Pen used to write brilliant movie pitches.

Unclassified and Probably Unclassifiable Brilliant Movie Concepts

Movie Pitches

PEGLEG BALLERINA [drama]

Edgar Degas is a beloved French impressionist known for his many paintings of ballerinas. But his least-loved (or to be honest, most shocking) work is his "Pegleg Ballerina". It is one of the dirty secrets of the art world that this would-be masterpiece has never been seen by the public since an initial one-week showing in Paris in 1905. The brief outrage it caused led to its being hidden away from the public by an art curation community that sees itself as protecting the public from what it would not appreciate or understand. To this day, mention of this obscure work will lead to raised eyebrows among the cognescenti at best, or more likely, statements that the questioner must be mistaken.

But the painting exists, do not be mistaken, and this dramatic film will illuminate the inspiring true story behind the art.

Degas' "Pegleg Ballerina" is based on a dancer he knew, a dancer who was an inspiration to every life she touched. The film will start with the painting's being hastily hidden from the public after the shortened Parisian exhibition in March of 1905, then work back in time to show Degas' struggle to capture the dancer on his canvas. From that, it will jump back to a time when Degas was an artist struggling to distinguish himself from the rest of the impressionistic movement, and the day he first met this dancer and learned her amazing but true story. Their forbidden love has been one of the darkest secrets of the fine art community, but PEGLEG BALLERINA will bring its inspirational and timeless story to the masses.

Still from the movie 'Pegleg Ballerina'

Degas searching for his lost love at a Paris dancing academy

CROUCHING DRAGON, FOLDING CHAIR [action]

What happens when traditional Kung Fu masters team up with professional wrestlers to retrieve a magical ring from an evil warlord? One very large and multi-cultural can of whupass is opened!

Mixing the Kung Fu "old school" of Master Po and Kwai Chang Caine with the "middle school" of Jackie Chan and "new school" of Jet Li, along with the WWE "old school" of the 1980s films of Rowdy Roddy Piper and Jesse "The Body" Ventura with the "new school" of Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, blended with the humor and visual effects of "Kung Fu Hustle", CROUCHING DRAGON, FOLDING CHAIR has something for everyone!

Still from the movie 'Benjamin Franklinstein'

BENJAMIN FRANKLINSTEIN [horror / historical drama]

The movie that dares to ask just WHY one of the Founding Fathers was so interested in lightning. It could have been just scientific curiousity, but it could have been an attempt to harness lightning to power his other, lesser-known, experiments.

Father of a country.

Creator of a monster.

BENJAMIN FRANKLINSTEIN.

NIGHT OF THE LIVING GIPPER [horror / sports / inspirational]

A legendary football hero's corpse somes to life and terrorizes a small Michigan town.

Ripped from the headlines:
http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/news/story?id=3058026
Associated Press
Updated: October 10, 2007, 10:35 PM ET
Gipp family has Notre Dame legend's body exhumed for DNA testing
TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. -- The body of George Gipp, the Notre Dame football player who inspired the rallying cry "Win one for the Gipper," was exhumed recently for DNA testing in his Upper Peninsula hometown.
The test was sought by the Gipp family and met legal requirements, Houghton County Medical Examiner Dr. Dawn Nulf said Wednesday, although it angered some relatives who live in the area where Gipp was born and raised.
Nulf declined comment about why the request was made.
An ESPN crew filmed the exhumation for an upcoming story, but a spokesman said the network played no role in arranging it.
[....]

MEL GIBSON'S "THE ROAD TO ATHENS" [action / comedy]

Given the success of Mel Gibson's "Passion of the Christ", maybe it's time to re-imagine The Acts of the Apostles as a mismatched buddy cop movie.

Saul of Tarsus experiences a theophany on the Road to Malibu! While driving his top-end German sedan to Malibu, a major Hollywood figure returning home from the execution of a notorious death-row inmate named Steven is suddenly blinded by the intense spotlight of a California Highway Patrol cruiser.

Rendered blind, he lashes out verbally against his persecutors with racist terminology, then hears the question "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute us?"

He asks, and is told that the speaker is of the race whom he had been cursing.

Mysteriously blinded, he is transported to Rampart Emergency by paramedics, examined by puzzled physicians, and told to go home to recuperate. But he cannot get home to Malibu by himself in this condition, and must rely on the care of strangers. Thus he is taken into the Beth Israel Home.

The chief rabbi, an elderly man named Ananias, visits him, and something like scales fall from his eyes as his sight is miraculously restored. He changes his name to Paul, renounces his Hollywood career, and talks one of the staff physicians, Lukas of Athenas, into a trip to the doctor's ancestral home.

To be filmed entirely in Hebrew and first-century Greek.

Tagline:
Η αλήθεια θα σας απελεσθερώσει!
"The truth will set you free!"

MEL GIBSON'S "THE CRETAN" [comedy]

Still from the movie 'The Cretan'

The script of THE CRETAN will be printed only in Linear A and all cast members must learn this as-yet undeciphered language.

Mel Gibson has brought us two movies (so far!) filmed entirely in obscure or dead languages: "The Passion of the Christ" in first-century Aramaic, Hebrew, and Greek, and "Apocalypto" in classic Mayan. The obvious next step is a movie with all dialogue in languages which not only are no longer spoken, but which are not even deciphered!

THE CRETAN, a hilarious comedy ideally suited for an Adam Sandler type of actor as its lead, is set in Crete in the early Minoan era, well before the time of classical Greece.

The dialogue of THE CRETAN is written entirely in the language known as Linear A, a language used between about 1800 and 1450 BC on Crete, especially around Knossos, and not yet deciphered.

WORLD CHAMPIONS [sports / science fiction]

Still from the movie 'World Champions'

The visiting team arrives

A hirsute and rebellious baseball team (think of the 2004 Boston Red Sox) are the champions of the "World Series", thought to be of little import outside the world of Major League Baseball until the enormous ships appear above in the skies above world capitals. Demanding a game against "The champions of this world", the mysterious aliens in their enormous ships threaten global annihilation if they cannot be defeated in a best-of-seven-games series.

In a concluding twist (and see here the rather lame and obvious twist at the end of H.G. Wells' novella "The War of the Worlds", let alone Tom Cruise's far lamer Scientology recruiting film by the same name), the aliens are defeated because they have been monitoring the satellite transmissions of Ted Turner's WTBS.

WTBS carries the games of the Atlanta Braves, an American League team in which the pitcher does not bat but is replaced by the Designated Hitter. Our heros are from the National League, and the alien pitcher's complete inability to bat saves the population of Earth from immediate annihilation.

Tagline:
"In the National League's Central Division, no one can hear you scream."

CARDIOLOGIST OF DARKNESS [TV quirky comedy/drama series]

When an African-American cardiologist accepts a position in a small city in Mississippi, the local bigots are scandalized. But when this outsider saves the life of the local patriarch, a man who is not-so-secretly (to the townspeople) the local Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, he changes their minds.

The cardiologist and the townspeople come to respect each other while remaining baffled by their respective differences. After the tension of the first few episodes, this transitions into quirky humor based on the fish-out-of-water scenario.

Tagline:
It's like "Guess Who's Coming To Dinner" and "In The Heat of the Night" meet "Northern Exposure"!

This was sent immediately after the pitch for APOCALYPSE THEN, in case they didn't get the point of that one. Of course, they completely missed the point of both brilliant ideas.

THE TRANSPORTER 7: TRANSPORTING MISS DAISY [action]

He was a Special Forces operative, and then a mercenary. Now he is a chauffeur for the elderly. But with the same meticulous attention to detail.

She is a wealthy elderly lady who needs to get to town and back. But, is that all she is.... Or is there something ominous lurking in her background that will bring sudden violence to their usually peaceful drive into town?

Inspired by a Robot Chicken skit. Well, fine, simply lifted from there.

THE CHRONICLES OF BARNIA [fantasy]

A group of friends discover that the door in the rear of an enchanted liquor cabinet opens into a magical world where the animals can't talk but the chickens have fingers, the buffaloes have wings, and, along with domestic pitchers, they're half-price until 7 PM daily.

THE CHRONICLES OF HERNIA [inspirational]

The daily miracles experienced in an evangelistic outpatient surgical clinic. A lot of people bought those "Left Behind" books, and some of them might buy tickets to an adequately righteous movie.


Amazon
ASIN: B000JR0BYE

POPE FICTION [biography / historical drama]

Ripped from the headlines of Jon Voight playing Karol Wotyla, aka John Paul II, in a made-for-TV movie, POPE FICTION is a movie that, while respectful and faithful to history, presents the story of the papacy in a hip non-linear fashion certain to appeal to a younger market. This movie will reward multiple viewings (always a big plus for both ticket sales and DVD rentals and sales) as it cuts between events during Vatican II, the Avignon papacy, and the Christmas day 800 coronation of Charlesmagne.

THE IN-LAW JOSIE WALES [comedy]

Riding on the coattails of the popularity of "Meet The Parents" and "Meet The Fockers", THE IN-LAW JOSIE WALES takes the concept one step further.

So far, the popular comedies have been based on the humor of a hapless would-be groom dealing with the future in-law of a character similar to a character that might be played by Robert De Niro.

Well, imagine the uncomfortableness, and hilarity, experienced by a young man in love with a woman who is, vaguely, from "near Monterey, California", and whose father is "active in local government".

Yes, the future father-in-law is not a character played BY Clint Eastwood, but actually IS Clint Eastwood! The Man With No Name! Dirty Harry! The man who did his own climbing stunts in "The Eiger Sanction"!

The big question is the casting — could you get The Man himself to play this role? The answer is Yes: this is an actor who has co-starred with an orang-utang, who has a keen sense of comedy, yet has not yet been offered the chance to expand his craft this way.

ENRON HUBBARD [action / alternative history]

The two-fronted US war against both Iran and Saudi Arabia raged through much of 2007 and into 2008. Known respectively as "Operation Persian Vengeance" and "Operation Desert Thunder" in the US, and as "The Jihad That Finally Ejected The Crusaders" throughout much of the rest of the world, this war did not go nearly as well for the US as recent military endeavors had.

The Cheney administration had issued Presidential Edict #1 in 2007, simply stating that Presidential Edicts now exist, they have the immediate force of law (with the exemption of executive branch staff), and the legislative and judicial branches of government have no say regarding a PE. This was followed in thirty minutes by the announcement of PE2, better known as the Compulsory Patriotism Act of 2007.

As the price of oil skyrocketed to surreal levels, raising the price of fuel in the US nearly to that long common in western Europe, the American way of life was drastically changed. First were the Gas Riots. Then the conversion of many of the larger SUVs into trendy small diners. Three national competitors to Greyhound were founded and thrived, as people who weren't on their way home from prison started taking the bus. Thanks to the provisions of PE2, the rather narrow industry segment of mace and plastic restraint wristlocks boomed, but little else did.

Almost in financial desperation, Presidential Edict #5 decreed tax-free status "for all corporations engaged in the oil or related energy businesses".

Enter a charlatan and author of mind-bogglingly bad science fiction, Enron Hubbard. He founded an "oil and energy consulting company", named megalomaniacally for himself, and fought to achieve tax-free status from the Internal Revenue Service. Finally awarded it under mysterious circumstances, his system of Profitology provides a shelter for wealthy businessmen unable to reclassify their businesses as oil-related.

But as the executives learn more of the secret teachings of their new "partner", they begin to become uneasy....

SUDOKU: THE MOVIE [fantasy / art / stoner]

SUDOKU: THE MOVIE is the obvious next step in moviemaking, following two popular trends:

The audience is mesmerized as colored numbers swirl and drop into place on a 9x9 grid! As soon as grid is filled, a new nearly empty one fills the screen and it starts again!

With a soundtrack by Pink Floyd and to be played at midnight near college campuses.

TURNING JAPANESE [game show]

In this new game show
the contestants must only
speak in strict haiku.

Five syllables first,
seven syllables come next.
Finish with five more.

Violation of
this strict speaking rule leads to
immediate loss!

Humiliation
of dramatic contestants
spells "reality".

This hot new idea
promises to soon out-sell
SUDOKU: THE FILM!

THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING [action]

It is said that King Arthur will return "when England most needs him". The Norman Invasion, the Battle of Britain, and other historical calamities have made some people say that history just proves Arthur to be a myth.

But....

It's the early 21st century. The British royal family continues to decay. The Prince of Wales has discarded his fairytale princess for a rather horsey (and not in an equestrienne sense) woman, for whom he has rather infamously dreamed of serving as a tampon. Things look grim for the United Kingdom of Great Britain, Scotland, and Northern Ireland.

Still from the movie 'The Once And Future King'

Prince Harry, second in line to the British throne

Still from the movie 'The Once And Future King'

Prince Charles, first in line to the British throne

In Glastonbury, in south-eastern England, near Cornwall, a strange man has appeared. Glastonbury is full of strange characters, New Age devotees and others, so one more odd person there would be no big deal. That is, if he weren't wearing chain mail, carrying a broadsword, and speaking Anglo-Saxon....

See the "Camillagate" scandal, in which intercepted mobile telephone conversations between Charles and Camilla were revealed. The recording was made in 1989 and the transcript published in the press in late 1992:
Charles: "Oh God, I'll just live inside your trousers or something. It would be so much easier."
Camilla: "What are you going to turn into? A pair of knickers or something?"
Charles: "Or, God forbid, a Tampax,"
Camilla: "You are a complete idiot! Oh, what a wonderful idea."
Harry's party dress might just be part of family tradition, what with Edward VIII's alleged Nazi sympathies and the German plan for the SS to kidnap Edward in July 1940.


Amazon
ASIN: B000FFAAD2
Still from the movie 'The Hammer of Thor'

Lisa Nowak, former astronaut

THE HAMMER OF THOR [fact-based drama]

Based on the hammer-wielding Depends-wearing astronaut who drove from Texas to Florida to assault a romantic rival.

Attempts to answer the question "Why did she wear an adult diaper when she would have to stop multiple times anyway to refuel her car?"

Still from the movie 'First Daughter, Third Base'

Is our children learning?

FIRST DAUGHTER, THIRD BASE [teen sex comedy]

And you thought that the Bush twins were a handful....

PRESIDENTIAL BATTLES [fantasy / reality]

It appears to be a "reality" show, and to be honest, it isn't really much less realistic than any of them.

PRESIDENTIAL BATTLES is based on the premise that deceased U.S. presidents go to a Valhalla of sorts. A Valhalla based on ENDLESS COMBAT!

There's the formidable Thomas Jefferson, a tall — well over six foot — redheaded farmer. And there's Teddy Roosevelt and his Big Stick. And Gerald Ford the football player.

Still from the movie 'Presidential Battles'

And then there's Abe Lincon, the Illinois Rail-splitter. He's just a spindly sufferer of Marfan's Syndrome, right? No, not when he has his ax!

Of course Woodrow Wilson always gets thrashed. But then there's Warren G Harding, widely considered to have the most corrupt administration ever — watch out for his dirty fighting!

And Ulysses "U.S." Grant — get him full of whiskey and he's a one-man bar-clearing brawl.

Each week on PRESIDENTIAL BATTLES we see one historic figure take on another in a no-holds-barred fight.

From the creators of TAFT, TAFT'S BIG SCORE, and TAFT IN AFRICA.

BRUTHAS [drama]

Two gangstas kill an older man, and only then realize that they're brothers and he was their father.

Dosteovsky in da hood.

SERVE THE PEOPLE [suspense]

It looks like a welcome change from the usual self-absorbtion in Hollywood — a wide variety of celebrities band together to fight homelessness. The new organization is called "La Cucina", Spanish for "The Kitchen", in honor of its original soup kitchen.

Still from the movie 'Serve The People'

The highly secretive nature of the organization itself leads some detractors to claim that it's a cult, but La Cucina's spokesmen say that its all-celebrity membership just couldn't do their good work when subjected to all the distractions of public attention.

Sure enough, thousands of homeless people are disappearing from Los Angeles sidewalks. They are taken to La Cucina's compound in the California desert for what La Cucina's spokesmen describe as "a program of nutrition, exercise, and preparation for a proper insertion into society".

Some alarmist detractors ask where the "graduates" of this program are — homeless disappear from the streets, but where are those people reappearing after La Cucina's program? The steely-eyed spokesmen just reiterate, "They are being properly inserted into society".

Meanwhile, one of the prominent La Cucina members raises a furor in Peru when she is spotted carrying a book whose cover bears only a red star and Chinese ideograms saying "Serve The People". Of course this Maoist saying opens emotional wounds in Peru, where the Sendero Luminoso, or Shining Path, Mao-inspired terrorists killed many thousands in decades of national horror.

But when asked, she only responds "It's a cookbook".

And so the mystery deepens....

Based on the premise that Cameron Diaz might be an alien overlord instead of just naïve:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6236142.stm
"Diaz apologises for Maoist slogan
Actress Cameron Diaz has apologised for carrying a bag in Peru which featured a political slogan likely to be considered offensive by local people.
The Shrek star visited the historical Machu Picchu site with a green bag which had a red star and the words "serve the people" printed in Chinese.
It evoked memories of a Peruvian war against Maoist rebels in the 1980s and '90s, when up to 69,000 people died.
[....]"

SEVEN BRIDES FOR EVERY BROTHER [re-imagined musical]

An updating of the classic story with a twist:

It's set in a schismatic fundamentalist Mormon compound.

Tensions grow with the increasing shortage of women. Will six out of every seven young men be excommunicated and banished from the community? What will become of them when they were raised to distrust the outside world?

Tagline:
It's like "Paint Your Wagon" meets "The Book of Mormon"!

THAT'S ADVERTAINMENT! [variety]

The Geico Cavemen didn't get a fair chance.

An hour-long block containing a weekly rotation of 20-minute episodes, THAT'S ADVERTAINMENT explores the tolerance for advertising taking over entertainment. The individual 20-minute "shows" rotate from one week to the next, much like the CBS Mystery Movie of days of yore. The Geico Cavemen would act as hosts, providing introductions at the beginning of each segment and wry commentary at its end, much like Rod Serling on The Twilight Zone. The segments would include:

Tagline:
Why wait up to fifteen minutes to see advertising?

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