As a busy screenwriter with several projects in various stages of development and/or production, my idea bank (brain) has been backlogging like a constipated hockey player at a Nathan's Hotdog semi-final. Naturally I have a huge list of project ideas that I know will never make it to the top of my to-do list, much less a pole position on the track to development hell. Therefore I now choose to release the safety valve, and free up space in my "Next Big Thing" vault. Here they are, ready to be greenlighted – yours to expand into a future blockbuster. No copyrights lurking in the b.g. here. My fellow aspiring script-smiths, take 'em and run!
SLAMMIN' DOWN TO BRISBANE
(Blame It On Rio meets Bumfights)
Myrtle and Sam "Spammy" Wilkerson click an internet pop-up and win a second-honeymoon trip to that dazzling vacation capital, Brisbane, California. They pack up the Dodge Valiant and are on their way down 101 when they pick up wayward hitch-hiker Bobby Boo, once famous radio crooner and Hollywood royalty of yesteryear. Hilarious adventures ensue when Bobby mistakes an eastside hoorhouse for the 3-star hotel where he was once a fixture in the heyday of the great Tinseltown musicals.
JUNIOR ASSKICKERS 2004!
(Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon meets Our Gang)
(This synopsis was written in 2003, when the title would carry a bit more relevance, but it can easily be changed to something up-to-date.) The plot: Angry at being flunked out of DeVrie Summer College and thus denied his electronic associate's degree, scientist hero Jameson Goldenrod suspects foul play afoot among the institution's adminstratti. He injects ten preschoolers with super-hyperdyne steroids, then teaches them kung fu, aided by his own Yoda-like mentor Hibachi Sokomotamoto-Tannenbaum (I wrote the part for Alan Arkin, but any competent character actor with good dialect presence should work). Can the Junior Asskickers get to the heart of a corrupt Junior College and deliver swift, bonecrunching, action-packed justice? Or will campus security shut them down with a few tazers, and by playing the Macarena over the school's sound system?
STAR BANGERS!
(Star Wars meets The Food Network)
No, not a tale of celebrity groupies, but of a platoon of intergalactic bounty-hunters, on the trail of half-lobster/half-super android, Krorgon! Aided by his army of Space Bears, Krorgon is secretly a hero of the galactic gourmet underground, whose mission is to free the planet X-98-D from the culinary tyranny of the tantalizing ten-breasted Princess Moparra, seductress of heroes, enslaver of billions, and host of her own mid-morning cookery show "Brunchtime Brainwash." Her ultimate recipe for Uranus Sausage holds the entire planet in bondage, addicted to the savory tubular delicacy. But with his mission top-secret, and led by the guidance of the cloned bodiless head of Julia Child, can Krorgon succeed while being hounded by both the Federation AND the interstellar bounty-hunters? Will Krorgan and his troops become Uranus Sausage on Princess Moparra's next show? By the end credits, will it make any more sense?
THE THREE STOOGES MEET SATAN
(Three Stooges meet... well... Satan)
Yes it's those three madcap nutty goofball slap-happy... guys, who get a job as wallpaper hangers, and paste-n'-press their wacky way right down to the Underworld, where they must elude capture by the Big Red Horned One and his pitchfork wielding minions. Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin and Phil Donohue make hilarious cameos! (Yes, I realize the Stooges have been dead for about 30 years, but they can do wonders now with computer graphics, and I hear production orgs like NBC Features and Turner Instant Classics have now acquired the rights to film on location in Hell. Start developin'!)
CREAMED!
(James Bond meets Mary Kay)
Joe Revlonné is the "Cool Hand Luke" of the feminine hygiene industry. His products sell, and his "nose for the business" has served him well. He can sniff out the difference between a 'fresh-n'-fuzzy' and a 'soggy clambake' from across a retail cosmetics convention floor! At just such an event he meets his match in Asian synthetic beauty queen, Chi-Ki, CEO of Dragonflayer Cosmetics, and creator of their #1 selling fem-hy sensation, "Sprunt." But there's something fishy about Sprunt, that leads Joe to suspect a world-domination scheme in the making. Can he get up his unique talent in time to screw Chi-Ki's plot?
METER SQUAD
(Inglorious Basterds meets the 10-minute zone)
Washington DC Ticket Officer Bill "Chalk-demon" Taggart is sick as hell of cars parked over the time limit! Spurred on by retired politician Arnold Shwartzamutha's HUM-V parked 20 minutes past the red-flag on the meter, he snaps. Before he can "chalk the town red," he is recruited by elite Pentagon parking specialist Perry Lell, who urges Taggart to let out his frustrations upon America's enemies abroad rather than moronic line-straddlers at home... Now an ultra-secret team of meter police have banded together under Taggart's command. They accept a covert government mission to chalk up the tires of overseas terrorists and anti-American war factions... they're Meter Squad.
NOTHING IMPORTANT
(Boring meets Pointless)
David "Jack" Smithers gets some bills paid, washes his car, and does laundry. He rewards himself with a snowcone. This angers Wanda, his shrewish nextdoor neighbor who decides, for reasons known only to herself, to make an example of Jack to the neighborhood. She hires her brother to knock on Jack's door and club him with a waterpolo mallet, as she watches from behind taut drapes. Wanda's brother knocks, and goes inside with Jack. He and Jack watch the game and have a couple of beers. Wanda's brother returns without harming Jack. When confronted by Wanda as to why he refused her orders, the brother says he forgot. Wanda hires the town drunk to lay in wait for her brother, at a nearby bar, and club him with a length of PCV pipe. That doesn't happen either. Wanda will have her revenge!! (Can't you just picture Clooney as Jack?)
FLIGHT OF THE FLYING FLIER
(Horse Ass meets Propeller)
Jockey Bert Jertson sends his ailing horse "Flying Flier" to the glue factory after losing ten races in a row, and decides to take up piloting – naming his plane "Flying Flier" in homage to his dead trotter. Drama erupts when Bert accepts a race from New York to Paris against fellow airman Charles Lindbergh.
THE GALAXY'S GOT TALENT
(American Idol meets Independence Day)
Leeza Chimps, a young pop vocalist wanna-be, and her newbie agent Trix, find themselves beamed to the planet Velcro, to represent Earth in a galaxywide talent contest! The stakes are high; Leeza must win the competition or our world faces total destruction! Leeza surprises the interstellar panel of judges by besting every alien act thrown at her – from Crab Nebulan quick-costume change artists to a Jupiterian insect twelve-million-legged clogdance ensemble. Along the way, Leeza gets the milky way rockin' with soft-pop and faux-blues hit after hit, earning her megastar status back on Earth, as the entire human race watches on intergalactic HD TV. Leeza makes it to the final, but comes in second to a glob-like Andromedan magician who can squat and produce small brown clones of himself. As fiery death-rays ravage the Earth, leaving it a burnt-out lifeless cinder, Leeza counts it as a coming-of-age experience and moves on to a hopeful tomorrow.
BLARNEY STONED
(Up In Smoke meets My Left Foot)
Irish poet Fagin McFlaherty spends his days blissfully indulging in his two favorite passtimes, rhyme and weed, until one day he falls in love with Haarga, a raven-haired beerhall waitress with only one handicap – she is a deaf-mute armless, legless human stump, who navigates between tables upon a small wheeled platform, propelled along by her own flatulence. He devotes his life and art to her, but soon discovers that the market for stoner poetry – particularly about voiceless human logs who can fart at will – is too small to make a living from. He takes a job in the town coal yard to support them, laboring on his fanciful words only by night. Successes are few but Haarga believes in him, earning extra money working at a circus sideshow and raking in a small fortune, which she secrets away, in the hope of surprising Fagin by getting an operation to have new arms and legs – of styrofoam – duct-taped onto herself, for their blessed honeymoon night to come. Fagin finds the money and uses it to travel to Scandinavia, to the annual pothead poetry jam and competition – which he wins handily with his poems of Haarga. But when he returns, he finally learns of her styrofoam dream of love that he has unknowingly thwarted. Haarga forgives him, and they marry. Years later at an award banquet in Fagin's honor, Haarga pays tribute to him by farting out a soulful rendition of Ireland's National Anthem.
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