the story of the murder of Michael Malloy, from the perspective of the scheming (and basically bumbling) nogoodniks who wanted to cash-in on his death.
the story of Jean Paul Getty and his kidnapped grandson John Paul Getty III, but beyond the kidnapping itself—both of their lives, all the way through, and colliding at the climax with the kidnapping that JPG1 reluctantly paid-off.
Note: Holy shit this movie actually got made, in 2017, and an FX one-season series on it came out the year after.
the story of David Atchison, "US President For One Day". Start it like the true story and, when he realizes that he's president, he launches into spree of “doing cool presidential things,” then passes out from exhaustion—and then he wakes up at 8 pm and realizes he slept through most of the day as president, and everything he thought he did was actually a dream; he had gone to bed shortly after getting word he was Acting President.
the story of the murder of Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey.
a hotel in The Borscht Belt that sees a lot of famous acts come through.
a man rots in an isolation prison cell (themed like a motel room) that he cannot leave. there's one window that a light always shines behind and curtains can be drawn to block it, but there is no concept of time other than his own aging. he can click a button on the wall and get a bunch of metal parts to assemble, which he'll put back and click the button to exchange for food—working for food, essentially. he inevitably cracks and tries to break out, trying a thousand ways but none work. ...so he goes back to working, and rotting.
a revolutionary war or civil war film through the eyes of a child, who attends school in a schoolhouse, plays with fellow kids, walks the town, and returns home to a troubled life, owed to the nearing battles or the absent father/older brother. the dialogue is in modern parlance so as to help us relate easier to the story and to the kid.
true story: in 2007, a Bosnian couple were using chatrooms to cheat on each other, and then they realized they were cheating on each other with each other.
a film with director's commentary throughout the whole film (often times shutting-up to let the film do its thing, but only when they want to) and will straight up explain what's happening over the dialogue.
film that is a modern day version of Mozart and Beethoven—a child prodigy gets lauded at a young age while a jealous parent forces their own kid to "become" a prodigy in order to get the same amount of fame, or more.
a film where the perspective (literally, the camera) is always in the eyes of passers-by.
A twenty-something guy is in a coma and realizes he’s dreaming, and begins to lucid dream to create the rest of his life inside his head because he doesn’t know if he’ll come out; he crafts his perfect life. (Does he wake up? The ending could be ambiguous.)
a tribe where only a few males can survive past sixteen because they are to kill each other off to establish dominance and worthiness of being the alpha males. half of the kids, thinking themselves weaker, are reluctant to partake, but all must. bracket is random, but each winner must win two rounds (i.e. must kill two other boys).
a TV show where the episodes are each twelve minutes long, with two in every half hour block (so it's set up like a children's cartoon), however the show is live action and for adults.
TV show about a reform school for disturbed and delinquent high school students: the Phoenix Academy.
Billy Mitchell predicted air as the next battleground, and then predicted Pearl Harbor. wiki/Billy_Mitchell + nationalmuseum.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=739
TV show named after a family who watches TV all day, but this show is about the shows they watch—like a variety show that follows a bunch of different story plots across the season; multiple different stories happening in smaller bites and always in the same sequence.
wiki/Neerja_Bhanot - flight attendant sacrifices herself in hostage scenario to save passengers.
"I Think We're Alone Now" by Tiffany to be used for horror movie trailer (or for an entire silent horror short); the 1987 radio edit, not a new version sung by a creepy little girl or fed through an echo filter.
a gang of skilled yet plucky Somali pirates, in touch with today's culture; it's a modern quirky workplace comedy where the work is heists & hostages and the place is the ocean.
give a Band of Brothers treatment to the First World War and the Korean War.
miniseries about people running for president (following a two-term incumbent) and their campaigns and debates, as if it’s a mockumentary competition show—like Total Drama Island but in the realm of the high-profile election season. we don't know who'll win by the end, and people drop out along the way. republicans include Louisiana bible thumper senator, arrogant super-rich CEO, rapture-loving Christian leader, loony Maryland representative, stiff Arkansas senator, cheery Colorado governor, dopey Indiana senator, asshole Arizona senator, stubborn New Jersey governor, war veteran Virginia senator, brash North Carolina governor, dodgy Kansas senator, psychotic Alaska senator. democrats include libertarian New Hampshire senator, bureaucratic Massachusetts governor, clumsy NYC mayor, incessant Green Party candidate, radical Michigan senator, progressive Ohio governor, egotistical California senator, unrelatable Connecticut senator, boring Illinois senator, extroverted Pennsylvania senator, socialist Minnesota senator, aloof New York senator.
what if people from American Lore were superheroes? John Henry, Paul Bunyan, Johnny Appleseed, Pecos Bill, Rosie the Riveter, Captain Stormalong, etc.
Note: Maybe I’ll hold onto this one and make a one-off comic book of it.
pre-dusk, sun going down: truck drives down desert road with Mexican refugees in back. sundown: approaching US border within the hour; stopped by police; a nervous refugee springs out, and others follow, scared, including our protagonist. dusk: protagonist flees from truck as cops chase on foot, out into the open desert, running, running, running. twilight: his running mate is captured, he hides. dark: he hides and waits, then after some time walks towards the border. the first light of dawn: he walks on, certain he is close if not there already.
WWII movie about elite group of paratroopers dropped into Italy deep behind enemy lines (like, when Allies were stopped at the first defensive line) and undertaking a mission to kill Mussolini.
a woman is given a stack of letters, never sent to her, from a man she loved a long time ago (the man died while in a mental institution); they were bequeathed to her by the facility after he died under mysterious consequences. she reads all of the letters from first to last and realizes that he never stopped loving her after some kind of disagreement over infidelity, and then he had a mental breakdown and committed a crime while in a heat of passion to win her back, was committed, and then died of heartbreak.
a miniseries staged to look and feel like a real reality TV show, like Survivor mixed with Hunger Games, in which homeless people are kidnapped off of the street and forced to fight to the death on national television.
if any boardgame should get turned into a movie, it should be fucking Candyland. YES.
web series: the messiah is a teen in one of the poorest and most violent parts of America (like Compton or South Side Chicago) and he struggles with healing such a populace and getting them to cooperate peacefully, and rise-up against the real oppressors.
web series: a guy with neurosis has an inner dialogue where banal events are very nerve-wracking since he's afraid of pretty much anything he puts his mind to (ex: just being in an elevator is a fast-paced word hurricane of him recounting facts about elevator failures and claustrophobia and germs in the air).
you know how "every classroom" or "every group of people on a bus" seem like "the perfect group of people for a television show"? how about you cast the show with no characters in mind; just get a bunch of actors who seem capable and intelligent enough to “go with it”, and build characters around them. (Hold on—that’s essentially how the secondary characters of The Office were cast, so obviously this strategy works, but the main characters on that show still had to be created beforehand in order to run the plot while the secondary characters had time to develop their personalities… so you’d need quite a lot of time with these actors working together through various scenarios in order to find their characters, all before filming and scripting could begin—maybe then, though, sending those characters back through the warm-up scenarios for the sake of the scripted series.)
wiki/Edgar_Cayce - The Sleeping Prophet
nytimes…emil-zatopek-unmatched-glory-at-1952-olympics + articles.baltimoresun…1991-05-05/sports…zatopek-jansson-run-a-marathon + runnersworld.com/elite-runners/emil-zatopek + guardian.com/sport…olympic-stunning-moments-emil-zatopek + wiki/Emil_Z%C3%A1topek — a Czech long-distance runner best known for winning three gold medals at the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki. He won gold in the 5,000 metres and 10,000 metres runs, but his final medal came when he decided at the last minute to compete in the first marathon of his life. He was nicknamed the "Czech Locomotive".
a SyFy original movie called Overdue about a calm, docile, meek librarian who gets possessed by the ghost of a US soldier from the Vietnam War, and she goes around and kills everyone who has an overdue library book.
short about how the voice of a Bop-It is telling kids to do things like it's a game but he's actually getting sexual pleasure out of it (he loves when you flick it, that kinky bastard).
cooperativeindividualism.org/montagu-ashley_conversations-with-albert-einstein-1985.html
usatoday…2014/02/09/mississippi-medical-school-graves-found/5320995/
When Pete Schoening saved those people on that mountain (K2).
short about the lying journalist Stephen Glass' post-journalism attempt at a career in law, and his rejection by the Bar Examiners for ‘not satisfying’ the moral fitness test due to his past. wiki/Stephen_Glass#Failed_New_York_and_California_bar_applications
an embedded journalist in the Iraq War, with the story quarter-told through the news camera following him. he dies at the end. (think "Michael Kelly, 1957-2003," but solely taking place in Iraq.)
Christian Bale and Matthew McConaughey are redneck punks who sit on a dirt road in a gorge that goes between towns, and they try to beat-up everyone that comes down the road.
fake-documentary (a la Blair Witch Project) on the Dnepropetrovsk Maniacs - bestgore.com/murder/dnepropetrovsk-maniacs-murder-guy-hammer-screwdriver-real-snuff-video/
an investigation into a murder in a dockyard leads to the uncovering of a foreign mafia or cartel’s presence, and further-up to foreign government aides and an ambassador orchestrating it, but the ambassador has diplomatic immunity so he flees once found out and gets away with it.
true story: the 1975 MobileLand Conference, when auto moguls and oil tycoons gathered to decide new gas prices under shadow of OPEC, fearing the unhappiness of the people while not caring for their blight, and deciding how much money they can milk the populace for without inspiring revolt.
drug dealer gets a teachers aide job at a high school to better be able to sell drugs to kids.
zombie movie bringing in a religious aspect: when another person dies, not only do they become a zombie but a demon possesses their corpse after their soul leaves their body.
miniseries covering the ages of the Kennedy family, from Joe Kennedy Sr. to young JFK to the Camelot era with JFK, RFK, Teddy, and Eunice & Sargent, to RFK, to Ted, to JFK Jr. and Ted, to the death of Teddy and the end of the original Kennedys.
therapist with narcolepsy—makes for awkward moments when the distressed patient is telling a boring story and looks over for guidance only to find a snoozing doctor.
TV: a small high school where the fifty kids in the student body are based on the fifty states.
a zoo would be a good place to fortify in a zombie apocalypse because all the defenses keeping animals IN could theoretically keep zombies OUT.
a pugilist who bandage-wraps horseshoes onto the front of his fists.
Idea for a feature-length porn I will never actually make but still had the idea for: a woman gets teleported through time and space when she first orgasms, and this sends her to renaissance Italy, and she realizes she needs to find more people to seduce and fuck in order to eventually, hopefully, be teleported back to her original time and place. successive times/places include the Mayan empire, Roman-occupied Egypt, Nazi Germany, Cold War Russia, futuristic Chicago, Victorian London, 1770 Boston, 1920 Atlantic City, 1870 Wild West, other places...
A television show that's an hour long that is basically a head-to-head concert. Two popular music acts take turns performing on opposite sides of the room, and the person/group that the audience preferred the best wins (judged on song choices, quality of performance, and how well they pulled it off). Live, at-home voting?
a documentary about the security guards on The Jerry Springer Show.
a short comedic video: a standard high school health class where the teacher’s lessons are as if our health practices today were those of the Neolithic and Renaissance—i.e. demons inside the stomach stab at the uterus once a month, as an attempt to escape, and that's why it hurts and bleeds ("and that's why women are inherently evil"); headaches are caused by demons that can be released through a hole drilled into the head; the common cold can be cured by bleeding-out “the bad blood” with leeches; etc.
neglectful parents who have an unintelligent blind child—but instead of tending to him, they bought an electric dog collar for him and set-up an invisible fence around the yard so that he can stroll around the property without walking onto the busy road.
a film about a fraudulent faith healer, either in the 1930s or 1940s.
noir/action piece set inside Alcatraz prison during its operation.
when doing a film about a historical person or event with so many amazing scenes that they couldn't all be strung together rationally and still make time, they could instead be strung together by having a professor teaching a class about the subject and narrating the movie, cutting from one moment to another as needed.
turn The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson into a miniseries.
Note: Holy shit this is actually happening, with Keanu Reeves in one of the starring roles and DiCaprio/Scorsese producing for Netflix.
a TV show that, when returning from commercial, counts down from 3 to "picture start" with the old film countdown video—that way the audience has a moment to get their attention back to the screen.
sitcom with audience laugh track that is actually a bunch of gobbling turkeys.
a drama film about an escape attempt from one side of the Berlin Wall to the other. (There’s a History Channel documentary with some good examples in it: The Rise and Fall of the Berlin Wall.)
a film about a person who trained their whole life for the Olympic Games, went and won a silver/bronze medal, and then took 5th at the subsequent Games, and now doesn't know what to do with their life since the Olympics aren't a part of their life anymore. (Think Rod Serling’s Requiem for a Heavyweight.)
The uncovering of a cave system like El Sidron reveals that a number of Neanderthals were victims of cannibalism; elsewhere in the world, more Neanderthal victims of cannibalism are discovered, and carbon-dated to the same time almost exactly; nearby, in a peat bog, a warped body is exhumed in great condition. This body is accidentally hit with a pickax when uncovering it, and a little nick in the taut flesh appears, opening up a massive stink from inside the decaying Neanderthal corpse: inside that corpse, coming out with the stink, was the dormant zombie virus which infected numerous Neanderthals across Europe, meaning there was a zombie apocalypse in 12,000 BC, and the surviving Homo sapiens fought them all off eventually then settled down to make agriculture, industry, and civilization. This zombie virus gets inside the exhumer and within three minutes he transforms into the first modern zombie, and he infects four other people before he is killed; those people infect others at a faster rate than they are being killed—and so on, until the zombie apocalypse comes again in the post-modern civilized world.
A TV show (miniseries if one season) that is a show like Survivor except it is a sitcom self-aware of being a competition/survival show. So the characters dance around tropes that editing would've brought in, like how a character gets more attention in an episode if that's the one they'll voted off in, e.g. "man, Kyle, you're so nice; why're you teaching us how to play the guitar?" "You never know if this is the episode I exit the show with, so I figured I'd get around to it just in case!" Etcetera. Jokes inhabit dialogue as if they weren't supposed to, and characters are circumstantially ignorant. There are obstacles and challenges in each episode, and voting sessions to remove people from the game. There's also a villain character who is clearly a stereotypical villain (not done so with editing but rather has some obvious characteristic, like a twirly mustache or a scar across a dead eye) who somehow makes it to the last four or three people; every person is a stereotype of some sort but they’re all ignorant to that fact unless a joke demands it. There's also wild, misconstrued, and improbable interpersonal relationships when at camp, outside of the trials/games, which come into play a lot.
White Baptist character who has a T-shirt that says “I went all the way to Georgia and all I got was SAVED!”
Guy becomes president and reveals all of the government secrets (ex: Area 51, JFK's assassination) in a live broadcast; he fears that the “shadow government” may kill him, but with the whole world now knowing (and also presuming he'll be a target) he feels safe that nothing will befall him.
Feature Film to the tune of Grey's Anatomy and Scrubs: inside a hospital for 90+ minutes, following doctors and nurses and their actions in one long take, as if it were a real day. Medical problems and personal problems bare themselves to both doctors and nurses. At the very end, an old man survives a heart attack but a baby dies during birth, and the Chief of Medicine remarks to the medical intern staff "sometimes you save someone who's going out, and sometimes you can't save someone who's coming in—there can be a cruel irony to our work."
A guy is a peeping on his hot female neighbor (she's married, and he's afraid of getting caught by her explosive, violent mafioso husband); one night he is watching her and ends up seeing the husband beat her to death (after she confronts him about cheating), and he fumbles to escape, during which time the husband sees him. The remainder of the film is the guy eluding the mafioso, amongst other intersecting plot lines. (The mafioso husband is introduced as egotistical and ruthless in a scene where he shoots a hooker who didn't swallow his semen after giving him a blowjob, having taken offense to her spitting "him" out, so he blew her brains out with his pistol.)
Film where a guy from the modern day time travels to the past (to 1926) accidentally, and he makes the most of it by pretending to be a fortune teller (since they were gullible, and calling himself a ‘time traveler’ would be too risky given the people's xenophobia). He knows a bunch of brief and various verses from rap songs, which he recites and thereby inspires a new breed a music that blends unheard-of rap with then-contemporary jazz; he also reinvents what he remembers from music (such as The Beatles' song “Hard Day's Night”) onto wax records, sung by tinny men and women with a swing quartet. As a fortune teller, he proves his "ability" by confidently stating facts about the future of 1926, even though the shit he tells the people for their personal fortunes is all made up and based on observations and general presumptions; "let's see, it's 1926, so we already had World War I-" "you mean, The Great War?" "Yeah, the war to end all wars—right, right—well, we have a second one start in 1939 and get millions of people killed. But we'll get to that later. Let's see... 1926... In three years, on October... 12th? Monday, 1929, the stock market will crash and America will go through the worst economic downturn it'll ever see—and it'll send all the other countries of the world into a similar state, like a ripple effect. That'll last for a decade before it gets better. At the same time, a series of dust storms from poorly-tended farmlands in the middle of the country will decimate the area and send thousands of broke, desperate farming families westward to find jobs in California. Prohibition will end in 1933 out of pity for the poor, but all of the gangsters will be in jail by then—even Capone. Outlaws and suave robbers will become the new crime-sensation for newspapers and households, as Robin Hood-like gunners will rob banks across the flat, desperate middle states. FDR will enter the presidency and hide his polio, then bring in very progressive tactics to form thousands of new jobs, and the country will start getting back on its feet by the time World War II starts—which we'll join only because the Japanese launch a surprise attack on us, but everyone will eventually suspect that the president knew it was coming but wanted to get into war with England at the start so that he could run for more terms ‘on necessity of continuity’ and maintain his autocracy. — And THAT ALL is only the next fifteen years. I know more." "...Okay, we believe you."
Black comedy wherein the aging ‘trophy wife’ mother is visibly jealous of her hot young daughter because someone tried to rape her — and so while everyone else tries to comfort the daughter, the mom is pissed because she feels like her daughter has reached a level of beauty she never did (if only because nobody ever tried to rape her).
Odd lonely man who pays prostitutes with his checkbook.
A comedy film that slowly turns into a full-on thriller/horror.
The Round Table of Camelot reimagined as an elite honors frat at an ivy-league college.
An adorable sorority girl who becomes a drug kingpin on campus; her dad is a DEA agent. (brobible.com/culture/article/sarah-furay-adorable-drug-kingpin-prison/ + kbtx…drug-dealer-who-received-international-attention-sentenced-5-years-after-her-arrest/)
A true story: A very well-designed bomb is found in a casino in 1980, with detailed instructions on how to deliver money to its shadowy inventors in exchange for an explanation on how to defuse it. The FBI and casino owner did not give in; the hotel was evacuated; the bomb went off. The casino managed to survive the explosion, and the inventor was later captured and jailed.
The daily lives of five people who were selected for a one-way trip to Mars, where they’ll establish the first human colony on another planet. We experience their exhilaration, fears, hopes, doubts, goodbyes, etcetera before they finally board the rumbling rocket bound for Mars...
Capitalizing on that time a strange gelatinous material fell from the sky over rural Washington, using that as the basis for a sci-fi/horror feature.
Horror film called “The Crier,” based on the “La Llorona” myth of Mexican lore. Also known as the Weeping Woman. – A legendary ghost prominent in the folklore of Hispanic America. According to the tradition, La Llorona is the ghost of a woman who lost her children and cries while looking for them by the river, often causing misfortune to those who hear her.
Note: Holy shit this movie actually came out three years ago.
An analogous story about a secret society run by a corporate-type figurehead, which promotes itself highly but is actually devious and secretive; shaming and harming their rebellious cult members; even the figurehead physically harms and emotionally manipulates the people closest to him. (A parallel of David Miscavige and Gold Base, of the “Church” of Scientology and the Sea Org.)
Centipedes are terrifying. What if there were a way to have a horror villain monster based on a centipede without it being totally corny? Native American legend? Radioactivity? Ghouls?
Live-action Fantasia-type series of interconnected animated films set to the classical album “Yanni, Live at the Acropolis.”
Dramatic film that perfectly syncs to Pink Floyd's "The Dark Side of the Moon" album.
A freelance agent hired by God for an immense task...
Movie: Gary Sinise portraying James Cagney in his later years.
The next screenplay I want to write is a remake of It's a Wonderful Life but with Nicolas Cage as the Jimmy Stewart protagonist—and it's meta, sorta like Scrooged but the story is ABOUT Nic Cage and his eclectic and legendary film roles, with him starring as himself.
Note: Holy shit this movie actually happened, sort of—the main idea was explored in this year’s “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent“.
Movie: “Vin Desus” stars Vin Diesel as the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, here to *save* us from a physical force, like an army of demons or space aliens or whatever.
remake of 1976’s Gator.
Movie: classic Robin Hood storyline, but in the modern age, regarding income inequality and the socioeconomic wealth gap. Could be a feisty heist, or a tale of revolution. Regardless, it's a perfect way to adapt the narrative for today's audiences while still being fresh and sticking to the source material.
Movie: "Robin Hood vs King Arthur: Dawn of Britannia." Arthur replaces the Sheriff as antagonist, in that the Robin Hood storyline is elevated from local to regional, when Arthur has staked his claim over a portion of England. Except Arthur's motives and mission are well-intended—it's just that he means to better Britannia through unity and oversight (collaboration and protection) as opposed to the traditional faring of individual villages, which Robin and his Merry Men want to keep intact for the sake of libertarian self-governing. This puts the Merry Men at odds with the Knights of the Round Table, prompting them to escalate to war at the midpoint of the movie, ending with Arthur's victory [at a more consequential battle] and a possible sequel of a battered Robin returning after losing some friends and his village being folded-into the kingdom.
Near-cheesy period/action film where explorers (conquistadors?) do battle with/fend-off megafauna of this new land they discover. Could call it “Terror Incognita”.
Bob Odenkirk portraying Robert Moses in a biopic, but he’s the villain and Jane Jacobs is actually the protagonist—even though she ultimately loses. (I could [and would love to] write this. Could enlist the brother, and together adapt “THE POWER BROKER” and “The Death and Life of Great American Cities“, because adaptations sell easier to studios.)
Note: Holy shit Odenkirk independently suggested in a reddit thread that he wants to do exactly this story.
Horror parody, like Not Another Teen Movie but for the modern-classic horror movies: begin with Final Destination's airport scene; jokes regarding boarding and take-off and then a big carnage; protag 1 flashes to reality and says he had premonition of a crash; half of our met characters leave plane and it flies away... crashing a few hours later in the snowy mountains; these characters (incl. an Ethan Hawke type) begin an Alive ripoff, for some period (and Sinister references for Ethan Hawke; also, The Thing); the premonition survivors undergo a Final Destination plotline for their remainder, with inclusions of other movies like Saw and The Conjuring, and etcetera and etcetera and holy shit this would be so fucking fun to write.
Original document created 08/30/2013.