GENRE FILMS (cont.)
Hijacked House - A family moves into a house souped-up with electronic locks and moving cameras in top corners of rooms, and motion detectors and burglary deterrents. A nefarious entity hacks the house’s controls and keeps the family hostage, saying he'll let them go if they kill their baby girl. The two kids are trapped in their bedrooms, and the parents are forced/coerced from one room to another by various technological aspects of the house. (The hacker is working for the government, testing the security system of this model of house, which they’d like to implement for all important heads of state.) At the end, the parents don't kill their kid and—to ensure there’s no “talking” about their experience—they're all killed. The government says the house is perfect and performed better than expected. (08/27/2013)
A person who is disenfranchised by their country has the realization it's a fascist dystopia with no privacy and no freedoms, only the appearance of them. Everyone is born into a niche and live-out their days absent of dreams, as slaves for the progression of the country (i.e. for the benefit of the country’s backroom oligarchical elite). The president has been around for decades, after changing the term limit during a long war, and endless propaganda campaigns have recoded national allegiances so the people now adhere to his name, symbol, slogans, and mythos instead of his title, position, office, or popular body, thereby creating an everlasting ‘icon’/’legend’ to obey until and after his death. Perhaps the president has died and was replaced with no election and no fuss. (Think The Wave meets 1984.)
Note: Lol, uh, more like “Think Trump, c.2016-present”. It’s utterly mind-boggling to think that, not even a decade ago, I was dreaming-up all these “dystopian fascist” story ideas, believing even then that they were corny, played-out, and farcical—and yet, mere years later, it became our fucking reality, and the end-goal of a few powerful demagogues, Congressional and commentary butt-suppers, and a whole swath of the populous…There's a national media building, run by the Department Of Truth, that controls all of the television channels and shovels mindless propaganda entertainment into the minds of the masses. The Department Of Registration gives everyone a "facebook" page upon their birth. The Department Of Transportation has constructed highways of cars that are “attached” to the road and follow automated tracks just by punching in destinations, and all of a person's “necessary” destinations are programmed into a chip in their left hand that was put there by the Department Of Registration immediately after they were born. (08/27/2013)
“The Spaceship Rules” - Spaceship of massive metal plates and beams, inside; interior is designed with 1970s lights (a lot of light bars and recessed others), aesthetics, and typography. One of two grassy/rocky parks is treated like a beach; picnicking, artificial sun-bathing. The only way into the cavernous metal-cube-enclosed bay that contains the park is via the horizontal pier and its two descending stairways.
Nick Kroll is on a blanket, eating a sandwich; says his tire was slashed (motorcycle?) and the mechanic (Joe Pesci) wouldn’t release his car for a few days until the rubber casing was replaced (“no sleeve, no leave,” he said).
I have a jet pack, and when I see a rival (a criminal or a gang member—either way I’m a vigilante; not authorized to have a jet pack) I fly up and shoot a mini-rocket off at them; the energy shield at the pier (the only way in) cascades up and down from the edge of the extended pier lip, going floor to ceiling and wall to wall, and the cops will arrive soon – and the rival dodged my rocket! (oh noes) so now I need to fight, before somehow, also, flight… (Based on a dream I had.) (01/02/2018)
“Mr. Eternity” - A man is born in a nomadic tribe in the BC times, and he doesn’t die. He moves around the world, being wherever is the “most happening” at the time, constantly reinventing himself. Think “Long Live Walter Jameson” (Twilight Zone episode) meets The Man From Earth (2007) except, instead of the latter’s [completely satisfying while low-budget] design of “all sitting in a room and talking about it”, we follow this man throughout the ages, with him at various locales and events and corners of the world—snapshots of adventures, plights, and famous interactions, up until the present-day. (08/30/2013)
“The State of Insomnia” - It's a play on words: the people are in a state of insomnia while it's also a whole nation of insomniacs, like the United States of Sleeplessness. (you get it. I know you do.)
This is our world but if sleep wasn't a thing. TV would air new shows from 9 pm to 4 am, the “new” prime time, and there'd be less of the same type of channel, since all the programming can just come from one: one food network, one history network, two news networks, only two or three big staple networks, etc. There are games and activities specifically devoted to occurring at nighttime. The nightlife is equal to the day-life, so clubs are open whenever. Workdays are 10 hours long. More problems have been solved than in our world since they have the time to continuously work at them, i.e. cancer is cured; it's more futuristic. Transportation is different, as they use car-like things; magnet-driven train-like things are popular. The zeitgeists of the decades of the 20th century are completely different, and wars didn't play-out the way they did; their wars were completely different from ours, and a lot shorter at that since the fighting was done in continuity. The countries are relatively different, by borders and ideologies, and there's almost world peace...almost. There's still rebels and malefactors, as there always are. There's no religion, since nobody dreamt them up.
It starts off with a baby being born who falls asleep and everyone thinks it died; the clamor of their elevating panic wakes it, which startles everyone—and it’s eagerness to doze-off prompts alarm and curiosity from doctors, who then run tests and deduce “the child goes unconscious occasionally” for reasons they can't figure out. The world is swept up by this scientific sensation, with headlines reading "Child Routinely Comatose, Yet Easily Roused". (They don't have the words "awake" or "asleep," nor do they “dream”.) The doctors can't figure out what's wrong since the baby still eats and has motor function. A scholar comes forward saying that, in ancient times, it was written that a child was born who fell into light comas when the sun went down and came out of them when it came up, and he would have spectacular stories to tell afterwards—visions, supposedly, but fanciful and unrealistic; they called him "Magna Relator" or "the Great Storyteller." Crowds of people would sit quietly and patiently around him, waiting for him to rouse and tell them a story; sometimes he wouldn't have a story, but when he did it was glorious. (Most stories they tell are all realistic, like documentaries or comedies or dramas; there is barely any sci-fi or fantasy, since few people dream, and creativity comes in the form of action, not idea; these people have realistic and helpful ideas, and less whimsical ones since they haven't had dreams to invoke a sense of fantasy within them.) And the film is about the world’s peoples learning what dreams and sleep are? I don’t know. Something else happens. (08/27/2013)
Ever-Changing Protagonist - The film begins following one person through a narrative of theirs, but changes to another story at the climax of that story by jumping to another physically-nearby person, now following their narrative—and rinse/repeat, and so on, etcetera. (The protagonists often don’t get a “true” resolution to their particular story. Consists of multiple genres, tempos, and character-types.)
A man escapes abduction in the city and flees his pursuers, dwindling their numbers through cunning and force as he goes. It culminates in the man holding a pursuer's gun to the pursuer's head in an alley; a woman passes the alley and stops, looks at them, who look at her—and she turns briskly and keeps on walking, eager to pretend she saw nothing. The camera follows her and the last we see of the man is a second pursuer getting the jump on him, and the three of them struggling over the gun. (No dialogue during this chapter.)
The woman walks deeper into the city, calming and slowing down; she checks her watch, redirects herself, and comes upon a store wherein she buys a dress. (Inside, perhaps, mentioning to the salesperson how her day is going.) Exiting the store, she passes an open market and sees her husband there, chatting-up a gorgeous younger woman. She takes a picture, checks her watch, then goes back to the dress store and buys six more—the ones she tried on but opted not to get, for the sake of frugality. She then goes to a jewelry store and purchases a glut of gilded joys. She checks her watch and goes to a coffee shop, and waits for her husband—a sharply-dressed executive-type—who shows up for lunch. He greets her; she shows him the picture, he tries to lie, she slides him his maxed-out credit card saying he'll need a new one, then she smooches their waiter, smirks, and walks out. (Minimal dialogue in this chapter.)
The camera follows the waiter back into the kitchen. He tells what happened to his coworkers; they’re gleeful yet he doesn't know how to tell his girlfriend. He decides to call her: she's upset; he says it's not his fault; she hangs up. He takes off his apron and leaves. He buys a rose and has it couriered to his girlfriend with a note to go to the park at 1 pm. He is then seen talking to a variety of people. At the park, he sits on a bench and waits; the girlfriend shows up, displeased; stranger after passing stranger hands her a rose as she walks toward him; by the time she gets to him, she's got a dozen roses. He says he didn't enjoy the free kiss, because there’s nobody else that excites him: he loves her, and he gets on a knee and proposes. She says yes. People applaud. A mime fist-bumps him as he leaves the park. (Largely dialogue in this chapter.)
The camera follows the mime, who gets into a feud with a little girl, who is ruining his act by penetrating his invisible walls and blatantly spoiling his illusions. He tries to box her up but she just steps aside. He tries to hoist a piano above her and cut the rope, but she just stands there and sticks her tongue out—etcetera and whatnot; it's all comedic. The girl eventually loses, however, by flinching at something invisible; in a huff, she leaves the park. The mime is victorious and the gathered crowd applauds. (No dialogue during this chapter.)
The camera follows the girl who runs back to her bodyguard escort, sat upon a bench nearby; he walks her back to her house—and, the whole way, the girl mopes about being embarrassed by a mime. The bodyguard tries to cheer her up, while remaining stoic, but eventually resorts to making funny faces and having pratfalls, which manages to crack a smile and get her giggling. Once they arrive, however, the girl runs in to see her father—but he is preoccupied with his computer and shoos her away. The bodyguard goes to comfort her but she runs past him, too upset. (No dialogue during this chapter.)
The camera follows the bodyguard as he is summoned into the father's office. The father, a small-time mob boss, discusses with him the recent actions of ‘the scum of the city’, the rival family. The boss begins to monologue about an idea he had—a plan to uproot his rivals, forcing them into making concessions by using the rival boss’s kids as leverage—and how he hastily initiated this plan earlier this morning... He motions to a false wall (both familiar with) and they pass into the secret room, wherein is the man from the first chapter—having been abducted during our absence from him—who is now restrained to a chair, with his mouth gagged, and is bloody and bruised and missing a pinky finger (severed and freshly wrapped in a rag, and put in a cigar box). Two of the pursuers from that chapter step away from the man, and in the back of the room is the husband from chapter two, still sharply-dressed but a tad disheveled and cleaning up: behind him is the bound, gagged, and bloodied ‘gorgeous younger woman’ he was seen talking to in the marketplace. He says it was easy to lure a gold-digger like her into captivity with a little charm and displays of wealth, but his wife (the father’s eldest daughter) caught him and misunderstood, and now he has to smooth things over; the father isn’t surprised, since his daughters have his wife’s Italian quick-temper. Cue a knock at the false wall, where the bodyguard indicates that—speak of the devil—his middle daughter is eager to see him, as she has great news: her boyfriend (a poor waiter who the father’s never met, who she’s only been dating for three weeks) just proposed, and she said yes. The father stares; he asks if the ‘boyfriend’ is with her; bodyguard says yes; father tells the two pursuers to pull-up a third chair—and the bodyguard to tell his daughter to wait, and to send-in the waiter, alone—so he can discuss why this ‘boyfriend’ didn’t think it important to ask for his blessing first, let alone meet the family… The bodyguard guides the waiter into the secret room and shuts the wall behind him; the sharply-dressed husband and the waiter lock eyes from across the room, and the husband says, “Well isn’t this a treat.” (08/28/2013)
Space Hotel - The year is 2027: seven friends pay a lot of money to stay in this Russian hotel that orbits the Earth for a two month vacation. The first three weeks are great, even with their boring moments, but things get interesting in the fourth week when a defunct satellite crashes into the hotel, bumping it off course; it hits a few other satellites as it ricochets and floats further from Earth—and the shuttle they came in is pried loose from the dock, rendering it impossible to get to (the hatch is clearly broken, as well, meaning it's useless—dead weight). The friends are frantic and try to communicate with ground control. They use their meager training (the Russians provided the bare minimum) to try and correct their course, but the hotel was damaged in the collision and its propulsion system—which should correct them—ends up just causing them to spin. Ground control says they'll send up a rescue mission, and for them to just sit back and wait, as their craft slowly moves out of Earth’s orbit... The friends have enough supplies for a week, and begin rationing to stretch it to two; the joy of vacation has been replaced with dread, and not even sex can alleviate the tension and the threat of dying in space. Nearly two weeks pass and a rescue shuttle finally arrives, approaching the hotel; a lone astronaut spacewalks out to the hotel with a gas canister; he untethers himself from his ship and dives into the hotel, clinging, then uses the gas canister to counter the spin, slowing it, and propel the craft in the other direction, eventually getting it still and facing the right way. He greets them through a window, and indicates he'll bring the shuttle over to the hotel, bring them aboard, and take them home. He uses the gas canister to propel himself back to his shuttle, but the shuttle is hit by another rogue dead satellite (second world junker) and jostles out of place, bumping the astronaut and sending him backwards, away from the shuttle and hotel, unconscious, with the canister locked in the "on" position, propelling him deep into the cold abyss of space, quickly disappearing from sight… The shuttle captain corrects his craft and eases over to the hotel; another astronaut spacewalks to the hotel's dock and uses tools to remove the useless Russian shuttle from the hotel. It floats off. The astronaut checks the dock for damage, which there is, but he declares it safe enough to dock. The rescue shuttle closes in and proceeds to dock. It isn't a complete fit, so the captain says that they'll have to move-in extremely fast, and that they should therefore leave their belongings: he will, without hesitation, close the hatch 20 seconds after opening it; they will be subject to the vacuum of space without air for those seconds. The friends agree to his terms and prepare. The captain counts down to "go" and opens the hatch. All the air escapes, giving them a slight boost towards the airlock of the shuttle. They scramble in zero-G, pulling along the walls of the ship and each other, vying to get there before it closes on them, leaving them to suffocate in space—it's a free-for-all, and the effects of being without a suit in space make it harder, with frostbite sneaking into their clothes-bundled bodies. Five make it into the airlock, but two were ‘utilized as ladders’ more than they were fighters, and they lost too much momentum to make it. One's pretty far back and gave up, floating and choking, while the other almost makes it before the airlock closes but doesn't; the last thing the five friends see is a distant, floating friend who gave up and the outstretched arm and hopeless gasping face of a friend who was but four feet away from reaching the airlock, slowly freezing-over. The five survivors are brought into the shuttle and given oxygen and treated for hypothermia (-148°F in space in the shade). An onboard doctor checks their blood pressure and temperature, and the status of their major organs, to make sure they're alright: one has minor blood boiling and tissue damage while another is experiencing an extreme version of the same situation. The doctor tries what he can but says that they'll have to let the air pressure coax the body back into stasis. (The ‘extreme’ case slowly returns to normal, but has all-around nerve damage as a result.) The descent back to Earth is a solemn and quiet one, since both the rescued and the rescuers lost friends and went through trauma. The shuttle lands on the tarmac at the Kennedy Space Center. News crews and EMTs wait for the shuttle to land, then swarm it. All persons aboard are taken to the hospital, put in decompression chambers, and treated for ebullism, hypoxia, hypocapnia, and decompression sickness. The Russian space hotel oligarch [barely] compensates the friends, as well as the families of the two who were lost; the 4 rescuers, including the lost one, are given the Congressional Space Medal of Honor. All survivors are interviewed by practically every major news network around the world. — Years go by: all five surviving friends went to therapy, at some point, but one couldn't handle reliving it over and over and committed suicide. The friends are never the same, as a contrast is shown between them before they went into space and in the two decades since: all seven friends, spot-lit in youth, juxtaposed against their current selves, at their jobs, at home, buried in the ground, or floating in space amidst the wreckage of a failed space hotel.
(All shots in space should be filmed from inside something (like the hotel, shuttle, or helmet) and not from space, to emphasize the claustrophobic setting and uninhabitable environment that is space: so uninhabitable that the omniscient cameraman can't even be out there. Shots on Earth can be taken indoors or outdoors. The final shot should be of the hotel wreckage, at the end of the contrast bit, and should start on the giver-upper, easing back to the friend who almost made it, then easing further back, deep into space, keeping the hotel center, easing back further and further: this being the only shot taken in space, as if we are now among those helplessly floating in the cold abyss.) (Based on a dream I had.) (08/27/2013)
Original documents created on the dates parenthesized following each item.