(no subject)
for the Create-a-Show option challenge at tvrealm
• This idea has been knocking around in my head since I was eleven, and especially since last year, when I finally completed the last level of the Titanic: Adventure Out of Time computer game.
• Like the game, this is a story about spies. Pan Am has taught me that no historical story set around the World War is complete without spies.
• But mostly it is an attempt to restore this ship to glory and erase out as much of the James Cameron movie as possible.
• Yes, the names of the characters are cheap variations of the names of their actors. (In my defence, I would've gotten majorly confused otherwise.)
R. M. S. TITANIC;
Ten people, three nations, a war, and the Titanic.
A globetrotting inventor. A disowned aristocrat. A demure young angel, and her rakish chain-smoking brother. A gold-digger and her nerdy sister. An international art thief. A glib, careless sailor. A gentleman boxer. A woman is more wraith than real, and the greatest ship that ever sailed.
Set against the backdrop of the First World War, the R. M. S. Titanic sails from Plymouth to New York. On board, behind the smiles and the social graces, is a race against time to discover the spies and kill the traitors. Success would mean an early end to a dreadful war, and failure would change the world as we know it today.
This is the story of the good, the bad, and the double agents: the ones who play jump-rope with the line in between.
THE AMERICANS
Daphne is young, rich, beautiful, admired, bored, and not the least bit nice. In fact, she's always been able to use her looks and her intelligence to get whatever she wants, and why not? Sailing to America, her homeland, for the first time in her life, she's not happy with having her little sister, the frumpy Emily tag along. Dinners, dancing, rubbing shoulders with the élite- this is the almost-perfect voyage, as far as Daphne is concerned. And when the gorgeous, mysterious Gerard starts paying attention to her, she's hardly surprised. What's a little flirting between two good-looking people with equal amounts of cleverness and charm?
The problem? Daphne thinks she's too much of a devil to be considered 'innocent', but her closeted upbringing makes her more naïve than she realises. Gerard is tall, dark, handsome and ruthless… something Daphne might never see until it's too late.
Emily is the baby of the family. Emily is pitied by her aunts because her older sister, Daphne inherited both beauty and style. Emily is the bookworm, the plain-speaking one, the one who has more sarcastic quips to dish out than pleasantries. Emily wants only one thing in life: a rich husband, who can help her escape the confines of her family. She may be the 'ugly duckling' and the 'black sheep', but she's not Daphne's sister for nothing. She has ambition, she has plans, and she's as mercenary as they get.
Lily is the one that got away. Beautiful, enigmatic, loved by all, life cut short by her sudden and mysterious disappearance. She escaped by the skin of her teeth.
Once upon a time, there was a girl with a poker face. When her adored father was hanged at the Old Bailey on what she is convinced were trumped-up charges, she grew up hating the system: the London police, English justice, and all the lies it stood for. She was the easiest prey Theodore had ever come across. At seventeen, she was working as a typist in Downing Street, the seat of British Parliament, and one of the finest spies that the Germans had planted.
And then the unthinkable happens. The cliché. She meets a man. Boyd is spoilt, but generous, earnest, and optimistic- a far cry from Lily's world. She falls in love him, making promises about their future: promises she knows she can't keep. And what will happen when Theodore finds out? No one would be safe.
So Lily empties her desk at work, pays her rent, packs her bags, and runs. New York is so large and anonymous; she will always be safe there… won't she?
THE ENGLISH
Anderson wants to see the world. On a shoe-string budget, because that's what he has. And maybe fall in love along the way, and get his design for the new ballpoint pen patented. Hey, he's a dreamer, but he's going to make them come real. And America is the land of opportunities and credulous people, he's going to have no trouble selling them his inventions. As for falling in love? There's a corkscrew blonde aboard the Titanic that he can't keep his eyes off…
The problem? Her name is Emily. She may laugh at his jokes, but she's never going to forget the fact that he's in second class. That's just one cla$$ less than the way she likes them.
Boyd didn't know how tough the real world was until he was thrown out of his luxurious life on his arse. As the son of the chairman of the White Star Line, he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He was attending St. Andrew's and picking out engagement rings as surprise for his wonderful girlfriend. But then, one day, Lily disappears, and Boyd's world falls apart. He drops out of university, fully prepared to comb the whole world to look for her- only to have his father call him a lovesick, deluded cretin who needs to complete his education first. Needless to say, Boyd doesn't listen, but his father disowns him for it.
Now in a position where he can literally count his money, he scrapes up a second-class ticket on the Titanic, based on the rumour that Lily has gone to America. He finds that he's bunking with a rather amusing chap named Anderson, who finds it hilarious that Boyd used to be a millionaire and the son of the very man who built the ship they're on…
The problem? If only Boyd had paid attention to the nuances of his father's life, instead of free-wheeling through life, eating, drinking and making merry. Maybe he would have heard a thing or two. The shady deals his father had pushed through, especially with troubled steel baron Andrew Conkling who supplied the very stuff that the Titanic is made of…
ThKatherine is just an angel with a dirty face. And now trouble is her only friend, and he's back again. The life of an international art thief is all about deception, glitz, and seeing the world, but Katherine may be in a tighter spot than she realised. Having replaced a priceless Goya painting in the Louvre with a very clever fake, Katherine and her accomplices have gone their separate ways. In particular, she's taking the Titanic to the cultural capital of America, where there are even more things to steal.
The problem? Aware of the dangers of keeping the Goya original in her room, Katherine had left it in a tightly sealed case, in the care of the ship's Purser. But now the damn fool man has gone and mixed up two identical-looking parcels, so while Katherine is holding on to a box full of make-up, unbeknownst to her and anyone else… Daphne and Emily have the painting.
Theodore epitomises Englishness. Ostensibly a professional boxer, who enjoys Glen Fiddich, cricket, and afternoons at the Club, he's in the business of grooming spies for the Germans.
THE FRENCH
Claire is unassuming and innocent, nothing more than a pretty face with an appreciationfor natural beauty: her wholesome goodness is certainly a far cry from her brother, Gerard… right? Or maybe not. Underneath the angelic façade is a master manipulator, who can sweet-talk anyone into revealing anything. Claire's nearly eidetic memory makes her the ultimate intelligence-gathering asset for the Germans, and whoever would think to suspect a face like that?
But really? She and Gerard are only posing as siblings, while they put their own plans in motion. Moreover, Claire is in the precarious position of being a double agent, and Gerard will kill her without hesitation if he so much as… suspects.
Gerard is living proof that you can't arrest someone for looking like a devil in a pair of khakis. Five minutes in a room with him, and you'll walk away thinking he's "such a charming young man, maybe a little shrewd, but that just means his clever!" He and his sister Claire are sailing to visit their aunt in New York… or so they say. Side-by-side, they're a pair of angels with dirty faces on a single-minded mission: kill the traitor.
Posing as siblings is only their cover. Their network has it on excellent authority that Lily is secreted somewhere aboard the Titanic, either a stowaway or in disguise. With the kind of knowledge she has, she'd be the ultimate source of information for the Allies, and she must be silenced before she can destroy her former. Working alongside their handler, Theodore, it's a race against time for Gerard and Claire to get to Lily before the Titanic touches the port and she disappears into the anonymous crowd of New York city forever…
Serge is invisible. To everyone else, he is I. P. Freely, First Mate of the R. M. S. Titanic. It's the perfect cover that gives him perfect access to all corners of the ship, go anywhere without being stopped… and question the passengers without being suspected. Serge is Claire's contact aboard the Titanic and not even he can save her if they don't find Lily before the spies do, or if Gerard discovers his partner is a double agent…
production notes;
because I have a lot of these, and I like to talk. A lot.
• When casting the characters, I tried to avoid making them a replica of the roles their actors are most famous for. Therefore, Tom Hardy is a posh scumbag (Inception), Bradley James is lovesick and incompetent (Merlin), Clemence Poesy is a crafty bitch (Harry Potter; Gossip Girl), Dianna Agron is a hard-core bimbette (Glee), and Emma Stone is a gold-digger (every teen movie possibly done by her.)
• I couldn't escape the Gaspard Ulliel stereotype (Hannibal Rises) because every photo of him that I have ever Googled shows him A) smoking too much B) looking like the world's sexiest villain in the process.
• All of Andrew Garfield's pictures are from Never Let Me Go. Emma's are all from The Help.
• Sebastian Rochéas a member of the Titanic crew has been taken straight out of the Supernatural episode, My Heart Will Go On. Balthazar agrees with me about the dangers of making the Titanic movie.
• The black and white photos of the Titanic are all restored originals, and they were taken from HERE. It's one of many websites that have old photos from the ship, but I am in love with that site for being so dedicated and comprehensive.
• Each ship photo is a dig at the character they have been placed with:
-second-class library (Andrew Garfield) D-deck
-third-class general room (Bradley James) E-deck
-veranda café/café Parisian (Clemence Poesy) A-deck
-B-deck cabin (Dianna Agron) B-deck
-first-class grand staircase (Emma Stone; made famous by the movie and ironical in the movie context for her character, Emily)
-first-class smoking room (Gaspard Ulliel) A-deck
-first-class lounge (Keira Knightley) A-deck
-Titanic leaving Southampton (Liv Tyler)
-Marconi room/wireless room (Sebastian Roché) boat deck
-gymnasium (Tom Hardy) A-deck
• Yes, the implication of the last scene is that Boyd is dead. Was it suicide or did Gerard get to him first?
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• People I wanted to cast, but ran out of roles for: Daniel Craig, Emily Blunt, Gisele Bundchen and the rest of the cast of The Devil Wears Prada.
