler.

(h) He doesn’t tell Jodi that in the second session of the experiment, which he’s not telling her about anyway, that he has a vision of himself pushing her to the floor of her parent’s garage.

d) What circumstances might cause them to switch from one to the other?

i) Wanting to hide from Jodi that he is getting more involved with the Professor and is going to partake as a subject in a paranormal experiment.

ii) He believes that he is going to damage his marriage to Jodi.

iii) He believes he will have to attempt making greater efforts to get accepted into medical school.

iv) He will have to hide his prophetic visions from Jodi.

v) He needs to hide the real reason he went to the police to try to get their help.

2) Villain: – Chaplain Peter Anello

a) Basic state – trusted because of his religious principals

b) How might they NOT be trustable, but appear trustable?

i) Being secretive about his past.

(1) Nothing is known about his past other than his military service and he was a former cop and detective and crippled in the line of duty.

(2) He never mentions anything to anyone about his prior marriage.

ii) He as a man of the cloth makes “somewhat” flirtatious comments and attitudes to Detective Sue Hart but hides this using the veil of his religious dedication and goodie goodie manner of speech.

c) The circumstance that might cause him to switch from trustworthy would be

i) Obviously to hide that he is the Socialite Strangler.

ii) For him to attain more information from Warren as to exactly what Warren saw as to recognize who the Socialite Strangler is.

iii) To learn more details as to the circumstances surrounding the vision of the murder of Warren’s mother-in-law.

iv) To find out Warren’s in-laws’ street address so he can show up to retrieve the rake with his blood on it.

v) To find out when his in-laws won’t be there so he can retrieve the rake with his blood on it.

vi) How it would be possible to get into Warren’s in-laws’ garage without anyone knowing.

3) Red Herring Character: – Lieutenant Bill Bono

a) Basic state – Trustworthy

b) How might they appear trustable but may not be trustable?

i) Expecting him to give Detective Hart more help from him.

ii) Expecting him to give Detective Hart more respect publicly because she is a female detective. He says to the Chaplain, “I’m giving her enough rope.” And “She needs to earn her wings.”

iii) Having a devil may care attitude about catching the killer.

iv) Having it seem a bother for him to have to apprehend the killer.

v) Not giving Warren any interest or compassion as to the stress Warren is under while it is his mother-in-law who is to be murdered. He says, “Anyone would be happy knowing their mother-in-law was to get murdered.”

vi) Not respecting Warren’s sincerity and honesty by coming to the police before doing anything on his own to catch the killer.

vii) Trying to make it seem it’s because he’s not a woman that he can’t figure out more about the killer so he turns the case over to Detective Hart so that she might fail, and he won’t have to take the blame.

c) The circumstance that might cause him to switch from trustworthy would be:

i) He would want to hide something he might know from Detective Hart to sabotage her solving the case because he can’t. This is what makes him look like a red herring.

TRUST RELATIONSHIPS

Hero Warren / Villain Chaplain

1) TRUST: Warren eventually trusts the Chaplain but only after the Chaplain contacts Warren on his own to talk with him and having no one else who is showing any compassion or belief as to his visions.

2) DISTRUST: Warren distrusts the Chaplain’s Catholic conservative perspective that Warren shouldn’t communicate with spirits because they might be demonic belittling Warren’s ability to know the difference.

3) TRUST: Warren trusts the Chaplain’s religious education and experience as he quotes scriptures to warn Warren against dealing in the spiritual realm, but…

4) DISTRUST: Warren feels the Chaplain is rather proselytizing because Warren is Jewish.

5) TRUST: Warren respects that the Chaplain had been a detective and has some good insight into criminal behavior and how the police must work.

6) DISTRUST: Chaplain distrusts Warren and that he must test the accuracy of Warren’s visions, “test the spirits” the scriptures proclaim and this all might just be Warren’s imagination or to get dramatic attention drawn to him or fanciful thinking. Or,… are the spirits just trying to trick Warren?

Hero Warren / Jodi – agent of change

1) TRUST: Warren trusts Jodi because she is knowledgeable as a college graduate, responsible, and ambitious coming from a good stable family with good values.

2) DISTRUST: Warren distrusts Jodi because he fears if he doesn’t get into medical school she won’t remain married to him readily losing interest in him.

3) TRUST: Jodi trusts Warren because even him knowing her feelings about psychic phenomena or threats about a serial killer being at large and in the area of her parents’ house he has told her things she didn’t want to hear and wants to believe he will remain honest with her even wanting not to hear certain things.

4) DISTRUST: Jodi distrusts Warren because she thinks he doesn’t really want to become a doctor but is doing so just to please her and to get her to marry him because of that.

5) TRUST: Warren trusts Jodi that she wants to have a secure marriage and to have nice things. He can’t argue with that.

6) DISTRUST: Warren distrusts Jodi because she doesn’t really believe in his psychic ability but her disdain is conditional, such as until he was able to call out all the numbers on a roulette wheel and she thought that was okay and they could become rich with him doing that.

Warren / Professor Keller agent of change

1) TRUST: Warren believes Professor Keller has the knowledge to help to explain how and why Warren suddenly attained psychic abilities more than a decade after having a childhood head injury. He thinks Dr. Keller has all the answers to what is stressing him out.

2) DISTRUST: Warren believes that the Professor wants to help him deal with the dilemma of his vision of his mother-in-law’s future murder not believing that they would actually discover who the serial killer is and to stop it from happening. Rather it’s so that the Professor could have a means using Warren as the needed psychic, to use Warren realizing that there might be dangerous side effects to retro-intention and for Warren to attempt changing causes which lie in the future to only be able to prove his theory that “cause does not have to precede effect” so that he can get published and prove to his colleagues that he isn’t just a misguided dreamer and to save his tenure.

3) TRUST: Dr. Keller trusts that Warren is an authentic clairvoyant after having it proven in the class exercise where only Warren was able to precognitively draw out a picture of a clown’s face prior to an assistant professor randomly choosing a picture in an art book after the picture had been drawn.

4) DISTRUST: Dr. Keller distrusts Warren because he feels Warren might get cold feet and not go through with being used as a psychic for his experiment after spending hours already working with Warren and it might be because of his fear that Jodi would be a kibosh on everything he’s trying to accomplish sticking his neck out by attempting again to go against the established academia.

TRUSTED BUT SHOULDN’T BE

The chaplain

ISN’T TRUSTED BUT SHOULD BE

Lieutenant Bono

• This reply was modified 2 years, 12 months ago by  Warren Goldstein. Reason: forgot to put on TRUSTED BUT SHOULDN’T BE The chaplain and ISN’T TRUSTED BUT SHOULD BE Lieutenant Bono

[Warren Goldstein]

Friends in High Places – Twists and Turns – ASSIGNMENT

Friends in High Places – Twists and Turns – ASSIGNMENT Day 9

“What I learned doing this assignment is…?” I had already wrote my draft with all of these twists already in 2018 and had put in all I could think of at that time, but this exercise was a great checkup on my previous draft to make sure that I didn’t miss any I could have used. But as it turned out I used so many in almost every part of the story. FYI, the producers and police detectives I know which read the script for me earlier all remarked about these twists and how it kept the suspense going the whole time.

Hal is right on recommending having twists because they keep the pages of the script turning quickly to find out what happens. Everyone said they couldn’t put the script down. We are instructed to put these into the new version of the thriller map but would be too long to post however. The 14 suggestions made me reevaluate the “reasons” for each twist which was really helpful. Thanks!

1) Irene and rake location

a) Initial Direction – Irene finds a rake at the foot of her driveway believing it had been left there by her gardener, so she picks it up to put it into her garage.

b) Twist – Walking to garage she answers her phone and must speak with the caterer for the upcoming wedding instead of proceeding to put the rake into the garage, so she leans the rake instead against the pool gate.

2) Warren picks up the rake and has the vision of Irene’s strangulation murder.

a) Initial Direction – Warren needs to enter the pool in the backyard to clean it. Irene was to put the rake into her garage to hold it for their gardener.

b) Twist – Now the rake with the killer’s blood on it is leaning against the gate and Warren has to move it to get into the pool location, inciting him to have the vision of Irene being strangled which if the rake wouldn’t have been there the fate of everyone would have been different.

3) The Chaplain wants to know if in Warren’s vision he can identify the Socialite Strangler Serial Killer

a) Initial Direction – The chaplain asks Warren to come down to the police department because he only wants to talk with Warren. His plan, however, is to learn if Warren can actually identify the killer of his mother-in-law which secretly of course is himself.

b) Twist – Warren can’t see his face because of what the Professor describes as the “critical faculty” related to an ability which blocks certain information from being brought up which would be in Warren’s subconscious preventing him from psychically seeing the face of the killer. The professor states it’s because Warren knows him. However, Warren lets the Chaplain know that he sees the killer coming to his in-laws’ garage to retrieve a rake and guesses because it’s probably incriminating evidence on it, like blood. The Chaplain, who is secretly the killer, realizes that his own blood is on that rake because it scrapped his arm during the burial which he must get back and which is also on the blanket in which that victim had been wrapped.

4) Detective Hart meets with the Medical Examiner concerning one of the victims.

a) Initial Direction – Hart is looking for clues about the victim’s body but there is only strangulation and leather gloves used.

b) Twist – The medical examiner remarks that there is however not on the body but on the blanket someone’s blood, but none of the victim’s blood herself. This would be the killer’s blood when he killed this victim and while burying her, he cut his arm on a bent tooth on the rake. So, if the police get the rake which they don’t know about it because Warren only mentioned it to the chaplain and not the Detective so only now at the end can the evidence be led to prove the Chaplain was the killer but the cops need the rake with his blood on it as well to prove the connection as the required evidence to posthumously have him indicted.

5) Professor and Warren engage in retro-intention in the experiment to be able to change fate, stop the killer from knowing where the rake with the evidence leading to him is located.

a) Initial Direction – The Professor guides Warren under hypnosis to enter the non-local universe so Warren can access the collective unconscious under the Professor’s retro intention hypnosis protocol whereby containing all memories past, present, and future of everyone who has ever lived or will be born in the future. This is outside of time in order to retrieve Irene’s present memory from her past which shows the circumstances of the cause for her to have found the rake on the edge of her driveway which series of events leads to her murder.

b) Twist – (this is of major significance to the theme of the story in order for the Professor to prove his theory that “cause does not have to precede effect”!!!) This existing memory of Irene of the past event of picking up the rake and putting it against the pool gate exists in both universes, in her brain in the physical universe under the relativity factor of “time” to mass and energy AND in the collective unconscious devoid of time because there is no mass or energy there. So being able to change a memory “simultaneously” in the collective unconscious at the same time as in Irene’s physical brain replacing the original one with a “new desired memory” created by Warren acting as a clairvoyant accesses the collective unconscious under the Professor’s retro intention hypnosis protocol, and this memory now appears of her “instead” as visualized by Warren as her being scared by a cat.

The memory that now exists is of the cat scaring her, making her jump off her path so not to pick up the rake. This is intended to change the all the subsequent memories relative to the physical world’s time line of the sequence of events from the past that followed this new vision of her jumping out of the path of the rake caused by the cat. But for now the memory sequence is of different altered events that although actually in reality have already transpired in the past but remain as memory as “causes” which will incite contingent causes which are now “future memories” now to exist in the collective unconscious’ future. These though are “not relative” to physical events past because you can’t physically change the past but can in the physical world change the future which hasn’t occurred yet in the same manner as changing the “future memory” which has not taken place in the physical world BUT exists in the non-local collective unconscious devoid of time.

Because there is no short-term memory “initiated” in alpha level physical brain activity “under hypnosis”, this “original” physical world memory, like RAM memory in a computer, can be “wiped out” by Warren’s accessing it and “replacing” it with the new memory data like the Professor’s protocol of “retro-intention” allows making changes in the collective unconscious (as only a psychic can who has access to the nonlocal collective conscious).

For those who need areligious context this is my scientific explanation as to how prayer works though using angels of the Lord and ordained and who can enter the collective unconscious. For this story and my belief is that the angels of Satan can also enter the collective unconscious to reflectively change and influence the mind of men in the physical dimension. Drugs do it on the physical spectrum of energy within the brain, btw)

This means for our storyline that Irene also no longer has memory of that original memory of her picking up the rake because the physical brain’s memory parallels the collective unconscious memory data bank. The collective unconscious memory acts in the same way like a data backup for a computer in the “cloud” whereas changing the data backup on the computer’s physical drive when updating information into it, then subsequently updates and changes the data to the virtual cloud storage reflecting what the computer has as date when changed.

What this means now is that all contingent interconnected memories to this prior physical memory which has been changed in the non-local collective unconscious, all those changes are being mirrored, reflected in the physical world memories in people’s brains. This allows changing the “causes” for future actions to all “other” people having this knowledge also recorded in the collective unconscious with that same memory data and those associated with it as well also having new memories put in, erasing the old ones when replacing them with new ones in the collective unconscious.

So, the “causes” for events that have not “yet” happened in the physical future will be changed or eliminated if so desired. Thusly, this proves the professor’s theory that “cause does not have to precede the effect” if someone employing retro-intention using a psychic is able to alter the causes which are existing as memories of the future but only in the collective unconscious not restrained by time because there is no mass nor energy in the nonlocal universe, only in the physical world.

This is why Warren’s “own” physical brain’s memory of the changes made in the retro-hypnosis session also are removed and altered as well. This chain reaction takes place resultantly in the physical world causing the physical energy existing in everyone’s brain as memory related to this certain data as “causes” for future things to happen which incite future actions to take place are altered. This is the purpose of the Professor’s theory in order to prove it, to change the end results in the physical world and to change the fate of something which is to happen in the future but allowed to be seen by a clairvoyant.

It took me fifty years to figure this out as a proven clairvoyant, master hypnotist, and trained scientist. This has allowed me to understand “why” that once a clairvoyant speaks of a future event that they have envisioned to happen, simply by their attaining that information from the collect unconscious devoid of time, the mere act of speaking about that act can change the initial outcome of it happening. “From your lips to God’s ears”!!! Even Einstein has said, “The experimenter has an effect on the outcome of the experiment”. – Case in point.

6) The rake scenario continues

a) Initial Direction – Because now Irene did not pick up the rake (in her memory of it) because of the retro-intention experiment using Warren, the rake would have remained there in physical memory.

b) Twist – (not known until Sid mentions what he did telling Irene on the airplane trip back to Las Vegas) Instead, Sid says that he noticed the rake lying there (because the past event memory now never happened for Irene to have picked up that rake) and so Sid’s memory takes precedent because Irene’s memory of the past no longer exists. So Sid picked up the rake so not to damage the tires on their car and it was instead him who placed the rake against the pool gate instead so the gardener would see it assuming it belonged to the gardener, not knowing it had bounced out of the killer’s pickup. Sid’s unknown actions now in everyone’s memories allowed the resulting sequence of events to still play out and to continue as before not changing the physical past inciting events to follow so that Warren still has his prophetic vision of Irene’s murder and so the killer will still show up at the in-laws’ house to retrieve that rake.

7) Warren promises to secretly help Sid gamble while they are in Aruba by giving Sid the numbers psychically over the phone while Sid bets in the casino there.

a) Initial direction – This is Warren’s plan B in case the Professor’s retro-intention experiment to change the “cause” for Irene’s murder can’t be changed in the future “not” proving the Professor’s theory. This is because of Warren’s participation himself screwing up the sequence of events, changing the causes referred to as “memories of the future”. This lure to get Warren’s in-laws out of their house is because Warren knows from his visions that the killer is going to be coming back there for the rake and but doesn’t want anyone home at that time so no one will be murdered by his retrieving the rake. Warren hires an armed security guard to surveil his in-laws’ house and to catch the killer’s act of coming back to get his rake back but Warren only wants the security guard to photograph the killer, not actually catch him and place herself in danger – after all Warren’s the hero and the good guy not wanting anyone to die in this.

b) Switch – Sid changes their plans and decides to fly home early, but which will be “prior” to the killer getting to their house – not good, because both in-laws may be killed by him in order to have no witnesses as to him getting the rake which evidence will prove he’s the killer matching his blood to that on the rake and on the blanket which was wrapped around the victim’s corpse.

8) Sid and Irene are going to Aruba to a casino so Sid can make bets using Warren over the phone to tell him what numbers to bet on the roulette wheel.

a) Initial Direction – Sid and Irene would have not gone to Aruba in the first place and would have been home when the serial killer would have gone there and would have been murdered by him when getting his rake back with his blood evidence on it to identify him.

b) Twist – Because they were not going to be home Irene called their maid for her to show up there instead, clean the house, and check on it. Because the maid had been there when the killer goes there the first time, she instead was murdered by the killer earlier, posing as a new gardener to get the rake. Although the caveat is that the killer did not get the rake because the steel door to the garage had been locked and he has no tools to break in. The security code on the garage outside door had been changed by Sid upon Warren’s recommendation earlier to his in-laws at a dinner at their house. We don’t see Sid doing this however to plant the element of surprise when the killer can’t get into the garage the first time when he has to kill the maid to shut her up. This means the killer will have to return again when Sid, Irene, or perhaps Jodi, all knowing the code, would be there.

9) Irene cannot reach the maid by phone while they’re away in Aruba (because she’s been murdered by the serial killer)

a) Initial direction – The maid should be there but has been murdered by the killer.

b) Twist – Irene instead calls Jodi and asks “her” to go to the house and check on why the maid hasn’t returned her call and, as well, because they’re coming home early she suggest they’ll meet Jodi there at the house and have dinner when they return.

10) Warren is to exchange his pool cleaning truck for Jodi’s car at her school so he can pick her parents up at the airport as originally planned.

a) Initial Direction – While Jodi is half asleep when Warren gets back at night after working his job in Laughlin, he tells her he needs to switch cars with her at her school in order so he can get her parents at the airport when they will arrive, coming home a day early.

b) Twist – Jodi has that school day end early, forgets to tell Warren that while he’s planning to go to her school to switch cars. Warren heads over to the school parking lot to switch cars, but Jodi’s car isn’t there because unknown to Warren she’s at the house where the killer is expected to arrive. This causes Warren to do a mad drive to get to the house to protect Jodi knowing from his vision that the killer will go there, More so, Warren has had a subsequent vision while under hypnosis with the professor where he sees his first vision of Irene’s death not happening but instead seeing Jodi there in the garage and him throwing her to the floor, BUT not seeing why he would be doing this.

11) Warren has secretively hired an armed security guard he meets while working at the Laughlin casino. She’s a female, Patty, who is too short for the police department, who is now staked out down the street of the in-laws’ house.

a) Initial direction – Patty is there so as to see all the cars which will come to the in-laws’ house coming up their driveway and to photograph who comes there so when it will be the killer they have a description of him for the police to use to identify and arrest him.

b) Twist – the security guard loses one of her earrings which falls on the floor of her car, tries to get it but in doing so spills her soft drink on herself while bending over down to the floor and by doing this at that moment misses seeing the killer’s truck going up the driveway and also not knowing Jodi is already there in the house. Jodi is now coming out of the swimming pool and having arranged to meet her parents there coming home early.

12) The killer arrives impersonating a detective to get into the house and into the garage because he has the tools to break the lock to get into the garage and to get the rake.

a) Initial Direction – the killer impersonating a detective tells Jodi he’s following up on her husband having made a police report. First he asks to use the restroom. Jodi wet from the pool, points down the hall towards the garage inside door now “unlocked” because she had the code to unlock and did so earlier without being seen doing it.

b) Twist – The killer goes down the hall past the restroom and enters the garage steel inside door which is now “unlocked” but we don’t see him going in. We do see from inside the garage the door opening. It’s Jodi hurriedly entering the garage. She suspicious, questions the supposed detective, “How did you know about my husband trying to put in a police report.” The detective replies faking his answer, “It says so right here in the notes.” Jodi continues, “You need to leave immediately. This is not our home; it’s my parents’ home”. The killer now with the rake in his hand comes at Jodi. Warren has just arrived and bursts through the door throwing Jodi to the floor to protect her. (the last of his visions, btw) The killer is known because Warren knows him as the chaplain. the chaplain pulls his gun and the security standing on the tail gate of Warren’s truck in front of the garage shoots him dead. (FYI) Most importantly, reiterated so the viewers understand why Warren couldn’t identify the killer in his visions, Warren remarks in the denouement to the Detective,” Now I know why I couldn’t identify the killer when I first came to the police station to report a murder,… before it happened, it was because I was going to become his friend and was going to meet him in the future. I guess subconsciously I knew that and because he was to become my friend it would have been too traumatic for me to see him as the killer. Wait until Professor Keller hears about that.” Detective Hart questions, “Who’s that?”

13) Sid and Irene arrive home by cab but Sid, forgetting his key to get in, while Jodi had not answered the front door:

a) Initial direction – Sid was to open the front door with his house keys and would have come through the front, not having to enter using the outside garage entry code to get in.

b) Twist – Sid has forgotten his house keys so instead he does have to enter the outside garage door using his code and the locked garage door opens. This causes Sid and Irene to interrupt the Chaplain about to shoot Warren and Jodi. The chaplain turns to parents. “Good thing I have five bullets in this revolver.” (Meaning he can kill all five of them with his 38 Saturday night special which holds five rounds) Patty the security guard is now standing up on the tail gate of Warren’s truck with her gun pointed at the Chaplain. The Ethereal Spirit is behind her holding up her arms to aim her gun for her at the Chaplain. She yells, “Drop it or I’ll shoot. I have all the bullets “I” need to get the job done!” The Chaplain instead points the gun at Patty and says, “I’ll just have to strangle one of you. Sorry”. Patty fires and kills him. Wow!

13) The denouement. Detective Hart is speaking outside the house; the police having arrived and securing the crime scene. Their conversation is interrupted by who was the red herring as established earlier in the script, Lieutenant Bono.

a) Initial direction – “We have several problems here. We have a security guard who shot a Chaplain with an unregistered gun with four witnesses to substantiate she did it. We have an old rake with somebody’s blood on it which proves nothing. We have a nice pair of new leather gloves which probably could fit O.J.’s hands but proves nothing, and most of all there’s no corpse of anyone you say he could have killed by strangulation and which would have to have his blood on the corpse which I know the Chaplain wouldn’t have been so careless to leave as a former detective himself.” “All this doesn’t prove anything that our Chaplain, who does seem to be missing his wheelchair at the moment, however, could be the Socialite Strangler”. Lieutenant Bono just arrogantly walks away.

b) The twist – Detective Hart, however apologizes for her boss’ crassness and says to Warren that she should have listened to Warren and that in future she’ll be more open minded about using psychics to get leads on a crime. The Ethereal Spirit stands next to Warren as he says, “Let’s just thank my friends in high places, at least the good ones.” “By the way, if you let your boss know, that if they dig up there, next to the adjoining new home their building, my Friend in High Places just showed me, you’ll find the body Lieutenant Bono says is needed to link the Chaplain to the last couple of killings. In fact, that corpse is dressed in a maid’s uniform, most likely with the Chaplain’s blood from his arm on it.” The Chaplain really should have had that arm looked at. I would have done it for him, but who knows if I’ll ever get accepted to med school.”

14) After the police are there investigating everything after Patty shot the Chaplain, the security guard, Patty has been inside her car desperately looking for the earring she dropped earlier as Warren questions what’s she’s looking for.

a) Initial direction – Patty loses her earring and can’t find it. Warren says,”We’’ll just have to buy you a new pair.”

b) Then the twist – The Ethereal Spirit stands next to Warren as Warren slowly rubs his hands down her hips down her legs. Patty exclaims, “Hey, don’t forget you’re a married man.” Warren interrupts, “Give me a minute. Forget about us buying you that new pair of earrings.” Warren’s hands reach her cuffs. He pulls out the missing earring and hands it to her. She exclaims, “Hey, you really are good at this shit. As the credits begin to roll and the shot slowly rises above the crime scene, Patty asks, “Hey, tell me somethin’. Am I gonna find Mr Right? There’s this guy who works over in the cage who I really like. Do you think I can get him to ask me out?… “

15) As credits continue to roll and the closing music plays, the Professor is in his office at the University pantomime speaking on his phone at his desk, leaning back on his chair.

a) Initial direction – He’s doodling on the back of a business card but we can’t see what he’s drawing.

b) Then the twist – He hangs up the phone, stands up and puts his jacket on as he looks at his doodle on the business card. It’s a large religious cross. As he adjusts his jacket he is about to leave, he hesitates, goes back and turns over the card. It’s the Chaplain’s business card which Warren had given him earlier to call him in case something terrible would happen to Warren in the experiment and it backfires on him and he ends up dying, somehow, or being killed by the serial killer trying to stop him.

16) Warren while at the psychic Reetha in Palm Springs, Patty’s mother who after meeting Patty in the casino who makes him leave the casino when Warren calls out the numbers which were coming up on a roulette wheel, Patty recognized that Warren has the gift but needs to be careful using it. Because of this she had suggested Warren to meet her mother who is also a psychic because of something which might have happened with her.

a) Initial direction – Reetha, the psychic, tells Warren she saw in a vision that her husband, Patty’s father, who was a detective and was going to be killed in an airplane crash but she wanted to change his fatal fate. She wanted to stop him from going but he didn’t believe in her psychic abilities as most cops don’t, so she didn’t know what to do to stop him.

b) The twist – Warren asks, “So what did you do?” Reetha replies, “I faked being sick so he wouldn’t leave on that flight, so he postponed his flight and scheduled a different flight.” Warren asks, “Well, did that save his life?” Reetha remorsefully answers, “It was the new flight that ended up crashing, in Chicago in 1980. The D.C. 10 where the engine dropped off.” Reetha warns Warren, “Don’t try to change someone else’s fate; it’ll get you every time.”

17) Aruba where Sid is expecting Warren over the phone to give him the winning numbers on a roulette wheel because Jodi had told her father about Warren doing it at a casino in Laughlin.

a) Initial direction – Warren would be able to keep Sid and Irene there in Aruba because Warren was allowing him to win, however…

b) The twist – Warren’s Ethereal Spirit stands next to Sid as Warren gives him the numbers, but too late each time so Sid doesn’t win, gets upset and tells Warren he’s coming home early because Warren can’t do it and allow him to win. By Sid deciding to come back early this is going to throw a wrench into Warren’s plan B if the retro-intention doesn’t change Irene’s fate and they get back when the killer is supposed to be at their home getting the rake.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 12 months ago by  Warren Goldstein. Reason: added other twists and turns

[Warren Goldstein]

Friends in High Places Life Threatening Sequences of Events 2022-05-10

What is the Villain’s plan and how does that put the Hero in danger?

The villain’s plan is to be able to get away with murdering Las Vegas single, middle aged socialites, projecting upon them in his taking revenge on his ex-wife for having affairs with other uniformed men. This has been since he as a former NYPD detective had been crippled in a shooting and became impotent as well. His wife and her latest lover have been on the missing persons list for the last thirty plus years.

Upon our hero Warren recently trying to come to terms discovering he is authentically clairvoyant, recognizing this only now for the first time in his life at 21, it is because he sees horrific future events which these in themselves suddenly threaten him so he might not be able to marry his college sweetheart, Jodi, frightened of his newfound but turned horrifying gift. This becomes immediately apparent after Warren unintentionally envisions the death of her grandmother a day before she unexpectedly has a stroke.

His college psychology and research professor, Dr. Gary Keller, attributes Warren’s newfound “spiritual gift” to have possibly been caused by having a childhood head injury unnoticeably causing at the time the pineal gland at the bottom of one’s brain to have been affected, determinably responsible for Warren’s latent prophetic clairvoyant ability, more than a decade later. The opening scene begins with Warren at 8 years old falling through a basement new home construction basement window and being hit between the eyes by a sliding large rock. As he lies unconscious on the dust filled basement floor, we are shown an ethereal white being coming out of him through his chest in a whoosh which then enters back into him. This accidental injury lands Warren in the emergency room for stiches. This mysteriously sets up immediately a mystery for the viewer which is followed throughout the storyline events. These visitations however are not apparent to Warren however, intriguingly only to the viewer.

Warren goes to the Las Vegas PD to report yet another disturbing envisioned murder but which he can’t share with Jodi. It is that of his soon to become mother-in-law which is to happen shortly into the future caused by the Socialite Strangler, at-large in Vegas, already up to his fifth victim. In doing so, Warren inadvertently meets the wheelchair bound LVPD Chaplain Peter Anello who unbeknownst to everyone ends up only to be discovered in the last scene of the story not to be wheelchair bound at all and is this highly sought to be apprehended serial killer. Because the Chaplain continues to milk Warren for more of his visions though under the guise of giving him scriptural advice against communicating with spiritual entities which Warren no doubt is unaware, it is insinuated that it’s these spiritual entities which are the means allowing him to have his visions of the future.

Because the Chaplain is a killer, Warren’s life is put into danger as well if and when he might come up with certain information he sees in his visions which he without hesitation shares with the Chaplain, having trust in a chaplain which he welcomes as his only port in the psychic storm raging out of control now suddenly in his life. By Warren trusting him, letting the Chaplain know these things, it causes danger unnoticed at the time by the viewer because the viewer doesn’t know the chaplain is the serial killer. This information threatens the Chaplain, unbeknownst to the viewer, however, to be exposed and ruin his cover and as he might choose to kill Warren as well to avoid this. Letting the audience not know the chaplain is the killer until the very end, however creates a more horrific ending to the story. As a side note, I have had a few seasoned detectives read the former draft of the script and to date yet no one, even the producers which have read it had suspected the killer to be the Chaplain, FYI. This is why I cannot reveal the killer’s identity until the end.

The dangers come from:

· Talking about the danger with the killer not knowing the Chaplain is the killer.

· Now having closeness to the villain trusting him

· Danger to someone they know; Warren’s mother-in-law and her family including his wife, and lastly

· The Unknown danger which is the result of Warren participating in his college professor’s research experiment having Warren as the subject go into hypnosis using a cutting edge technique called retro intention normally used to change memories from the past to change a subject’s present psyche. The difference is that using this hypnosis technique is going to instead have Warren enter the collective unconscious, so-named by Carl Jung, the father of psychology. The professor’s theory is that the collective unconscious contains all the thoughts that ever were and those that exist in the future non-local universe devoid of time, matter, and energy. Because there is no time then any sequence of events is devoid of time and matter. This reaches into biblical explanations as to prophetic visions and such things as prayer to change things being heard by the angels of God. For Warren it’s in order to reach the thoughts of the killer and alter his thoughts. This realm is so-named by the professor in his theory, “memories of the future”. Ironically, it seems like a conundrum to describe events which haven’t taken place in the physical universe under the auspices of only the past and the present but not of the future. These actions and the thoughts existing which haven’t been thought by anyone in the physical world yet become the causes for these future actions which Warren is attempting to change or replace other thoughts which haven’t manifested in people’s physical brains so that they turn into actions, yet before they cause these actions to take place in the future. Also the professor’s theory is that “cause does not have to precede effect”. This is a game changer for former scientific thought.

· Danger also comes from the chance that a relationship could end. This would be Warren’s forthcoming marriage to his college sweetheart Jodi who is scared to death to be married to someone who sees the future.

· Danger by the demand to stop pursuing the mystery. Warren’s wife Jodi demands he not use his clairvoyance any more if he wants to marry her and then stay married to her. This would mean if he didn’t participate in the professor’s experiment which he does only to try to stop the vision from coming to pass of the forthcoming murder of his mother-in-law because he doesn’t want to risk losing his wife, then his mother-in-law is going to die. His must get around this by lying to his wife.

· Danger as well comes from the threat that their own secret could be revealed. This is related to a subsequent vision Warren has since he has started participating in the experiment, screwing with other people’s thoughts in order to change fates of other people. Because of his changing fate, it results yet in a new subsequent vision of his wife to be murdered instead of his prior vision that it would be his mother-in-law. Warren has become now the cause for his wife’s murder, more intrigue.

· Danger also comes from other parties who need to solve the mystery first. This appears to be the police, Detective Sergeant Sue Hart. But, then there is no guarantee they could do it before Warren can stop his mother-in-law’s murder first. This is because that relies on the act of the killer knowing he must first retrieve a rake used as evidence to catch him. In doing so this is why Warren’s mother-in-law is to be murdered by the killer; his mother-in-law not fitting the profile of his victims. There is no advanced motive for this killing.

· Danger from other parties who want the villain dead. This would be the Lieutenant Bill Bono who showed no remorse about killing someone shown right in the initial police department scene where Bono asks the chaplain, “Try to tell me you didn’t want to blow the head off the guy who put you in that wheelchair.” It
appears as Bono wouldn’t hesitate taking out the serial killer himself given
the slightest opportunity.

[Warren Goldstein]

LESSON 6 Crafting the Mystery Sequence – What I learned. for Friends in High Places

Because of Hal’s advice, thank you so much for all the eye openers concerning intrigue you bring to the forefront. I have all the mystery stuff well established. That’s always been the easy part for me. Concerning Friends in High Places, I have needed to both rethink an existing autobiographical script and story I’ve already worked on since 2015. It is sci fi and a thriller. As far as the “who done it” and how the hero faces the villain, I had to combine various real events I have experienced first-hand as a clairvoyant and use an actual incident of real murders I have seen who the killer was and the police never apprehended the killer. Ugh. The killer(s) are all deceased now but never caught by the police. They hid their evidence really well except that I actually saw in real life the evidence and who the killer was frightening me for my own life because he knew I had identified a gun he had, knowing clairvoyantly by exact name who gave it to him. His daughter also knew that I knew and had to not say anything because he had been convinced my visions were authentic The victims were not innocent helpless people so I decided to let God be the judge in all this. I have all the police detective stuff down because my former father-in-law had been head detective in Norristown, PA and I saw and sometimes experienced first-hand cat and mouse police engagement. My father-in-law never believed in psychics until he met me. Because of this his department began using another psychic down in Delaware to solve all his big time high profile murder cases. That alone is a story unto itself.

Go to the end of the story and identify the big secret. The big secret often points to other secrets that need to be covered. The villain’s big secret that has been covered up since the very first scene is that he is the serial killer at large, and as the chaplain for the Las Vegas Metro Police Department, he gets away with it because he’s faking being confined to a wheel chair, appearing thusly not able to commit any strangulations. As his cover as well, it can be confirmed that he actually is a Catholic deacon, providing liturgy, word, and service, having assisting in New York having gone into the Catholic Church while married assisting bishops and priests. This turn to religion was while he would go through physical therapy but with no resolve for a crippling shooting while an NYPD detective leaving him not only crippled but impotent. His socialite wife had left him then however because he became impotent and he as well found out that she always ran around on him and allegedly ran off with a fireman having a liking for men in uniform. This information is only revealed in the denouement by the Detective Sue Hart who has found this out while investigating members of the Las Vegas Metro Police Department for a possible suspect. The Chaplain’s disability made him a very unlikely suspect. His motive as a killer was to get revenge against his wife projecting onto other socialites.

The first mystery must engage the Hero into solving it. It is that Warren has a vision of his mother-in-law being strangled before it happens, but mostly why his mother-in-law? She doesn’t fit the type of the serial killer victims, single, middle aged, and a socialite. She is none of these.

In the chain of mysteries we find although the LVPD won’t take a report on a murder which hasn’t happened yet the Chaplain at the PD takes an interest in knowing more about Warren’s visions. Why, if the Chaplain is warning Warren not to trust visions he may have because they may be demonic as warned by the scriptures? It’s because we learn the Chaplain only in the end we find out is the killer and wanted to learn more from Warren’s visions so not to be caught.

The second mystery concerning the villain is why does he have interest in a missing rake Warren sees in his vision. It’s solved at the end because the rake has blood on it which can be used as evidence to connect the strangler when the blood is found on a blanket wrapping one of his victims. Evidently the blood was a result of the killer, the Chaplain, cutting his arm on the rake while burying one of the bodies which has not been recovered yet until the very end which proves his guilt but only after he has been shot by a security guard friend of Warren watching his in-laws’ house expecting it to be broken into by the killer trying to retrieve the rake to keep it from the police.

The Red Herring is to create misdirection while the Villain gets away with most of his or her plan. Because it is determined that the serial killer most likely is or has been in police or military training to know how to viciously strangle a victim to kill them the Detective Sue Hart must investigate all of the surrounding police department personnel narrowing down her search. We need to keep our audience wondering and investigating two or three suspects. The police lieutenant above Detective Sue Hart is Bill Bono who seems not at all suspicious at first. He did however hire Sue Hart as new detective with very little experience. Perhaps he did this so not to have anyone who is more accredited handle the case and solve it. Also, he was adamant about not taking the report of Warren having a vision of a murder before it happens being the first person to discredit Warren and belief in taking a lead from a psychic. So Sue without question goes along with him on this, Bill being her superior. Bono also fits the description because of his military background, being a cop of course, and not married. One of the victims at the coroner’s office it has been pointed out the manner in which the hyoid bone was crushed. So, the coroner suggests the killer was obviously military or police having such training.

[Warren Goldstein]

Friends in High Places – Warren Goldstein – To create your Villain’s plan. “What I learned is to succinctly make sure all the bases are covered in setting up the sequence of events that get to the final confrontation between our hero Warren, a clairvoyant senior college student and the villain, the serial Socialite Strangler.

Answer these four questions:

What is the end goal?
For the villain, it’s because of his once repressed hateful reproach
for socialite middle-aged type of women which we find out only later, after the final confrontation and in the aftermath when he has been
identified, that it was because his former wife was a socialite and cheated on him after
he was wounded in a robbery and paralyzed from the waist down. This happened while he was
a NYPD cop doing his dangerous duty apprehending a robbery suspect.

How can the Villain accomplish that in a devious way? Because of his enduring hatred and desire to get
even with his wife, who according to police missing persons’ reporting from thirty years prior, she supposedly ran off with a fireman in New York,
without ever knowing what happened to her or her lover. This villain’s killing of other women in revenge makes him feel satisfied to
instead take it out on other socialite “too good for themselves” women by
strangling them. As a former cop and detective he knows how to get away with it
without being caught.

His need to get even with his ex is by his projecting on to his victims by
enjoying the fear by killing them slowly this way and see them suffer. This is because, we
learn only later, that his wife disregarded his personal feelings without empathy or any
remorse and that she only chose men in uniform as well with whom to have her affairs in order to anger him.

How can they cover it up? (giving away who the unknown strangler is and ruining
it for someone who reads this script) He had not only become a Catholic deacon
while in physical therapy which never seemed to work for him, but now years later went on
to hold the position of Chaplain to the Metro Las Vegas Police Department.
He dishonestly remains in a wheelchair to avoid any suspicion as to his
ability to strangle anyone while being able to continue to have an inside pulse to continue his sick and deadly cat and mouse game without his capture or being identified.

Sequence it to make it as intriguing as possible. After his initial victims and without leaving any
traceable clues to him and his being aware of all the angles the police
detective is working on discovering his identity even while he is right
under their noses the whole time, his plan will become ruined. This is by Warren
trying to avert and stop the horrific prophetic vision of his mother-in-law becoming the
sixth victim of the at-large serial killer.

Because of Warren going to the
police in the first place for their help, which is the first inciting event that propels the sequence of
events which eventually will put an end to the villain’s clandestine plan, serendipitously, he overhears Warren attempting to make a police report on a murder which
has yet to happen. Because of this event the villain intentionally befriends Warren at the police
station interested to find out what else Warren has seen in his visions especially that Warren might actually identify him in some way if Warren is authentically and provenly clairvoyant. This of course is after the detective, clever Sergeant Sue Hart, had already shined Warren off. This is because
of her disbelief of having a psychic see the details of an impending
murder which hasn’t happened yet. Come on…

The villain only
through a subsequent event meeting with Warren again for a second time, pretends to advise him spiritually and religiously to warn Warren not to have communication with spirits but only as a lure. His intriguing goal he discovers and steps him to the next sequential event is to locate a rake which Warren doesn’t know has blood on it but from
a prior Socialite Stranger murder victim’s body. The rake with the blood stain had been used in
burying his number five victim and which tore at her wrapped blanketed body and his arm as well in the dark with his blood remaining on
the rake. It accidentally bounced out of his pickup and landed on the
driveway of Warren’s in-laws’ house for which Warren’s mother-in-law
picked it up and then it ended up in their garage, out of site from the
street.

This information which builds the suspense will lead the killer to Warren’s in-laws’ house
to get the rake back to remove his evidence that might link him to the murder victim number five. This is where the strangler,
according to Warren’s vision, will have to confront Warren’s mother-in-law
in their garage where he is predicted by Warren that she will, though
unintentionally, become his sixth victim.

Each event occurs in a sequence
as Warren strives to eliminate the causes for the killing in order to stop
it. These causes however theoretically lie in the future for events somewhat of which already
transpired because of Warren since becoming now a participant himself in this sequence of events trying to change his mother-in-law’s fate. Warren must not let his wife-to-be know about his vision or she has threatened not to marry him because his supposed “gift” frightens the hell out of her and can’t live her life with someone who is clairvoyant.

Warren only
undertakes his college professor’s experiment as a last resort solution.
This is the paralleling sci-fi element, although based on real events in the author’s life, but not of time travel which is
impossible, but rather through use of retro-intention hypnosis which the author has used as a master hypno-therapist as well. the hero’s goal is that Warren
might be able to engage the “collective unconscious” and narrow in on the
killer to try to change the villain’s “memories of the future” which are yet to occur and to change his choices he makes in events along the way. This solution which is to occur only if Warren participates in the professors’ experiment is theorized by the
professor to be able to use hypnosis of a clairvoyant to enter this “non-local universe” realm to change people’s own thoughts they will have in the future. This (by the way) is how and why a psychic can see the future events which have not happened yet. The professor’s goal is to get his theory published now having the proof.

• This reply was modified 3 years ago by  Warren Goldstein. Reason: to correct codes

[Warren Goldstein]

SOTL Stacking Suspense – Silence of the Lambs

WOW. Great exercise having filled in all the scenes. I did not notice in all scenes particular character MIS notes. Thanks for this 5 hour exercise. I almost can recite the lines back from this flick. Once again I really loved the denouement with Hannibal calling from the Bahamas. Having someone for dinner and seeing Dr. Cheldon there was something I missed the first time I watched the film. Anthony Hopkins was absolutely great and the dialogue I felt kept the MIS going well.

Thanks

Warren

[Warren Goldstein]

Warren Goldstein – BI Stacking Suspense comments requested. The chart appeared to “not mention” numerous points of intrigue throughout the movie scenes which I personally perceived through GREAT subtext and not through dialogue but “talking heads” would have made it too much of a soap opera to rather listen to while ironing LOL. However, I cannot detail these points here specifically within the time and space constraint of the forum.

However, the mystery aspect in every scene was continuous without any superfluous scenes to distract us from the suspense. So, the mystery was quite clear in each scene which I found succinct.

Conspicuously, I noticed each scene’s intrigue to appear and stand out perhaps rather as “goals” for our hero to digest on and which because we were sucked into Nick’s psyche took us along with him on this ride. This left us at the end of each scene with the suspense which keeps us tuned in for more. I discovered in each scene (mostly) a dependence on adhering to a hope versus fear paradigm to qualify the moments of intrigue. I was “hoping” all along Nick would get the girl in the end and love would triumph (the American audience requirement). This fulfilled this requirement of most successful films counting the B.O. After all, it’s all about break-even of budget to gross which is 3 to 1. (See question at end of this commentary) *

It was too obvious the film was trying to make Sharon Stone appear as the killer from the onset which I can live with. Seems when the actress is “too” beautiful the writer has to put in some conflict in her personality to distract from the pretty face on the screen. Having Beth come in looking like a stable forlorned abandoned love interest was very effective and did not cast any dispersions on the intrigue and the mystery as to “who done it” being “stacked” up on us. I would have liked more clues to substantiate the mystery aspect of each scene. Cops depend on working on clues and motives, for the record and I found this area weak for a cop movie and could have been increased to make the mystery more mysterious. Once again, having such a big star like Stone play the female lead made me doubt it would have been her as a killer (good try however), making her game playing cause us to think she was just a bitch to Nick, however.

Talk about shock value suspense to take home with you, putting the ice pick under the bed in the last scene was a great chilling recompense for our temporary relief as to have already had the killer subdued. It worked, and it was totally unexpected and a surprise. Worth the price of a ticket other than seeing Sharon Stone’s body double in the sex scenes, from a male perspective, which in this day and age is no big deal anymore. Hitchcock would have been proud of that ice pick “mind f—“put in there as the last “emotion” we would have in our gut for the film. People don’t remember what is said or what is done but only remember how they are made to feel – ask any successful politician. Killing now days for namesake seems to be overdone, just watch the local news if you just want that. It’s the switcheroo’s that make me want to watch more.

FYI Concerning American audiences appeal as to M.I.S., (I can only speak from this perspective on my own)

*Because it’s all about success which is measured in dollars, in reference to the reliance solely on the M.I.S. structural conventions of this film related to this exercise, I noticed this film’s budget at $49 million which was shy of breakeven (3 to 1) in the US with US and Canada B.O. at only $117,727,224. Looks great but no cigar! (I had been an auditor in my past and having training by David Leedy comptroller for Universal) This “might” indicate American thriller genre audiences’ appeal for this type of thriller particularly during the 90’s was shy for “some reason” compared to US audience’s desire for “pure” action thrillers almost 10 to 1 (unfortunately for lower budget productions) Jackie Chan’s martial movies on low budget could make such profits and have instant distribution worldwide, considering most of “us” are shooting for low budget producers or we wouldn’t be taking this class. This should be kept in mind. So, my point is this example as a “money maker” cannot be substantiated as one might want to believe. US versus worldwide gross at $352,927,224. This is where the income return to investment was actually seen at 7 to 1 or a profit of theorized return which was 4 to 1, which is outstanding from “just” a thriller with lots of drama with only spurts of action. So,… my question might be is that do “foreign” audiences because worldwide outranked US B.O. have a different perspective of a thriller than US audiences? Is there a missing caveat here?

I would hope Hal might comment to his knowledge on this please to guide us in the decisions “we” make in writing thrillers with action verses lots of drama such as this film that will be to our advantage in scene MIS structure. Thanks!

[Warren Goldstein]

Characters and the World – Friends in High Places

“What I learned doing this assignment is…?” and put it at the top of your work.

An outline is essential prior to writing.

(Note: the assignment I previously edited down to simple statements did “not” post in the forum and I’ve had no response back concerning this and cannot spend another couple of hours detailing the specific characters “again”, so here is the original notes) Customer service has not responded to my numerous inquiries concerning the program, FYI)

Tell us the Intriguing World you have selected for this story. The CONCEPT in this science fiction thriller is that of the paralleling of two worlds simultaneously in which a murderous crime must be solved ahead of it occurring so that it can be averted. It is an envisioned future strangulation death of our hero’s mother-in-law by an unknown maniacal serial killer, prophetically witnessed by senior pre-med psychology major college student, the hero. It is based on true certain characters and events, autobiographically having transpired in Warren Goldstein’s life, now presented as a sci-fi thriller by this author, a now well-documented clairvoyant as well.
Warren, for the first time, by discovering his so-called gift of prophesies at 21, he must intervene “somehow”, simultaneously acting in both of these two worlds to curtail the fulfillment of his vision of this maniac killer’s soon to become seventh victim.

The two worlds in which Warren must accomplish this, first understood but to be easily recognizable as the known physical world, referred to as the “local universe”. Traditionally, this can only adhere to the auspices of both Isaac Newton’s physics as he was the culminating figure of the Scientific revolution of the 17^th century, predominantly followed strategically by Albert Einstein’s 20^th century innovation since defined in his lifetime. This was by his theoretically and proven in his day accepted e=mc²; energy, mass, and time with a strict unbendable “relevancy” between these three known accepted factors to exist; time and the circumvention of it however is our most intriguing variable for our story’s focus.

Together these two academicians’ forefathers’
perspectives are necessary to explain and portend all physical existence, though
only stepping through conscious acceptance of a past, the present,
and that of the future, that is,
until now in this innovative cutting edge thriller. We conceptually engage
yet another new conflict hidden from our understanding but to be dramatically
unmasked
playing between these two worlds, the physically undetectable and
immeasurable “non-local universe”, harboring
the “collective unconscious”, theorized to exist by Carl Jung, the
renowned “father of psychology”. This
theorized realm contains the metaphysical existing memories of events past, present, and those not having occurred yet in our future?
If this being the case, according to the tenants of
quantum physics, our professor theorizes and believes his goal to be able
to enter the realm of the collective conscious by using a clairvoyant
subject having access to this theorized realm for his experiment in order
to prove his theory access to this non-local realm existing without “mass” as in Newton’s and
Einstein’s “only” Physical
universe, compared to the
theorized “nonlocal universe” that
realm which would be then be devoid of and without dependence on any of
the three elements of Einstein’s e=mc^2,particularly that of “time”, the “c²” can our hero, the clairvoyant subject, under
the use of “retro-intention” hypnosis
be able to actually alter or eliminate those causes existing yet in the
future because of his own actions to intervene in his clairvoyantly prophetic
vision of his mother-in-law’s murder by the villain, the Socialite
Strangler?

We portend a new concept proposed in our story by researcher and theorist Dr. Gary Keller, our hero’s college professor and a quantum physics oriented paranormal psychologist and most imperative to dramatically propel our story, acting as the agent of change in the life of our hero. Dr. Keller terms this new esoteric dimension he investigated uniquely as the “memory of the future”. This is our unique hook to our concept in entering the most electrifying world theorized by him as already existing outside of the “local universe’s” time factor of our current physical world. This world is battling up against the conscious easily accessible present “local universe” world of physical reality we’ve been conditioned only but to accept.

The Big Mystery, Intrigue, and Suspense of the story.

Big
Mystery: What
is the main mystery of this
story that will keep us wondering throughout the story? It is, “Can “causes” for physical events actually
exist in the “future” for events
that took place already from our past
or currently exist now in the present?”
More so, can these causative events or circumstances be altered or eliminated
in order to change what religions and ancient cultures for centuries have looked
upon as inalienable fates of individuals? These unique mysteries are the intriguing
hook to this film, yet to our knowledge, have these been actually answered
satisfactorily by any of the great science fiction writers per se. Our
concept picks up where they have might have left off, such as Arthur C.
Clark, Robert Heinlein, H.G. Wells, or especially the twentieth’s
century’s most revered great physicist theorist Albert Einstein.
Ironically, however, intriguingly, he perhaps only could refer to these
non-material interactions within our physical world by such witnessed phenomena
as “spooky actions at a distance”.

Intrigue:
There is constant challenging intrigue
as to resolving our mystery
as to an at-large serial killer, while relying on to consequentially reconcile,
does this mean “cause” necessarily “always” has to precede
“effect”? Or is it that, mirroring
our autobiographical author’s own theory resulting from his first-hand
experiences as a clairvoyant, a hypnotherapist, and a trained scientific
researcher, as portrayed through Dr. Gary Keller and as to this theory that
might these story goals all be reached?

The clock is ticking while Warren must depend upon not the police, which
dismay psychic knowledge to make them take Warren’s vision seriously, but
reliance is rather upon his college quantum physics based paranormal
psychologist researcher and as well Warren’s professor in his but last
college elective course requirement prior to graduation before
anticipating entering medical school.

Dr. Keller is the key to the resolve of the story’s mystery, while
attempting to help Warren in solving a serial killer theme. His motivation
is ultimately to be able to prove his own theory to be published now discovering
Warren to become his research subject in order to prove that “causes” actually can exist in the future for those events as well that
have already transpired both from
our past and now in our present.

Big
Intrigue: What is the covert,
clandestine, underhanded part that will live under the surface for most of
the movie? Can Warren with the use of Dr.
Keller’s cutting edge hypnosis technique called retro-intention be able to allow Warren to enter the collective unconscious and
institute the change of memories of the future which have yet to take
place but need to be selectively altered unknowingly to both the killer
and his mother-in-law? In doing so, can
and how might our hero actually
be able to alter or totally eliminate those “causes” theorized to be residing in the future but are to
become the leading events hidden from our present world consciousness so
as Warren will be able to change the outcome of certain strategic and
those unwanted forthcoming future events.
Characters’
Intrigue: To prove Dr. Keller’s theory to
get published is a necessary and intriguing paralleling side line which complements
and perpetuates our on the edge of your seat suspense life and death
situation in our storyline in order for the discovery of the identity of
the serial killer, not necessarily to apprehend him without the police
however. This turns out surprisingly different to enhance the suspense of the story.
To assist our hero, Dr. Keller uses a “cutting edge” newly developed
hypnosis innovation of his, retro-intention technique application, in
order to reach what are also newly termed by the author as “future memories”. This is somewhat of a conundrum for our
intellect but necessary to establish the intrigue of the science fiction genre’s
expectations. Though it is based upon real documented events and occurrences
by the author, though names having to have been fictionalized so not to
compromise the real life family relationships remaining to an actual
killer in real life and who was never apprehended, or identified while he
was alive then.
This intrigue strategically is implanted beginning right
from scene one, building from
one prophetic vision coming to pass to the next, leaving but only the sequence
of visions related to the murder of his soon to become mother-in-law to remain
yet to be fulfilled. Warren must find a way to intervene, save her life,
and change her fate but without his soon to become wife Jodi having shared
that he’s using his recently discovered apparent clairvoyant prophetic gift
which frightens her and threatens her to want to go through in their
upcoming marriage.
Can Warren go against the accepted scientific status
quo of the intelligentsia which does not want to step beyond the “what if” of science, the story’s continually
intriguing challenge for the climactic resolve to this mystery. It will be by our
hero through the help of his agent
of change in his life at this time regarding his newly discovered rare
and proven to be perfectly accurate prophetic psychic gift. Can his
college parapsychology professor and researcher, under his direction,
using retro-intention, how might Warren have access to enter this “collective unconscious” in order to
solve the structural mystery and
to continue the on the edge of your seat pending resolve for Warren’s
quest to be able to intercede in the serial killer murder of his
mother-in-law. Warren must put into practice his own efforts to thwart
this catastrophe by attempting to alter and eliminate the causes leading
up to her death. However it appears only he and his professor realize that
at this time these causes only exist
as “future memories” titrated
from Warren’s prophetic visions.
Warren’s mystery is to solve Who is the serial killer
Big Suspense:
What is the main danger to your Hero that will continue to escalate
throughout the script?

[Warren Goldstein]

cheryl

i have tried now numerous times to get help with the site through customer service without EVER getting a response. Now after posting lesson 3 assignment it does not show up in the forum. Please advise immediately. This is so frustrating.

Thanks

Warren Goldstein

702-271-2123

[Warren Goldstein]

Subject line: (39 Steps) Thriller Conventions – Directed by Alfred Hitchcock

Warren Dan Goldstein

Wdg4449@yahoo.com

702-271-2123

What I learned: That this was not as “slick” like the later Alfred Hitchcock thrillers. Hitchcock allegedly was the master. Hitchcock later declared “you only get the suspense element by giving the viewer information”. So,… I felt that the plan of this thriller was a bit pretentious because there was not enough suspenseful information given to the viewer to build initially enough intrigue or suspense. This seemed weak.

Hitch said, “In mysteries you are holding back information, but this does not guarantee an emotional engagement with the viewer. But we “must” “give” information in order to get that emotional response to build suspense. That’s what was confirmed to me by watching this older film. Simply having the movie’s theme about some “unknown” information with consequences which was never revealed what it was. This “alone” was not strong enough to get me on the edge of my seat. This information was “that information” which had to be stopped from leaving the country, (England), but seemed a relatively uninteresting thing but not maybe for that era. This was written just prior to WWII when spying was the big faux pas as compared to the high tech stuff of today and with nuclear consequences etc.

The consequences of this film were “not” great enough for me anyway. If it were a bomb to go off, etc., we as an audience would have been more engaged with more emotional leverage at stake, not knowing where and who would be killed with “life and death consequences”. Instead, as it turns out in the end, it becomes just a supporting character who seemed relatively unimportant though in the opening scene. It was a theatrical mentalist showman who could memorize things and people could question him and he precisely would repeat what he knows verbatim. Only at the end of the film in the denouement we see this connection and this was the ultimate mystery unveiled, war weaponry secret formulas etc. which were being stolen in order for spies to get them out of the country, and most likely to the Germans at the time who were the bad guys but not precisely stated as such. The Germans as we know today were the ones with all the technology secrets including the A bomb.

ACT #1 – Doing – Events to establish the mystery by “actions taking place” – “characters doing things” (thank you Chris Soth and his 8 Minnie Movie structure based upon historically the original limitation of movie reels which at first ran only for 15 minutes each and had to be changed for the next reel. This concept conditioned audiences to experience sections of the story in parcels as structure each with a beginning middle and end, like beats for example)

#1 Minnie Movie – ACT I begins – the “doing perspective” for the viewer which begins with the “Status quo” – Mr. Memory, a mentalist performer, in a theater giving his mind memory performance whereas he is portrayed as having memorized everything in the world it seems and people would ask him questions he had to answer. Suddenly, a shooting takes place, shots fired. “Mysteriously”, an unknown woman, we learn later, Anabella, is frightened to be seen there as the protagonist Richard Henney takes her out of there and goes to an apartment I “assume” he has for rent. Frightened, she goes to close a drape, then goes with him back to “his” apartment. She says she fired the shots in the theater in order to create a “diversion”. This is a mystery as well as to why she needed a diversion. From what? To stop what?

She says two men there wanted to kill her. She says however it is “not” a “spy story”, but rather she is an “agent” of the government (England?), but she has no country. (Why?) Mystery is who she is and why? Intrigue – covert, underhanded, clandestine. Emotions are tension, anticipation, uncertainty. Don’t know who the villain is “exactly” yet. She must save a “secret” from being dug up and taken out of the country. This is a life and death situation because the two men will stop at nothing to stop her.

She warns Richard that now he is in trouble “as well” because he followed her. She makes him look out onto the street to see the two men outside on her corner to establish the intrigue. She mentions the “39 steps” but not “what” it means. She says she is the “only” person who can stop them, the unnamed villain leader that is. Intrigue, because there are only days and the secret information she must protect will be then out of the country, the suspense. She does give a clue that the leader, who has a dozen names, but has the top of his little finger missing. She says that there is a man in Scotland she must “visit” if anything is to be done to stop this from taking place, but not as to “who” that man is. Richard says, “Scotland Yard has “39 steps”.”

#2 Minnie Movie #2 15 minutes. Richard is now a reluctant hero not wanting to become involved, unwitting and not knowing what to do to help her get away from the two men. This woman stumbles back in to Richard’s apartment but with a knife in her back. He is now “more unwitting”, not knowing what to do. She’s now dead and the phone keeps ringing. Men are outside at the corner in a phone booth. In her hand is a map with a city circled. Why? Intrigue. Richard doesn’t want to be caught by the two men and needs to escape the building being resourceful. He believes the problem will just go away, however, but now the problem reasserts itself with him involved.

While the two men are outside, Richard shows further resourcefulness and exchanges his clothes for that of a milkman to get past the two men. Here is a “good man” doing a “bad thing” now, lying to trick the milkman, fabricating a story, telling the milkman he has been having an affair adulterously with the woman on the third floor and the two men outside are her brother and her husband after him, though he knows she’s rather actually been murdered but the milkman does not and exchanges clothing with him.

#3 Minnie Movie #3 – approximately at 20 minutes. Richard’s attempting to resolve the problem at hand and “possibly” to take over for Anabella to find out what the woman wanted to avert. However, at this suspenseful moment, it’s “primarily” to escape the authorities about the dead woman and or the police as his immediate goal is so not to be killed now himself. Escaping the two men he takes a train to Scotland after seeing a map with something circled that was in Anabella’s hand after she died.

The two men see him at the train station and persist to catch that train themselves, but we don’t know any “information” how they would know Richard would be going there and if they also made it onto the train. Cut into a scene I suppose where a landlady discovers the dead Anabella in Richard’s apartment, and she screams (Hitchcock style) shockingly.

The action becomes suspenseful for Richard to continue to get away and “intriguing” as to why the two men now want to catch Richard particularly, still unknown. Perhaps they believe Richard knows something told to him by the murdered woman agent. Will they get to him before the train gets away?; no, to keep us hanging on. The hero is now locked into the adventure. All the ordinary things won’t work it seems to just get away from this and he now is involved, so he continues to head to Scotland.

Now there are a different two men who share a private train seating room with Richard and he reads their newspaper about the woman who was murdered which has Richard’s picture in the paper as a suspect for her murder. Authorities now on the train are searching the train for him. He however escapes police by going into a stranger’s private train car seating room, a beautiful woman (Hitchcock as a philanderer always made sure of this) to avoid the authorities finding him. He starts madly kissing her, but hiding that it’s against her will but charades as lovers in order to feign off authorities.

But after he leaves her without respectable apology, she tells the authorities that he’s the man they’re looking for by her knowing his publicized name. He escapes them on the train when it stops to search for him but strangely right on top of a bridge and he hangs outside onto the bridge to hide from them. This builds intrigue as he faces death of falling off. The train pulls away. A news radio report broadcasts publicizing his description on the radio as well and his name. His picture is already shown to be in the newspapers.

This ACT II continues after this PLOT POINT 1 He’s now resourceful by walking on foot and stops at a farmhouse and rents a room for the night. This would be until he can get to the city that was circled on the map. Again he lies, “a good man doing a bad thing”, saying he’s rather looking for a job. The owner of the house has a wife who appears unhappy with her over zealous religious husband having her live out in the country and forms an immediate liking to Richard because of his metropolitan pizazz, but this makes her husband jealous. Richard probably discloses to the wife the truth about himself and his predicament, but we can’t hear dialogue, only see him speaking to her through a window (Hitchcock style), building intrigue and mystery “not knowing information” and we as the viewer must “imagine” that he’s telling her the truth about himself. He trusts her.

The wife at night awakens and hears cars coming, supposedly the police looking for him. Richard pays her “bible toting” (planting a future event to be related to this personality) jealous husband to hide him as police arrive, but instead the husband reveals to the police he was there. His wife quickly gives Richard her husband’s heavy jacket to wear in the cold as Richard continues to flee. Richard is attempting to resolve the problem at hand concerning his innocence but isn’t doing well because no one believes him so far except for the jealous husband’s wife.

This personifies that we are indeed in ACT II which is the “observing perspective” for the viewer as to story structure and as Richard unwittingly attempts to solve his problem, his obstacle, while he escapes police again, but they remain on his trail to catch him escaping through the countryside. This is the first of the big chase scenes. Suspense builds that the police are going to get him. The consequence to this will be then he won’t be able to stop the mysterious plot which he doesn’t “understand” exactly what it is yet, but in order to do this.

This “understanding” must happen in the upcoming ACT III (of four acts which I follow and make more sense to me instead of just one, one hour act II which needs to be divided into two with each one having a definitive different viewer perspective, FYI) which is the forthcoming need for viewer “understanding” of what’s happening on the screen. This anticipation to “know something” not yet known builds up intrigue for us. All Richard knows at this time is that he’s trying to stop “information” getting out of the country for the dead woman agent. The mystery, which is lack of information, persists to us as viewer and to our hero getting us emotionally connected to Richard making us continue to want to watch the film.

#4 Minnie Movie #4 around 45 minutes-ish, halfway in ACT II – Richard must take on a “more grandiose plan”. This begins at 38:44 when Richard reaches the house of a professor which address was on the map in the dead woman agent’s hand, not knowing as to “why” he must go there except the agent woman mentioned she must go there but didn’t, of course, or who the real villain is as well. A party is going on and he asks if this professor knows the murdered woman by name, which he does. Police arrive but the maid at the front door lies to protect Richard from them. Something’s going on “why” she wouldlie to hide him from the police. Hint… Intrigue

Then the professor lies to police as well as they leave. More intrigue. Richard notices that the Professor has his little fingertip missing, a big clue to confirm the identity of the villain. The professor is the real villain and we are now knowing the more grandiose plan Richard must go forward to put into action. But this villain exposes to Richard his goal concerning that there is simply “information”, mysteriously not saying what that is, though he must get out of the country. He’s the main villain, now revealed. Richard “understands” now who he is against which is rather to become ACT III’s “perspective of understanding”.

The mystery continues but is still not clear “how” that professor is to convey the supposed unknown important information out of the country but still not knowing what that information “is” or “how” he is to do this, get it “out” of the country. Intrigue. The professor suggests Richard to take his own life, suspense, but then as Richard looks to escape, instead the Professor shoots Richard in the chest; though we assume this is the location of the shot because we don’t see any blood. This is a “red herring” in our story, needed, which we will disseminate in ACT III. We are led to rather “believe” Richard is dead and the villain now can continue in his goal suspense, but…

#5 Minnie Movie #5 and beginning ACT III (of 4 acts) at 55 minutes. This is the “understanding perspective” for the hero and the viewers. Back at the country house the overzealous religious jealous husband states he left something in his jacket pocket and learns that was the outer coat which his wife gave Richard to wear in the cold. We joltingly “cut to” Richard now seated before a sheriff in Scotland that he apparently “trusts”, and shouldn’t have, mistakenly, showing the sheriff a hymn book that was in the pocket of the jacket he wore which stopped the villain’s bullet and saved his life and allowed him to escape the professor, the villain. This trust has been betrayed and the sheriff turns him over to the local police as a murderer. However, Richard escapes from the police through a window he breaks and runs off.

Richard stops in, accidentally it appears, at a political rally meeting, whereas the people believe he is one of the speakers at the meeting. The two villainous men show up there. Richard speaks b.s. political rhetoric and wins over the crowd at the meeting, b.s.ing everyone in his political speech. This is as the still angry distrusting woman he kissed on the train who told the police he was there in the train is now in the wings of the hall standing with police and the two men masquerading as authorities,(bad guys) so we are led to believe them to be.

Unfortunately, Richard is trapped. The two men take him away in their car but along with the woman he kissed who turned him into the police, with the woman not understanding why she must go with them as well at this point. They aren’t being taken to where the two men said they were going. She is being kidnapped by them and still is angry at Richard, not believing him and thinks he is the murderer of the woman in his apartment and was appalled at his affronting her back in the train. He trusted her mistakenly.

It is eye openers for Richard and he decides to change his character, his personality as he starts to examine his own character as he becomes aggressively mean to the woman he kissed while she is being kidnapped with him and handcuffed to him resisting him all the way. Sheep block the highway and the two men exit the car to remove the sheep out of the way of their vehicle, leaving Richard and the woman handcuffed together assuming now they won’t escape. However, they run off and through chase action through the woods and a waterfall being closely pursued by the two men.

Still in ACT III, we as viewers “understand” they are not just police but are the villain’s agents. Suspense is resolved “temporarily” as Richard and the woman have escaped and get into a hotel. One room left with one bed, so they must sleep together, hiding their adjoining handcuffs to each other while the woman persists fighting with him while Richard tries to hide this with his new forceful aggressive actions hiding their confrontational interactions. This is especially from the Inn keeper’s wife who rather wants to “believe” they are lovers instead and favors helping them by not telling anyone they’re there for a rendezvous and to thwart anyone who may come after them and to let them have their night of romance, so she wants to believe.

1:13 The woman gets out of her side of the handcuff while Richard is asleep and is about to escape from Richard. She overhears the two men on the phone in the hotel lobby talking about their plot and realizes Richard’s innocent of the murder of the woman. The Inn keeper’s wife gets rid of the two men believing Richard and the woman are lovers trying to get away from something not realizing who the two men are. So, the woman goes back to the room with a new attitude knowing Richard is innocent, her eye opener.

This clearly appears to bring us to Minnie Movie #6 still in ACT III, where we “understand” the villain is much more dangerous and conniving than we had believed. 1:10 The professor leaves his house headed for the Palladium, but we are not knowing the reason, building intrigue as to “why” and for what reason – going to the theater? For what purpose?

The final ACT IV begins with Minnie Movie #7. This is the battle of words, deeds, and actions between the hero and the villain. 1:16 Richard wakes up and the woman tells Richard what the two men, having come to the Inn, and having used the phone there with the call mentioning the Palladium show where the Professor had gone. This is while supposedly we assume the professor is on his way there, building intrigue as to the unknown as to “why”. The couple hurries to get there because Richard knows he “must” in order to clear himself of the murder and hoping to find out how the information is to be taken out of the country and to confront the villain, he assumes, secondary to proving his innosense of the murder.

The hero goes right against the antagonist who has the secret plan to get the secret information out of the country, but still the viewer and Richard not knowing exactly how. The hero realizes he can be destroyed but still needs to prevent the secret information from getting out but not knowing what that information is. He must put his plan to do that into effect.

1:19 Now inside, seated in the Palladium for the show, more police arrive as the show is going on, blocking everyone from exiting the theater. Richard sees the Professor, the villain, in a balcony box seat and looks through a borrowed pair of binoculars that the Professor’s little fingertip is missing, the second time noticing this. (I personally would have waited to reveal this now instead of at the Professors’ house, BTW, because it would have more intrigue)

1:22 Richard hears the same song being played as in the initial musical theater where Anabella, the Woman agent fired the two shots. The same Memory man is there performing. Richard has a catharsis and figures it out that the information which needs to be stopped from leaving the country is inside Mr. Memory’s head! (How trite, especially for Hitchcock) Richard has solved the mystery as to where and how the information was to leave the country. The professor, the villain, is there to take Mr. Memory out of the country to get the information to the enemy.

Now only one will be successful. When the police are about to remove Richard, he yells out to Mr. Memory, “What are the 39 steps?” He can’t help but answer this question on stage, so he conforms to the requirements of his act to answer all questions posed by the audience. He says the 39 steps are technical questions about some sort of weaponry. The viewer is sure now that these people are foreign spies collecting that information on behalf of the foreign office of,… but cut off as he is shot by the villain. Mr. Memory might live but we’re not shown that precisely as the authorities hear Mr. Memory blurt out what he memorized as he lies dying on the floor of the stage. We assume the hero has prevented the spies from getting that information out to the enemy. I assume that Hitchcock was prevented from making it known the enemy was Germany.

[Warren Goldstein]

I agree to everything except the phrase stating copyright protects an “idea” rather only “an expression of an idea”. The electric light bulb is an idea, the automobile is an idea, a movie about a shark is an idea but which only the means of “expressing” those ideas are able to attain copyright. (Hope this might be helpful) The same goes for a “title” because that would be trying to have an exclusive “right” to the words themselves. You’ll sometimes find hundreds of theatrical works with the same title if you go to the copyright office government website and do a search. You need to put this form before a copyright attorney concerning your use and description of the word “idea”, FYI. I personally in the past have delt with the copyright office firsthand concerning titles especially.

[Warren Goldstein]

Warren Dan Goldstein. I’ve been in the music biz originally produced and recorded and help train Andrea McArdle prior to her role as Annie on Broadway. I was only 24! I written five film scripts, two stage plays, produced a stage play prior to the Olympics in L.A. in 1984 which was picked up as a film musical by Universal with completed full recorded soundtrack I composed, but MCA couldn’t guarantee release prior to the Olympics so I chose “instead” to do it live, and to a great L.A. Times review. “Here’s to the Winners has all the elements of good Broadway musical theater.” Majorie Stradinger April 1984. Went to NY Stewart Lane Palace Theater but Broadway went on strike and came back to L.A. I’ve been in numerous films etc. so look at my imdbpro https://pro-labs.imdb.com/name/nm5630218/?ref_=sch_int.

I’ve already had classes taught by Chris Soth, Pilar Allesandra, had film business classes at UCLA in 1980 and have listened and read many of Hal’s topics and presentations which won me over! Seems he has a great “boots on the ground” focus on Thrillers and I need more of his expertise training which I feel from just his intro he will give us. Thanks so much! Warren

[Warren Goldstein]

Oh, I see you can only “reply” in order to post. Correct? No instructions. thanks

Warren

[Warren Goldstein]

cheryl Hi and how do you introduce yourself “below” where do you enter the information? thanks Warren

[Warren Goldstein]

Bob

Sounds really interesting and would love to see this on the screen. Harry Met Sally on steroids. LOL Actually this happened to me in real life (not the homeless vet part) and reconnected with the love of my life 30 years later! I love stories like this. I can relate.

Thanks

Warren

[Warren Goldstein]

Robert

Can’t wait to see your story on the screen.

Warren

[Warren Goldstein]

Judith, I can’t wait to see your script become a film!

[Warren Goldstein]

Christopher, Hi. thanks, I forgot about Clarice’s roommate Ardelia. This was probably because now I think of it, she appeared to be less needed as some sort of “agent of change” for Clarice, meaning, she didn’t do anything to invoke any sort of change in Clarice I could perceive, the purpose of “supporting” characters. Perhaps, however, I now think was a band-aide so we could “hear” Clarice actually bring out certain feelings to remind us that Clarice was just a young girl although respectively in her capacity credentialed in psychology and forensics as brought out in her explanations of the murdered girl’s corpse, while taking on a big responsible and dangerous job, the FBI.

The fact I forgot about Ardelia having nothing to “risk” with her in those scenes or for Clarice to risk with “her” didn’t add any intrigue or suspense (for me anyway) to those scenes, dropping the ball to add on to suspense and or move the mystery forward bordering on an unnecessary chick flick movement which diverted the moment. I “paid” for a ticket, as Hal said, to get scared, intrigued, and for me to hone my own Sherlock Holmes mystery acumen, but these scenes fell short. These scenes didn’t put me “on the edge of my seat” as so many of the other scenes did extremely well in fact. Hal seemed to infer the goal of the writer in a thriller is to “keep” the viewer on the edge of their seat for “every” scene and the Ardelia scenes did none of that for me and I interpret not well for you.

to the screenwriter’s kudo’s from me is because I have written a serial killer script already and I have found Clarice’s description of serial killers action and characteristics very on the mark. This reassured me of credibility in her acumen in her character’s capacity in the story in contrast to her sweet and darling girl next door politeness.

Thanks again for your comment that made me think more about this supporting character’s MIS aspect and as well for her purpose.

Warren

[Warren Goldstein]

Michele, thanks for reminding me that Hazel Dobkins was a great Red Herring in the story along with the other one, Catherine’s lesbian lover although she didn’t have a criminal record like Hazel. I didn’t find Hazel subtext to make her creepy enough to do something and the screenwriter instead relied on using the police recorders but that didn’t grab my emotions, nor did Hazel have a motive, despondent lover etc., whereas the lesbian lover’s actions and great subtext made her believable to me.

thanks for making me think harder. that’s why a forum is so good.

Warren

[Warren Goldstein]

Jack, You made me think about (now after watching SOTL) that there was a parallel with Clarice like Hannibal, both manipulators (like most shrinks) as to how she worked the room when it came to men. Of course Hannibal was the master. His intellect was overwhelming which made me frightened and distrustful of him as the villain, whereas Clarice’s manipulations of men were obviously innocent and because she needed to do her feigning off sexual advances by older men as a “diplomatic” move which every viewer would accept as being okay.

thanks for pointing that out to me.

Warren

[Warren Goldstein]

Judith

I agree about not finding Nick unwitting, UNLESS being an addict defines a person as unwitting although clearly he is a sex, alcohol nicotine, coke addict etc. Ironic, but in real life Michael Douglas admitted himself to have been treated as a sex addict. type casting, huh…

I thought the “great” Alfred Hitchcock twist to this movie and the fear it caused, the emotions it elicited as the last hurrah for this film. Having our emotion jiggled is what we remember from films – the ice pick at the end. It was a mind “f—” after having been convinced, or at least the cops were convinced, Beth was the killer and the case was solved (unless I missed something).

The key to drama as I have seen in the great thriller writers seems to the “hope versus fear” see saw they put us on, maintaining the tension which “appears” to me to be the foundation of “intrigue” which is different to different people. I think this film didn’t reach US audiences as well as it could because this film (amazingly reported for US B.O. with advertising equal to the production budget didn’t break even, but that’s the studio system accounting system – cost $49 million, U.S. gross was $117 million, needing $150 million to breakeven without profit. Worldwide Gross later did well BUT distribution profit to the producers for foreign is perhaps 5% of US profit back to the producers. (That’s why stars and above the line is there to guarantee money to stars and writers etc. because no one ever sees profits except studios padding the upfront budgets. My concern about this film is that cop films (having several detective friends over the years and father-in-law who was head detective in Norristown PA) I’ve “found” from their experience in the real world, that without a “motive” usually there isn’t a crime.

Case in point: Catherine’s motive was made to appear was because in order for her to write a murder thriller she had to experience the characters first hand. come on? This was Hollywood in the 90’s. The writer should have made the motive believable like in Silence of the Lambs. I honestly feel if there is to be a believable murder mystery then Beth obviously was the one with a real “believable” “motive”; all her clandestine acts, different name, not being honest about knowing Catherine, having “one” lesbian affair, questionably because she was obviously lying by omission, jealousy and she was a shrink! They’re all screwed up and search the crime files; so many of them end up being perpetrators in sex crimes etc. I have a degree in psychology and had been accepted to med school but because all the shrinks were nuts (first hand experiences during training) right off it made me believe she was in fact the killer, not a red herring. The red herring was Catherine’s lesbian lover. Your form posting just made me think about. I really like your “unwitting” comment. Nice catch!

Thanks

Warren

[Warren Goldstein]

Sherri, I liked that you described the intrigue as “tension”. I found “tension” to be “fear” versus “hope” and that seemed to keep me at least tedder todering upon our emotions; in one way hoping that “love” might actually surface, as contentious as Nick and Catheryn’s relationship might appear, and with “fear” that he might be putting himself into harm’s way by following through on his attraction for her. I like the word “tension” to describe this. Thanks!

Warren

[Warren Goldstein]

Patricia

Good point about the red herrings being created by the antagonist rather than appearing on their own. I see how effective that was now that you mentioned it. Good catch!

Warren

[Warren Goldstein]

Chris. Good call on noticing not enough action at the beginning, just the sex thing and then nothing until the car chase. James Bond flix continue to rake it in almost 40 years later and the audiences of this genre expect that. If producers only read at most the first ten pages of a script (now days) we might not have a chance relying on drama or sex and not “thrills”. Just a BTW.

Also, subtext is the key, Gene Hackman having been the master of this without a word spoken sometimes. Good catch!

Warren

[Warren Goldstein]

Eric

I haven’t seen this film but I’m now enticed to see it.

Warren