I recently wrote a film treatment for my film class but also for a summer movie script. I like the over all story I've written and I wanted to get the story out there, for people to read, give ideas and critique. This is not the final draft, what so ever, and I'm still going through a ton of changes. Mr. Costal, you can expect an email from me with this identical draft of the film treatment, asking for your thoughts. To be kind to the blog, I'm going to post this paragraph as the main comment and then post the actual treatment as a comment underneath to save space on the home page. Anyone who wants to read it, go ahead, I won't be offend if this doesn't get any responses because extra reading sucks, especially when it's three pages long. Enjoy everyone and I'll probably keep in contact about this when it get further into preproduction like casting.
Thank you for the help,
Paul Brower
P.S.- I used Reina's name because I need a name... it happens.
Yet the Sun Keeps Setting
ReplyDeleteBy Paul Brower
JOHN HURT wakes up and gets ready for his day. He’s a tall man in his mid twenties with a clean beard and is very personable. Walking outside to his car he waves to his neighbor DEBORAH CHANNING, who is watering her daisies. When he gets to his car and finds a light green business card with the name STEVEN GLOWS written on it. He drives to the local high school, where he works as a philosophy teacher. Standing in front of a class of fifteen teenagers, he talks to them about Kant’s moral theory. Abruptly the bell rings and the class leaves the room. After class he goes down to a storage room and finds Steven Glows, the janitor, dead on the floor with his throat slit and two large gold coins placed over his eyes.
Detectives CHRIS BROLLEY and GRANT HILL come to investigate. Chris Brolley is a portly man in his mid forties with a mustache and twinkle in his eye that reveals his softer side. Grant Hill is a tall, almost lanky man in his late twenties, who is clean shaven and always on the sidelines. The two talk to John about the deceased and John explains how he just talked to the janitor before leaving the other day. John doesn’t mention the card with Steven’s name written on it, fearing the will assume he killed him. PRINCIPAL REINA walks with John after the detectives have taken John’s statements. The sun is setting as the two exchange word outside and Reina tells John to go home. When John gets to the car there is another light green business card with the Principal Reina written on it. He looks back as the principal goes into the school and he decides not to say anything.
When he gets home, there are two gold coins, identical to the ones on the janitor, sitting on his kitchen counter. John picks them up to examine them and puts them back down and searches through his house. Everything is fine and he locks up for the night. During the night car lights slowly pass through the windows every two minutes. John finally runs out his house to check out what’s going on. When he gets out there though, the car starts to speed away and John isn’t fast enough to catch it. The driver flips a gold coin out the window as he turns the corner. John picks it up and head back to his house and goes to bed.
The next morning John wakes up to a phone call but doesn’t pick up right away and lets it go to messages. School has been closed for the remainder of the week. The Principal Reina was found dead at his house with two gold coins on his eyes. John makes the statement as he did with the janitor, that he was the last person i talked to yesterday. He thinks for a moment about this statement and decides not to talk to anyone but himself. Shaken by the news John stays up despite only falling asleep an hour prior. He walks through his day cautiously not saying a word. He keeps a close eye on the windshield of his car from the second floor window. When sunset comes there is a knock on his door. He runs down to the door to see it is but as he does, a person rushes past the side windows of his house. Before the man gets outside, the stranger is gone, and only a green note is left. It says you can’t just not talk and has the name Deborah Channing written on it. He stares across the street in disbelief.
The next day Detectives Brolley and Hill are at his door. The two of them want to have a talk to John about the recent murders including the recently deceased Deborah. The three men go to a local diner but the meal is quickly ruined when the two detectives inquire more information from John. They assume he’s the one killing the people around him and that he knows more then he’s letting on. John keeps denying knowing more but is too cautious to tell them about the notes in his windshield. They say they can’t say he’s the murderer yet but they explain each death was identical, slit throat and gold coins over their eyes, even their bodies were positioned the same. The detective leave together while John is left pondering what just happened and is unable to finish his meal.
Behind John a little boy his fooling around in the diner. The little boy grabs money from the table left as a tip and shows his parents. His parents tell him to put it back. The waitress, DORRIS HUNTER comes over and they give her the money and apologize. When the waitress goes to the counter she shows her co-workers the strange coin that was left for her. John looks up and sees that it’s one of the golden coins found on the victims. He quickly asks Dorris what the man looked like but she can’t remember clearly. She says he was quiet and only wanted some coffee. He was dressed really nicely and was very pale.
John rushes out the diner running and looking around in a panic for the man. He turns a corner and looks down a street to see a man walking away, wearing a suit. John calls after the man but he keeps walking until his walk slowly becomes a run as he bolts down the alley. The man takes chase and finds himself running through bushes and under a overpass. John keeps chasing, slowing catching up as the man dodges through wooded areas and bushes. He turns a corner to find and empty street. John looks around and curse to himself. It’s sunset.
When John arrives back at the the diner, he finds another light green card under his windshield with Dorris Hunter written on it. The man thinks for a moment as Dorris walks out the diner to her car. He realizes it is her name on the card. He gets in his van and starts it up and begins to follow her on her way back to her house. John parks only a few yards away from her house and waits. The time goes by with nothing and no one appearing. Slowly he starts to drift asleep until he passes out.
John wakes to a knock on his car window, it’s the detectives again. They ask him why he’s sleeping in his car far from his house. John explains that he had been out drinking and started to drive home and started to feel unsure of his abilities as a driver and pulled over and fell asleep. The two detectives eye him suspiciously but let him leave. As he drives away he soon realizes that they will find the body of the young girl and begin to have no other reason to think anyone but himself has committed these murders. John drives home but when he gets there he notices a car waiting outside. Instead of going in he keeps driving. John drives to an abandoned parking lot and starts to curse to himself over the fact that he’s been place adt the scene of the crime and implicated. He sits quietly until it dawns on him that the last person he talked to was the investigator.
Fade
It’s raining as a group of people crowd around the dead body of a young girl with two gold coins over her eyes. The two detectives stand there attempting to get the people to make room. One of the people in the crowd is John Hurt. He pulls away completely mortified. As he walks away he sees a man wearing a suit is tailing him and was watching the whole thing from afar. He keeps walking down the street and then takes a quick turn and waits for his tail to turn the corner. As the tail turns John grabs him and throws him to the wall. It’s the man from the cafe. John yells at the man asking him why he’s doing this to him. John begins breaking down, knowing that by talking to the girl he killed her. The man stays composed and smiles. Complete in his anger John punches the man in the face.
John brings the man to his home and ties him up in a chair. John attempts to torture information out of the man, such as what his name is or where he lives. But the man won’t talk, only smile and, unknown to John, is slowly trying to escape. John goes into the man’s pockets and pulls out his wallet and finds only some money and a library card. He pockets the library card without the man noticing. John keeps persisting for information, with no luck and decides to go up stairs. The man manages to break free from his cords and sits waiting for John. When John comes back down, the man hits him and beats John into the chair and ties him up. The man asks John to name five different types of people, teacher, garbage man, child, etc. John tries to ask why the man is doing this. He tells John that it is fun to eliminate people based on others actions. John is left crying as the man explains that he plans to drug the man and leave him a room with the bodies of five victims. As the man drugs him, he laughs lightly and says good night.
Fade-
As the man had told him, John wakes up with one large gasping breath, on the floor with gold coins over his eyes. He gets up and walks to the bathroom to wash his face and recall what happened to him. As he looks in the reflection, he sees the corpses of five people. With that he hears the foot steps of and the voices of the detectives. John thinks quickly and swaggers into the closet. The front door is forced open and the detectives go in to investigate. As they go further into the house, John slips out the closet and out the house. He tries to run but his legs aren’t carrying him as well as they should and he’s stumbling down the street. The detectives look out and see him running and take chase. John is gasping for breathe and still running. As he runs tears roll down his face and yells out his innocence. The two detectives catch up to him and take him away.
John sits in a interrogation room. The cops have multiple dead bodies on their hands and one man to blame. John sits trying to explain what happened, the dead bodies, the green cards, the man, his library card. The detectives explain that the house they were at belonged to one of the victims, the library card was under John’s own name and address, and that the pile of evidence points towards him. When the information dawns on him, he is left staring blankly in silence.
The End
needs a better TWEEST
ReplyDeleteGood idea..i love movies like this.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed it very much and liked the twist at the end. I was kind of left wondering why though, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Also, the business cards as evidence of the next murder reminded me of the Joker's methods in the Dark Knight. That was a good idea! Well done.
ReplyDeleteI'm still fairly fond of the "Alternte demension that is somehow the 1920's" idea you mentioned before. I agree with James though, it needs more of a twist. Also you have to get a new name for the principle, because I can suspend my disbelief for a lot of ridiculous plot concepts, but someone killing Reina is just too ridiculous, it can't be done.
ReplyDeleteIn before someone says "poop"
ReplyDelete~ The man asks John to name five different types of people, teacher, garbage man, child, etc. John tries to ask why the man is doing this. He tells John that it is fun to eliminate people based on others actions. ~ His character reminds me of the creepy, twisted killers we all love. John Doe from Se7en for example. It's a great character to have, I think. If he has a monologue in this scene, it will be amazing.
ReplyDeleteBe sure to send me the dialogue once you have it. I'll be looking forward to reading it. :}
Well I drew a lot on Se7en because it's Drew and my favorite serial killer movie... hell one of our favorite movies of all time. I had the idea from the beginning of the names on cards but originally it was going to be Death doing this to him not a deranged psycho. Also the pale green cards and (though it's not described here) the killers pale green dress shirt are because in the stories of the 4 Horseman of the Apocalypse, Death rides a pale green horse. Got off track. Anyway when I started writing I didn't know where I was going exactly but once he started chasing "the man" outside the diner, I quickly thought of Se7en's chase with Brad Pitt getting walloped. The story is an odd combo of Se7en and The Following (or Memento minus the nonlinear device), in the idea that it's about a serial killer committing crimes (Se7en) but we don't follow the detectives, we follow a normal guy who just happens to become just another victim(Nolan's films). I do agree the whole interrogation scene at the end need some fixing so I'll be working on that. I could always just end it while he's running away from the cops, crying his eyes out but that would be too easy. Hopefully lightning will strike and the ending will appear.
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