Friday, August 26, 2011

You're Welcome Hollywood

On a recent episode of Louie, Louie CK had to pitch a movie idea to a high-powered movie studio executive at an impromptu lunch meeting. He described a film premise where the main character's life starts out crappy and then through a series of poor choices and failed ventures his situation ends up becoming even worse than when the movie started (which apparently is a fairly common theme in independent films ... which also explains why I didn't know that since I'm not exactly a film buff). About half-way through Louie's pitch (it really wasn't a pitch .. more like a "well, I have this idea" thing) I realized that I have a similar movie idea that's been rattling around in my head for a while. I also understand that I will most likely never get an opportunity to actually pitch this idea to anyone who would be in a position to green light it so I figured I'd tell all you fine folks. Not to say that you are not all high-powered executives of your own fucking amazing lives or whatever but, well, you probably don't run a movie studio right? Or do you? Holy shit you've done well for yourself.

Here goes ... now please keep in mind that this is just an outline. I don't have all the details fleshed out yet:

The movie starts with a guy on his lunch hour in the city (maybe Boston? New York?). He's sitting on a stone wall that surrounds a water fountain, eating what appears to be a reuben sandwich. It's clearly difficult for him to keep it from becoming a big mess. He eventually gets some on his shirt and in a spastic move to avoid getting some on his pants he accidentally flings his cell phone into the fountain. He then has to take his shoes and socks off, roll up his pants and wade into the fountain to retrieve his phone. He gets it back and it seems to still be working until he tries to actually use it and it dies. He wades back over to where he left his shoes and socks and they are gone. Someone stole them.

He then has to walk back into the office building barefooted. Maybe he gets some static from the security guard about having no shoes on? I dunno...I'm spitballin' here. Eventually they let him in and he gets back to his sad, grey cube where he has a spare pair of socks and his running shoes. He goes to a big meeting with his boss. There is an opportunity for him to take ownership of a major project that the would have lots of visibility and would probably mean a promotion if he were successful. He balks at the chance and one of his co-workers (whom he trained maybe?) steps up and takes the reins. We see the boss looking disappointed and somewhat irritated that our guy did not take on the project. After the meeting, the boss takes him aside to tell him that he's concerned that our guy is not committed to the job and maybe he should re-evaluate whether or not he wants to work at this firm. As the boss is talking, he notices the sneakers the guy is wearing and just walks away from him in mid-sentence.

Our guy starts to make his way home and as he does, the camera pans up and we see what appears to be the silhouette of an angel sitting on the edge of the office building where our guy works (ok, that's cheesy and a bit of a rip off...needs work). The angel seems to be upset that the situation for our guy is going so poorly. We then get to review the office scene again from his perspective and we see that he influenced our guy to not take the lead role on the big project. The angel is so convincing in his efforts to make sure the guy does not work on the project that when the guy opts out, it is a choice that he feels really strongly about. When the choice turns out to be the wrong one (again), both he and the angel are genuinely stunned by this.

The angel sees the guy leaving for home and decides to let him go alone and meets up with his other guardian angel friends in a shitty dive bar in a bad part of the city. The bar itself if dark and dirty and there are a number of angels milling about and sitting either at tables or the bar. The angel sees a friend of his at the bar and makes his way over to him. He orders up a whiskey and his friend asks him what's going on. He mentions the guy from this morning (whom he calls a "client") and how the path that he lead this client to turned out to be the bad choice. He looks really bothered by this. His friend says "Well, yeah. I mean, that's what you do right?" The friend then goes on to reveal that they are not guardian angels at all but are, in fact, demons who's sole purpose is to ruin people's lives. "As a matter of fact, you're like the best demon in our whole organization!", the other demon tells him. "Your clients are by far the most miserable failures in this sector. You totally dominate the client's actual guardian angels that you've effectively rendered them useless." There could be a discussion on quotas and how his numbers are better than every other demon...again, needs work here.

The former self-described angel, now fully realized demon, is crushed by this news. His friend simply thought he was stating the obvious and didn't understand that this demon believed he was doing good. Our demon excuses himself, assuring his friend that's he's fine and that he just needs to go out for a walk. He walks around the city reflecting on his past clients and how every last one of them over the years has become a complete failure (perhaps some of them even becoming criminals or worse). He gets really depressed and decides to not go into work for a couple of days (side note: maybe we then get to see some of his clients' lives improving as they start to make better decisions?) while he tries to get his head around this new notion of being evil.

This is where I lose my train of thought: What direction to go? Does the angel/demon character then try to redeem himself and truly try to become "good"? He could then struggle to go against his own base instincts (à la George Costanza in that Seinfeld episode where he does the opposite of whatever he normally would do) and in the process of doing that, alienate his fellow demons to the point of getting exiled. But unfortunately, even though he's "reformed" and is now doing "good", the guardian angels reject him based on his past (I mean, he was their sworn enemy for eons). Because he is not part of either the angels or the demons (sounds like 1960's street gang names), he becomes lost and broken. He is stripped of his powers and becomes a mortal man with no knowledge of his history and is then assigned a guardian angel and a demon (perhaps his old friend from the bar? And maybe this is considered a punishment by the other demons because technically he was responsible for them losing their best employee?). 

OR...

He then embraces the fact that he is evil and totally ramps up his game. Maybe he becomes such a workaholic (I hate that term by the way...why is "aholic" used as a suffix to describe obsessive behavior?), rising through the demon ranks to become the head demon for all of the northeast territory. I don't know why I have this vision of them breaking up all the client people that they have to watch over into quadrants or whatever. I just see them as salesmen y'know? Like their whole job is to "sell" the choices that people are presented with on a daily basis. The angels are selling the "right" choices and the demons the "bad" choices. And the better they are at this, the more people or "clients" they get assigned to them. Am I blathering again? Sorry.


So, yeah, I don't have an ending and the 2nd act is pretty weak at the moment but like I stated earlier, this is only a draft outline. The gist is there I think. The concept is fairly straightforward but I just don't know all the details yet. Uh...that's my idea in a nutshell. Whattaya think? Vote below! Hooray! Voting with no real outcome!

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1 comment:

curlytop said...

How about: he decides since he's a demon and he can't help doing bad anyway, he'll ramp it up and be the best demon ever...but when he actually tries to influence bad decisions, his clients start making really great decisions and their lives become stupendous.

That's probably really obvious, huh, but don't movie-goers eat up obvious with a spoon?