Thursday, February 10, 2011
Idea for a Film Script
This is a rough idea for a film script that would have to be written by a professional Writer because I'm not one. The story would be based on facts mixed with fiction because real life has many lame moments. It would also have to be done in a humorous way so it wouldn't become a melodrama. Lots of old documentary films could also be used to give the film the look and feel of those times.
Here's the story in a nutshell... Karma has not prepared a conventional life for the hero. But that Karma was created for him by his Higher Self. So, the life he's had was a life he's designed himself. There are some reasons for that but those won't be discussed here. Though the Higher Self is immortal, the hero is as weak and mortal as any other human being, and his soul reincarnates through a genetic transfer of memory that does not manifest itself in full with every birth.
The story begins with a free flight between the stars in space until the blue planet Earth appears below in a distance. At that instant, the viewer is beamed down to the planet at a great speed like as if it was done with a close up down to a street view level on Google Earth. Now comes the next scene... A crying newborn baby wrapped in white cloth is shown and the scene fades out. Now, it fades in again and we are in 1961 where we see the hero as a young boy sitting before a TV set watching news of Yuri Gagarin traveling into space. After that, we move on to the next scene. Its 1963 now. Our hero is a bit older and hears the news of President Kennedy's assassination through a school PA system in his classroom. When he returns home, he watches TV again and witnesses the assassination of Lee Harvey Oswald live on TV. The scene fades out and fades in again with the hero watching the first The Beatles performance on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1964. After that, the hero witnesses the British Invasion of other bands such as The Rolling Stones. He grows long hair, wears high heal Beatle boots, wears rings like Ringo Star and dresses in Mod Fashions from England. He experiences some rejection and is made to get a hair cut by the school Principle.
Next, we see him as a young hippie. He gets introduced to psychedelic drugs and gets a hippie name after taking LSD with an older hippie friend that he met in Chicago's Old Town. After that, he gets involved in the 1960s peace movement (Anti-Vietnam War movement, Human Rights Movement), protests with scenes of draft card burnings and hitchhikes with his friend down Highway 66 to Summer of Love in San Francisco in 1967. In the following scene, we find ourselves in late 1969, just before the hero's eighteenth birthday and after the Woodstock concert. The hero is at home and explains the draft situation to his Parents and tells them about his school friends that were drafted and died in Vietnam. He leaves Chicago for Montreal, Canada where he stays a few weeks. Problems with finding a place to live and getting a residence permit drive him to look for refuge elsewhere. So, he calls his Mother in Chicago, explains the problems and convinces her to fund a trip to the Old Continent for him. Shortly after that, he's in the middle of the Atlantic on a transatlantic Ocean liner heading for London, England. He's not met with open arms in London and witnesses a Police raid on a pot party that he is about to attend. He leaves London for Copenhagen in Denmark, which was the bicycle capital of Europe at that time. But he doesn't stay there long either. In the next scene, he catches a cargo ship to Rotterdam in Holland. Goes through a fierce storm on the North Sea, in which he almost gets blown board. In Rotterdam, he becomes a street musician and rents a sleeping room from a Dutch hippie in a canal houseboat. He visits coffeeshops, smokes hash, meets a girl, makes love and gives a concert in a hippie coffee house with songs he's written for guitar and harmonica. He then leaves Rotterdam and takes a train to Amsterdam where John Lennon & Yoko Ono are holding a "Love-In" in 1969 (scenes of hippies on Dam Square and in parks; coffee shops etc. from documentary films). He hangs out with other hippies on the Dam Square and sleeps in Vondelpark for a few days before finding shelter on another houseboat. Then, due to the high cost of living in Holland and lots of other hippies playing music on streets, he finds it difficult to get by. So he decides to head for the Polish mountains on the Czech boarder where his Mother has arranged a place for him to stay with her friends. He's eighteen now and starts drinking a lot of beer and vodka with exchange students he met in a mountain resort town. Later he's invited by his friends to play harmonica with their blues band at a coffee house concert that they've organized and gets a standing ovation. In the next scene, he goes to Prague and brushes shoulders with other American hippie students. One of those students resembled young President Clinton, who was studding there at that time.
After living in Europe for about a year, he gets a ticket in the mail from his Mom for an Ocean liner from Gdynia, Poland to Montreal. He returns to Chicago in 1971, finds a retail sales job in a downtown hotel across the street from City Hall. He's in conflict with the law because of his unresolved draft situation but he's lucky not to be questioned about it. Attitudes about the war have changed from those he remembered before he left the country. He also comes out of the closet and gets involved in Chicago's vibrant gay scene. Election of President Carter in 1977 changes everything. The end of the Vietnam War follows and President Carter gives amnesty to draft evaders. The hippie hero registers for selective service right after that. In his job as a cigar stand Manager, his everyday costumers are the City's Mayer, Senators, Judges, FBI agents, journalists, mafia bosses and other prominent city figures. Many of those persons appear to be fighting with each other in the media when he watches TV at home after work. But to his surprise, in real life they act like friends when they hang around his cigar stand, read newspapers and smoke the Cuban cigars that he sells them from under the counter. But later the hotel gets sold and demolished to make room for a new high-rise office building. So, he finds a better job and rents a studio apartment with a beautiful view of Lake Michigan on Lake Shore Drive. He spends time biking, going to Chicago Film Festivals and rubbing shoulders with beautiful people, models and Playboy Bunnies on Oak Street Beach and on Michigan Avenue.
The hero is now in his early thirties and finds himself unemployed during the late 1970s recession. Then he is offered an opportunity to return to Europe to save a difficult family situation (too much to explain about here..) in mid 1980s. There, he witnesses the underground Solidarity Movement in Poland and fall of the Berlin Wall. The hero is now a middle age man in his forties when he meets a young straight student in whom he recognizes someone he knew in a past life (a flashback to ancient India). Together, they start talking about Yoga, which the hero's been practicing since the late 1960s. They get others interested in the Yoga and are some of the first to manage to register a none Christian religion in predominantly Catholic Poland. After that, they are faced with intolerance and rejection from Catholics, bad Press coverage, intrigues by clandestine foreign agents, Police monitoring, attempts to derail the group and other things. The group is struggling for survival, holds public lectures and meetings in a hostile environment. The bad Press leads to a decline of interest in the group. That in turn leads the hero and his friend to decide on closing the group. Now the hero realizes that religions don't unite people but divide them. From now on, he looses interest in religion and just in time... A New Millennium brings media reports of mass suicides, child abuse in the Catholic Church and other problems in other religions. The film ends on a live TV broadcast of 9/11 attacks that the hero and his friend witness on CNN. Suddenly, during that live broadcast the hero's TV goes out with a small bang shortly after the last plane hits the WT building. The film ends on a close up of the TV's black screen. Final credits follow that scene on a black background.
The movie would have to be filmed in several countries on two continents. It should have lots of music of the era because there was great music through those four decades. The hero has original music that he writes and plays throughout his travels. There would be Mod Fashions, Austin Powers style international espionage scenes (BTW, Mike Myers was an actor from Chicago's Second City Theater). The film would have to be done with humor and perhaps with some Matrix series special effects and time travel for flashbacks between distant past and future events, which could be material for other film scripts. The story would also take us back to ancient Indo-European times, to India and to a space city on Earth orbit where the hero and his friend find themselves again due to radioactive pollution of the planet after a nuclear war...
It may be difficult to get rights to use many popular music recordings that accompanied us through those years. But the Author has his own music that he recorded for a demo, which could be used in some places instead. Those recordings can be found here.
Here's the story in a nutshell... Karma has not prepared a conventional life for the hero. But that Karma was created for him by his Higher Self. So, the life he's had was a life he's designed himself. There are some reasons for that but those won't be discussed here. Though the Higher Self is immortal, the hero is as weak and mortal as any other human being, and his soul reincarnates through a genetic transfer of memory that does not manifest itself in full with every birth.
The story begins with a free flight between the stars in space until the blue planet Earth appears below in a distance. At that instant, the viewer is beamed down to the planet at a great speed like as if it was done with a close up down to a street view level on Google Earth. Now comes the next scene... A crying newborn baby wrapped in white cloth is shown and the scene fades out. Now, it fades in again and we are in 1961 where we see the hero as a young boy sitting before a TV set watching news of Yuri Gagarin traveling into space. After that, we move on to the next scene. Its 1963 now. Our hero is a bit older and hears the news of President Kennedy's assassination through a school PA system in his classroom. When he returns home, he watches TV again and witnesses the assassination of Lee Harvey Oswald live on TV. The scene fades out and fades in again with the hero watching the first The Beatles performance on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1964. After that, the hero witnesses the British Invasion of other bands such as The Rolling Stones. He grows long hair, wears high heal Beatle boots, wears rings like Ringo Star and dresses in Mod Fashions from England. He experiences some rejection and is made to get a hair cut by the school Principle.
Next, we see him as a young hippie. He gets introduced to psychedelic drugs and gets a hippie name after taking LSD with an older hippie friend that he met in Chicago's Old Town. After that, he gets involved in the 1960s peace movement (Anti-Vietnam War movement, Human Rights Movement), protests with scenes of draft card burnings and hitchhikes with his friend down Highway 66 to Summer of Love in San Francisco in 1967. In the following scene, we find ourselves in late 1969, just before the hero's eighteenth birthday and after the Woodstock concert. The hero is at home and explains the draft situation to his Parents and tells them about his school friends that were drafted and died in Vietnam. He leaves Chicago for Montreal, Canada where he stays a few weeks. Problems with finding a place to live and getting a residence permit drive him to look for refuge elsewhere. So, he calls his Mother in Chicago, explains the problems and convinces her to fund a trip to the Old Continent for him. Shortly after that, he's in the middle of the Atlantic on a transatlantic Ocean liner heading for London, England. He's not met with open arms in London and witnesses a Police raid on a pot party that he is about to attend. He leaves London for Copenhagen in Denmark, which was the bicycle capital of Europe at that time. But he doesn't stay there long either. In the next scene, he catches a cargo ship to Rotterdam in Holland. Goes through a fierce storm on the North Sea, in which he almost gets blown board. In Rotterdam, he becomes a street musician and rents a sleeping room from a Dutch hippie in a canal houseboat. He visits coffeeshops, smokes hash, meets a girl, makes love and gives a concert in a hippie coffee house with songs he's written for guitar and harmonica. He then leaves Rotterdam and takes a train to Amsterdam where John Lennon & Yoko Ono are holding a "Love-In" in 1969 (scenes of hippies on Dam Square and in parks; coffee shops etc. from documentary films). He hangs out with other hippies on the Dam Square and sleeps in Vondelpark for a few days before finding shelter on another houseboat. Then, due to the high cost of living in Holland and lots of other hippies playing music on streets, he finds it difficult to get by. So he decides to head for the Polish mountains on the Czech boarder where his Mother has arranged a place for him to stay with her friends. He's eighteen now and starts drinking a lot of beer and vodka with exchange students he met in a mountain resort town. Later he's invited by his friends to play harmonica with their blues band at a coffee house concert that they've organized and gets a standing ovation. In the next scene, he goes to Prague and brushes shoulders with other American hippie students. One of those students resembled young President Clinton, who was studding there at that time.
After living in Europe for about a year, he gets a ticket in the mail from his Mom for an Ocean liner from Gdynia, Poland to Montreal. He returns to Chicago in 1971, finds a retail sales job in a downtown hotel across the street from City Hall. He's in conflict with the law because of his unresolved draft situation but he's lucky not to be questioned about it. Attitudes about the war have changed from those he remembered before he left the country. He also comes out of the closet and gets involved in Chicago's vibrant gay scene. Election of President Carter in 1977 changes everything. The end of the Vietnam War follows and President Carter gives amnesty to draft evaders. The hippie hero registers for selective service right after that. In his job as a cigar stand Manager, his everyday costumers are the City's Mayer, Senators, Judges, FBI agents, journalists, mafia bosses and other prominent city figures. Many of those persons appear to be fighting with each other in the media when he watches TV at home after work. But to his surprise, in real life they act like friends when they hang around his cigar stand, read newspapers and smoke the Cuban cigars that he sells them from under the counter. But later the hotel gets sold and demolished to make room for a new high-rise office building. So, he finds a better job and rents a studio apartment with a beautiful view of Lake Michigan on Lake Shore Drive. He spends time biking, going to Chicago Film Festivals and rubbing shoulders with beautiful people, models and Playboy Bunnies on Oak Street Beach and on Michigan Avenue.
The hero is now in his early thirties and finds himself unemployed during the late 1970s recession. Then he is offered an opportunity to return to Europe to save a difficult family situation (too much to explain about here..) in mid 1980s. There, he witnesses the underground Solidarity Movement in Poland and fall of the Berlin Wall. The hero is now a middle age man in his forties when he meets a young straight student in whom he recognizes someone he knew in a past life (a flashback to ancient India). Together, they start talking about Yoga, which the hero's been practicing since the late 1960s. They get others interested in the Yoga and are some of the first to manage to register a none Christian religion in predominantly Catholic Poland. After that, they are faced with intolerance and rejection from Catholics, bad Press coverage, intrigues by clandestine foreign agents, Police monitoring, attempts to derail the group and other things. The group is struggling for survival, holds public lectures and meetings in a hostile environment. The bad Press leads to a decline of interest in the group. That in turn leads the hero and his friend to decide on closing the group. Now the hero realizes that religions don't unite people but divide them. From now on, he looses interest in religion and just in time... A New Millennium brings media reports of mass suicides, child abuse in the Catholic Church and other problems in other religions. The film ends on a live TV broadcast of 9/11 attacks that the hero and his friend witness on CNN. Suddenly, during that live broadcast the hero's TV goes out with a small bang shortly after the last plane hits the WT building. The film ends on a close up of the TV's black screen. Final credits follow that scene on a black background.
The movie would have to be filmed in several countries on two continents. It should have lots of music of the era because there was great music through those four decades. The hero has original music that he writes and plays throughout his travels. There would be Mod Fashions, Austin Powers style international espionage scenes (BTW, Mike Myers was an actor from Chicago's Second City Theater). The film would have to be done with humor and perhaps with some Matrix series special effects and time travel for flashbacks between distant past and future events, which could be material for other film scripts. The story would also take us back to ancient Indo-European times, to India and to a space city on Earth orbit where the hero and his friend find themselves again due to radioactive pollution of the planet after a nuclear war...
It may be difficult to get rights to use many popular music recordings that accompanied us through those years. But the Author has his own music that he recorded for a demo, which could be used in some places instead. Those recordings can be found here.
Labels: '60s, 1960s revolution, amsterdam, Chicago's Old Town, coffee house, coffeeshop, europe, gay, hippie, hippies, hippy, holland, karma, netherlands, old continent, rotterdam, Self, transatlantic
¶ 2/10/2011 07:09:00 PM
