(no subject)
This is the treatment I wrote for a movie I'm calling "Pretzel"
Okay, so this is how we roll:
Phillip Driver is our protagonist, a disenfranchised recent college graduate forced to return home to his small hometown in rural Texas, live with his parents, and accept a job stocking groceries at the local Tom Thumb. Across the street from the Drivers is a new man in the neighborhood, a class 3 sexual offender, Daniel Johnson, a erstwhile graphic designer. That’s the set up.
A winter night, cold and mostly rainy, finds Phil heading home from work, smoking a surreptitious cigarette. He watches a police cruiser move down the street, all lights off, but goes inside.
A few minutes later, the police stage a loud raid on the Johnson house, arresting Johnson. Phil is watching from the window, but gets yelled at by his parents, who are, strangely, awake, and seemingly expecting the raid/arrest. Phil acquiesces by heading out the back door, and following the squad car to the station on his bike. He doesn’t own a car.
At the station, Phil talks to one of the arresting officers, Miles Coom, who is outside sipping a cup of coffee and wiping down the backseat of the cruiser. The small town nature of Double Oak means Coom recognizes Driver, and they chat about the events of the evening, then Driver heads around the back of the station, and has a quick chat with the aforementioned Mr. Johnson about the details of the evening. Johnson allays the theory of his innocence and the conspiracy against him. Driver, eager to throw a monkey wrench in the process promises help, and in return, Johnson tells Driver about the spare key and necessity of removing the computer inside the Johnson house to outside the Johnson house.
As Driver walks away mulling over the requested task, he begins to worry about the notion Johnson might be guilty and removing the computer from the house might be the worst thing he could do. He makes a phone call to his friend Jenny, a New York resident and former college buddy/girlfriend, and they discuss the problem. Driver is convinced to remain an outside observer until he gets home and observes a red glow coming from Johnson’s house (obviously the glow comes from a flashlight and someone snooping/planning evidence inside). Driver takes up residence on his roof in a sleeping bag, hoping to see the individual planting the evidence, though, it is not long before he falls asleep.
As dawn rears it’s ugly house, a shutting door wakes Driver up, and he rolls off the roof into a nest of bushes. It’s still hella early, sun barely creeping above the horizon, so Driver makes an exploratory foray into the Johnson house, and finds the place trashed. Driver picks up a little, trying to hide anything that might be damaging, and also takes a laptop computer from the office to his house.
Johnson’s bail is denied the following morning.
Driver searches through Johnson’s computer, and finds illicit kiddie pictures, girls he recognizes from around the town. While doing this, he notices the police looking through the house across the street. There is a heated discussion on the front porch between a man in a suit and the chief of police, Tom Dewey. Driver follows the suited man to the richer section of town, the one right beyond the trailer park, and sees a meeting of sorts going on in a living room.
Outside the house, to the side, there is a girl, Stacy Myers, trying to light a cigarette, without much luck. She’s a pompous high school student, homecoming queen runner up, and something of a favorite for the prom queen runner up spot. Driver, seizing the opportunity, proffers a light for her cigarette, and then proceeds to chat her up. They head inside, Myers leading badboy Driver into the house for some illicit doings, but Driver subtly ditches the chick with a clever ruse about bathrooms, and drops an eave on the convo happening in the formal living room. There are tidbits dropped about the problems encountered with the house and the lack of the evidence. The only firm bit of information Driver can get before he sees Myers looking for him is a name. TJ Thompson.
Feigning a “thing”, Driver heads out to some phantom appointment, leaving a wanting Stacy Myers behind. He’s out to find Thompson. A look through the phone book at home lists four T. Thompsons, but no TJ. A few quick phone calls, and Driver finds that TJ lives in the trailer park.
A stake out of TJ’s trailer yields the same suited man as at Johnson’s house and the meeting. There is an argument, unfortunately out of earshot of Driver, but one that ends up with a heated exchange between the two men. The suit is yelling about money, so TJ pushes the suit off the porch, and screams something about seeing what problems a big mouth brings up.
Driver, though tempted to follow the suit, waits to see what TJ does. TJ gets drunk, drives to the store, and gets more beer. Driver has to avoid the store because he calls in sick for work.
Back in the trailer park, TJ proceeds to get completely snookered on cheap beer and passes out. Hiding in the bushes across the way, our hero falls asleep, only to be awakened by the sound of a propane tank exploding, and a trailer burning to the ground. The Volunteer fire department is rather slow to respond, and there are mainly ashes left when water is finally applied to the fire. TJ has been burned to a crisp.
Aghast, the neighbors talk quietly amongst themselves and somewhat to Driver about the shadowy figures they saw creeping about the place right before the fire. However, no one talks to the police because the police do not deign to show themselves at the scene. Nervous, Driver calls Jenny as he heads home, and she admonishes him for getting in the middle of a clearly dangerous situation. He expresses his fear to her, and wants to make sure someone outside the town knows something strange is going on. She hangs up on him because she doesn’t want any involvement, afraid the conspiracy will hunt her down.
The next day, Driver moseys back to the trailer park and tries to engage some of the residents in conversation, but can’t seem to get anyone to talk about the previous night’s events, that is, except for a little girl who talks about seeing a man in a suit creeping by her window. Her slightly older brother yells at the girl for talking about the man who “totally wasn’t there” the night before.
Phillip Driver knows he needs to find the man in the suit, and the last place he saw the suit, that isn’t burnt to the ground, was the Myers residence. SO, Driver heads to the Myers residence and has a run-in with Stacy, who lets on that her parents are out, like always, at some special PTA meeting, where they’ve been like, all month, completely ignoring her. Stacy makes some sexual play for Driver, which Phil deftly ignores, knowing he needs to head to the meeting.
The meeting is held in the basement, and while Phil can see a little of what is going on and hear a bit by crouching outside and looking through a small ground level window, he can’t identify all the participants. He knows, however, that the suit is not among those he can see. There are vague mentions of a plan, the need to escalate the plan, to take things to the next level. Some older woman asks when the parents return, when things have to be finished. “Two days.” Who’s watching the kids? “Holt, Jim Holt.”
Phil runs home, overwhelmed, and wanting to check the phone book for a Jim Holt. His parents come home shortly after he does, and ask why he’s not at work. He lets on about his investigation into the Johnson affair. There is a heated argument between the parents and the son, and we also find out that Phil has a little sister by the name of Mary who asks why everyone is yelling, and Phil storms out in righteous fury.
Upon which time, he runs into his pseudo friend Miles, the police officer. There is short conversation about the girl Miles is seeing, one Marie S. Brown, when a call comes over the radio to be on the look out for Phillip Driver. Miles closes his eyes, and mentions the need for Phil to run. Phil runs, in a panic, and hides in the backyard, and rather quickly, the inside of Johnson’s house.
As night falls, Phil sneaks back into his house, and looks in his mother’s cell phone, and sees a phone call was placed to the police and to Nathan Myers, who is listed on the fridge phone tree as the head of the PTA. Also listed in the phone is one Holt. No first name. Phil copies the phone number down, and heads out into the night. Maybe he does something to the house first, to get back at his family in some fashion. Saran wrap on his mother’s toilet, something juvenile like that.
From a payphone, he calls Holt, and gets Jim. Phil pretends he is calling from a mortgage brokering company, and actually cons Holt into giving some detailed personal information, including Holt’s address.
Heading over to Holt’s address, Phil does some snooping while Holt is sleeping, including looking at Holt and realizing Holt is the Suit, and finds a pair of blonde haired girls locked and gagged in the basement.
Then he calls the FBI or some other outside agency, perhaps the Texas Rangers, and the whole thing is wrapped up, as the girls testify it was Holt who kidnapped them and took the pictures, and not Johnson while Holt rolls over on the PTA and all that.
So, the ending is a little rushed, and it would behoove the movie to have a plot twist or two, or a subplot. Right now everything is a little linear for my taste, but the basics are there.
Thoughts?
Okay, so this is how we roll:
Phillip Driver is our protagonist, a disenfranchised recent college graduate forced to return home to his small hometown in rural Texas, live with his parents, and accept a job stocking groceries at the local Tom Thumb. Across the street from the Drivers is a new man in the neighborhood, a class 3 sexual offender, Daniel Johnson, a erstwhile graphic designer. That’s the set up.
A winter night, cold and mostly rainy, finds Phil heading home from work, smoking a surreptitious cigarette. He watches a police cruiser move down the street, all lights off, but goes inside.
A few minutes later, the police stage a loud raid on the Johnson house, arresting Johnson. Phil is watching from the window, but gets yelled at by his parents, who are, strangely, awake, and seemingly expecting the raid/arrest. Phil acquiesces by heading out the back door, and following the squad car to the station on his bike. He doesn’t own a car.
At the station, Phil talks to one of the arresting officers, Miles Coom, who is outside sipping a cup of coffee and wiping down the backseat of the cruiser. The small town nature of Double Oak means Coom recognizes Driver, and they chat about the events of the evening, then Driver heads around the back of the station, and has a quick chat with the aforementioned Mr. Johnson about the details of the evening. Johnson allays the theory of his innocence and the conspiracy against him. Driver, eager to throw a monkey wrench in the process promises help, and in return, Johnson tells Driver about the spare key and necessity of removing the computer inside the Johnson house to outside the Johnson house.
As Driver walks away mulling over the requested task, he begins to worry about the notion Johnson might be guilty and removing the computer from the house might be the worst thing he could do. He makes a phone call to his friend Jenny, a New York resident and former college buddy/girlfriend, and they discuss the problem. Driver is convinced to remain an outside observer until he gets home and observes a red glow coming from Johnson’s house (obviously the glow comes from a flashlight and someone snooping/planning evidence inside). Driver takes up residence on his roof in a sleeping bag, hoping to see the individual planting the evidence, though, it is not long before he falls asleep.
As dawn rears it’s ugly house, a shutting door wakes Driver up, and he rolls off the roof into a nest of bushes. It’s still hella early, sun barely creeping above the horizon, so Driver makes an exploratory foray into the Johnson house, and finds the place trashed. Driver picks up a little, trying to hide anything that might be damaging, and also takes a laptop computer from the office to his house.
Johnson’s bail is denied the following morning.
Driver searches through Johnson’s computer, and finds illicit kiddie pictures, girls he recognizes from around the town. While doing this, he notices the police looking through the house across the street. There is a heated discussion on the front porch between a man in a suit and the chief of police, Tom Dewey. Driver follows the suited man to the richer section of town, the one right beyond the trailer park, and sees a meeting of sorts going on in a living room.
Outside the house, to the side, there is a girl, Stacy Myers, trying to light a cigarette, without much luck. She’s a pompous high school student, homecoming queen runner up, and something of a favorite for the prom queen runner up spot. Driver, seizing the opportunity, proffers a light for her cigarette, and then proceeds to chat her up. They head inside, Myers leading badboy Driver into the house for some illicit doings, but Driver subtly ditches the chick with a clever ruse about bathrooms, and drops an eave on the convo happening in the formal living room. There are tidbits dropped about the problems encountered with the house and the lack of the evidence. The only firm bit of information Driver can get before he sees Myers looking for him is a name. TJ Thompson.
Feigning a “thing”, Driver heads out to some phantom appointment, leaving a wanting Stacy Myers behind. He’s out to find Thompson. A look through the phone book at home lists four T. Thompsons, but no TJ. A few quick phone calls, and Driver finds that TJ lives in the trailer park.
A stake out of TJ’s trailer yields the same suited man as at Johnson’s house and the meeting. There is an argument, unfortunately out of earshot of Driver, but one that ends up with a heated exchange between the two men. The suit is yelling about money, so TJ pushes the suit off the porch, and screams something about seeing what problems a big mouth brings up.
Driver, though tempted to follow the suit, waits to see what TJ does. TJ gets drunk, drives to the store, and gets more beer. Driver has to avoid the store because he calls in sick for work.
Back in the trailer park, TJ proceeds to get completely snookered on cheap beer and passes out. Hiding in the bushes across the way, our hero falls asleep, only to be awakened by the sound of a propane tank exploding, and a trailer burning to the ground. The Volunteer fire department is rather slow to respond, and there are mainly ashes left when water is finally applied to the fire. TJ has been burned to a crisp.
Aghast, the neighbors talk quietly amongst themselves and somewhat to Driver about the shadowy figures they saw creeping about the place right before the fire. However, no one talks to the police because the police do not deign to show themselves at the scene. Nervous, Driver calls Jenny as he heads home, and she admonishes him for getting in the middle of a clearly dangerous situation. He expresses his fear to her, and wants to make sure someone outside the town knows something strange is going on. She hangs up on him because she doesn’t want any involvement, afraid the conspiracy will hunt her down.
The next day, Driver moseys back to the trailer park and tries to engage some of the residents in conversation, but can’t seem to get anyone to talk about the previous night’s events, that is, except for a little girl who talks about seeing a man in a suit creeping by her window. Her slightly older brother yells at the girl for talking about the man who “totally wasn’t there” the night before.
Phillip Driver knows he needs to find the man in the suit, and the last place he saw the suit, that isn’t burnt to the ground, was the Myers residence. SO, Driver heads to the Myers residence and has a run-in with Stacy, who lets on that her parents are out, like always, at some special PTA meeting, where they’ve been like, all month, completely ignoring her. Stacy makes some sexual play for Driver, which Phil deftly ignores, knowing he needs to head to the meeting.
The meeting is held in the basement, and while Phil can see a little of what is going on and hear a bit by crouching outside and looking through a small ground level window, he can’t identify all the participants. He knows, however, that the suit is not among those he can see. There are vague mentions of a plan, the need to escalate the plan, to take things to the next level. Some older woman asks when the parents return, when things have to be finished. “Two days.” Who’s watching the kids? “Holt, Jim Holt.”
Phil runs home, overwhelmed, and wanting to check the phone book for a Jim Holt. His parents come home shortly after he does, and ask why he’s not at work. He lets on about his investigation into the Johnson affair. There is a heated argument between the parents and the son, and we also find out that Phil has a little sister by the name of Mary who asks why everyone is yelling, and Phil storms out in righteous fury.
Upon which time, he runs into his pseudo friend Miles, the police officer. There is short conversation about the girl Miles is seeing, one Marie S. Brown, when a call comes over the radio to be on the look out for Phillip Driver. Miles closes his eyes, and mentions the need for Phil to run. Phil runs, in a panic, and hides in the backyard, and rather quickly, the inside of Johnson’s house.
As night falls, Phil sneaks back into his house, and looks in his mother’s cell phone, and sees a phone call was placed to the police and to Nathan Myers, who is listed on the fridge phone tree as the head of the PTA. Also listed in the phone is one Holt. No first name. Phil copies the phone number down, and heads out into the night. Maybe he does something to the house first, to get back at his family in some fashion. Saran wrap on his mother’s toilet, something juvenile like that.
From a payphone, he calls Holt, and gets Jim. Phil pretends he is calling from a mortgage brokering company, and actually cons Holt into giving some detailed personal information, including Holt’s address.
Heading over to Holt’s address, Phil does some snooping while Holt is sleeping, including looking at Holt and realizing Holt is the Suit, and finds a pair of blonde haired girls locked and gagged in the basement.
Then he calls the FBI or some other outside agency, perhaps the Texas Rangers, and the whole thing is wrapped up, as the girls testify it was Holt who kidnapped them and took the pictures, and not Johnson while Holt rolls over on the PTA and all that.
So, the ending is a little rushed, and it would behoove the movie to have a plot twist or two, or a subplot. Right now everything is a little linear for my taste, but the basics are there.
Thoughts?