July 8, 2004
NINA AND THE FOOL
Feature Length Dark Comedy.
LOGLINE: A man falls in love with a girl who sole ambition is to destroy him.
PREMISE:
Richard Appleby, a happily married father of three and a hapless architect falls in love with Nina, a florist.
Richard becomes so smitten with her that she begins to form a cunning plan of deceit and betrayal. The first thing she has to do is pretend she loves him, oh, and get rid of the wife and children. Nina hates children after all.
So after Richard becomes a free man (with the help of Nina) they settle down in one of his horrific concrete creations which only makes Nina despise him all the more.
And the trouble is, the more Richard feels humiliated, defeated and trapped in his own creation, oddly enough the more Nina thinks she’s beginning to love him. Sometimes love, hurts a lot.
The film spans from his wife’s 10th Wedding Anniversary (November 22nd to New Years Day)
CHARACTERS
NINA: 22, a bilingual Quebecer. She’s as cute as a cap pistol and as cold as an ice cube.
RICHARD APPLEBY. He’s 42, with two children and a wife that loves him. He loves building with concrete (it’s so smooth and grey) and finds his wandering eye has finally caught the attention of a cute little young French girl.
THE AMERICANS
Feature length drama/disillusionment plot.
Logline:
A couple get stranded on vacation in a small Californian town as their relationship falls apart.
Premise:
Jack and Angela are traveling to Las Vegas for a vacation when their car breaks down in Baker California, Death Valley USA. The mechanic, a compulsive gambler who is going to fix their car, takes their money and heads to Vegas leaving Jack and Angela waiting.
In the meantime, Jack kills time by hanging out at the service station (expecting the mechanic) and with theprecocious and promiscuous teenage daughter of the mechanic.
Angela tries to fill her time in the small town taking pictures and sight seeing all the while trying to make sense of her life. One of the local residents takes a liking to Angela vies for her affection all the while trying to emasculate Jack.
When the mechanic fails to show up Jack coerces Angela to go with him to Vegas, and once there he proposes to her.
Angela reluctantly agrees, but becomes more and more disillusioned after a mugging ruins their honeymoon. Fortunately they find the mechanic, who is becoming increasingly ill, get the part and head back to Baker.
The strain of the quickie marriage finally bear upon Angela and she decides to head back home and wants an annulment. So she leave Jack in Baker to fix the car by himself with only the help of a fourteen year old girl.
Characters: Jack Cooper: 31, an engineer. He has been with Angela for eight years and finally wants to settle down and get married.
Angela: 29. She’s been working high class retail for years (Holt Renfrew) and feels like she’s going know where. She loves Jack deeply, but needs to find herself and getting married “like Elvis and Pricilla” isn’t going to do it for her.
Emma: 14. She can have any boy she wants, so she says. She’s recently living with he stepfather in baker to get away from her mother, a waitress in Vegas.
THE INVESTIGATION
Feature Length Detective / Neo Noir
LOGLINE: A detective falls in love with a woman who’s husband hired him to find out if she was still in love.
PREMISE: A man hires a detective to find out if his wife still loves him. It results in a meticulous investigation on the wife and the very nature of love to the point where the detective finds out that he has become intrinsically involved in his clients wife’s life.
The detective and the woman become lovers and the detective begins to give false, although, detailed information about his clients wife. After awhile the detective finds that he is the one under investigation and has become so involved with the small details he misses the larger picture.
The film is made up of a record of the detectives investigations, through his stills, audio recordings, memo’s, telephone conversations, evidence logged, miles driven, and composites of his query.
CHARACTERS:
HIRO: 30, Japanese. Private investigator. He’s drives a 1977 Nissan 280z. He’s beyond thorough and takes digital still pictures and sound recordings. He has an ex-wife, who’s remarried and now has children.
SECRETARY: Hiro’s secretary. 23. She’s the kind of girl you want so much it makes you sorry.
WIFE: 35? She’s a mystery. Independently wealthy. Cold. Hard to read.
CLIENT: Bit of an unknown. 48. Dresses impeccably. Drives an old Jaguar. Seems to have dealings in offshore exports. Determined.
A FAMILIAR PLACE
Feature Length surreal social satire / Kafkaesque
Logline:
A man loses himself when he accidentally comes home to the wrong suburban house and the family that lives their fails to notice that he doesn’t belong.
Premise:
A man comes home from work only to find the home he comes home to is not his own, only he thinks it is. The pictures on the wall look like him, the children resemble his, and his wife, who's is not his wife, doesn't seem to notice, he's not her husband. She just assumes that he is her husband and always has been. He is lost, yet in a familiar world.
When he leaves the house, he finds that he lives in a place where the homes all seem alike, the neighbors so common, the streets so nondescript that he becomes afraid and bewildered in his suburban nightmare. He begins a journal and a map to orient him within his surroundings.
Over time, he has a detailed overview of his life, the area he lives in, with his new wife and children.
And thenone day, someone he's never met comes looking for him. He just happens to be the man who's settled into his house, with his real wife and children.
Character: Peter H. 38. He becomes an anthropologist in what looks like his own home.