Pen used to write brilliant movie pitches.

Given What's Already On TV, Is This Really Worse?

Movie Pitches

HANSEN'S DISEASE [TV mystery / drama]

America loves Monk, the quirky detective with obsessive-compulsive behavior. This just shows the interest in detectives with unusual and colorful ailments.

HANSEN'S DISEASE features detective Eric Hansen. Hansen is skilled, insightful, and has a brilliant mind. He also has leprosy, contracted during a Peace Corps stint in Africa right after college.

Educating the audience and de-stigmatizing this ancient disease, Hansen's disease is well controlled by medication. But he does have to exhibit the cautious behavior of any leprosy patient, constantly checking his largely numb extremities for minor injuries that could develop into serious infections. And more than that, he has to deal with society's reaction to someone who is, quite literally, a leper.

That's HANSEN'S DISEASE, featuring America's first leper-detective.

NAPOLEON, P.I. [TV mystery / drama]

America may now like Monk, the detective with obsessive-compulsive behavior, but America will simply love NAPOLEON, P.I.

What can a police chief do when the city's best detective in its history, perhaps the best in the country, develops delusional megalomania? The ailment has severely effected his behavior but has had no ill effect on his ability to solve crimes.

Well, as much as possible, you require the rest of the force to put up with his quirks and you keep him on the cases. Even if some of the other officers grate at having to call him "Sire", "Your eminence", and the like, only after determining what his current delusion is. But they realize that whether he thinks he's Napoleon, one of the Caesars, the Pharoah Ramses II, or whoever, his warped mind is still the best mind for the case.

STAHGATE ATLANTA [TV science fiction / adventure / spinoff]

Dis heah is de sto'y ob de discubbery ob a large an mysti'eous ahtifack leff on Erf bah some long depahted an powahful alien race. Now in de hands ob the U.S. gub'mint, a skilled team ob military an scientists uses dis heah ring foah explo'ashun.

Dis heah lahge ring-shaped objeck has de powah ob foamin a wuhmhole between de Stahgate base, located unner Stone Mount'n, an enny udder locashun wiffen de foamah Confederacy. Trabbel between dese heah two points is neahly instantanyus.

Watch as dese heah intrepid esplorers meets colo'ful charactuhs clad in what suits an streen tahs. Witness theyah struggle tuh communicate wif de natives in deah colo'ful diahleks. Larn wif dem about turdish'nal values lahk Nascah, distillashun, and seggergashun.

Frahday nahts on de SahFah Channel.

THE CONSOLIDATED RUBBER COMPANY'S HANDBOOK OF CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS [TV drama]

Riding the coattails of GREY'S ANATOMY, the weekly drama THE CONSOLIDATED RUBBER COMPANY'S HANDBOOK OF CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS brings us the office romances and sexual adventures and frustrations of the staff of that classic reference handbook.

Will a bombastic senator force the editors to delete fundamental information on organic chemistry because it could be used by a terrorist?

Will the recent demotion of Pluto to a "minor planetary body" force a complete re-organization of the classic section F-5 on astronomical data?

Given that cold fusion is almost entirely ignored by the mainstream scientific community, shouldn't the volume of information on palladium (atomic weight: 106.4) be cut back? Or, does one of the senior staff secretly hold vast amounts of nearly worthless stock in palladium mining companies, an ill-advised purchase fueled by a mysterious spam e-mail?

FUNK AND WAGNALL'S DICTIONARY [TV drama]

Ripped from the headlines of riding on the coattails of classic-reference-work-referencing GREY'S ANATOMY, this weekly drama focuses on the romantic adventures and sexual frustrations of a madcap troupe of etymologists and semioticians who, between trysts, work at a dictionary company.

One running joke is the continuing complaint of the most egg-headed staff member that the classic anatomy text is spelled "Gray's Anatomy", while the popular television show is spelled "Grey's".

GRAY ANATOMY AND ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY [TV drama]

Still from the movie 'Gray Anatomy Buggy'

Set at the infamous Area 51, which the US government still insists does not exist, the weekly drama GRAY ANATOMY AND ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY follows a brilliant, attractive, and somewhat sexually-obsessed group of scientists working to understand alien physiology and reverse-engineer their technology.

Presumably their goals include better low-level handling characteristics in desert climates than the original prototypes....

This screenshot shows some of the earlier work of this group in the 1940s.

THE LEAGUE OF RIGHTEOUS GENTLEMEN [TV police procedural]

Still from the movie 'American Buggy'

Evil and crime are confronted with a crime-fighting organization. Business as usual, right? Not if the crime fighters are all Amish!

That's right, the League of Righteous Gentlemen fight 21st-century crime while intentionally limiting themselves to the technological level of 1880!

Their leader, Jeremiah Schmidt, requires that weapons expert Jacob Graber, forensics guru Ezekial Yoder, and alchemist Jedediah Graber, investigate the evil-doers while limiting themselves to the technology of the age of steam.

What will happen when the gang-bangers unleash their MAC-10s against our heros? Will Jacob's arguments that Hiram Maxim's belt-fed machine gun design is appropriately "period" for the late 1880's be found adequate for its use against the gangs of South Central LA? Will Ezikial's citing of Mark Twain's use of fingerprints as a plot device in "Pudd'nhead Wilson" justify their use in a League investigation? Watch and find out!

THE AX FILES [TV supernatural-themed thriller]

A pair of mid-to-late-1800s government agents (think Fox Mulder and Dana Scully meet Jim West and Artemis Gordon) are sent by President Grant to investigate mysterious events in Minnesota and the Dakotas, the apparent signs of a heroic lumberjack and his enormous and oddly blue-tinted ox. Are these just mythic folk tales? Or is there really something out there?

THE L.P. [TV teen sex romp / prime-time soap]

Still from the movie 'The L.P.'

It's 1808. New Orleans. The former capital of French America du Nord, and now the primary city of America's newest territory.

The teens are oversexed.

So are their parents.

They're all French, and we know what that means!

Sex!

Even in the early 1800s, THE L.P. means excitement!

THE LAW OF THE RING [legal drama-comedy]

THE LAW OF THE RING is not just another legal drama! Nor is it just another lawyer-focused show with the premise that the audience sees the characters' brief thoughts or fantasies (see "Ally McBeal"). Nor is it just another clone from the David E Kelley duplication machine.

No, THE LAW OF THE RING is all that PLUS the idea that all the lawyers in a Los Angeles firm are very recently retired professional wrestlers!

Imagine the possibilities when, during a difficult cross-examination, the prosecuting attorney briefly fantasises about smacking the witness over the head with a folding chair!

When a brilliant closing argument is followed by a brief glimpse of the jury waving, hooting, waving hand-made signs, and holding extra-large Mountain Dew cups!

When an objection by the opposing lawyer is followed by a fantasy of a flying leap from atop the judge's bench, smashing the opposing team's table and crushing the impertinent advocate!

Original working title: OFF THE TURNBUCKLES AND ONTO THE BAR

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