I was reading some of Ron Aberdeens posts earlier. He makes a point that an idea is nothing more than an idea. Everyone has an idea for a screenplay. It's the details.. the set-ups, the sub plots that make them work together in a cohesive manner. That's all i'm full of is ideas, just not sure if I have the writing skills to ever make them film worthy. So I wanted to think one up just for this thread. Here goes...

A man who teaches screen wrting at a local university (should be an easier character to write) gets ready for his summer vacation. He is not a professor, but a local who has sold 3 screenplays. First two for WGA minimum which just got him out of debt, his last was finally his big payday.

He preaches to his students that he believes everyone has a state of mind or a certain vehicle to help them write. He confesses at the end of every school year that his is seclusion... and alcohol.

So for six weeks out of every summer, he kisses his wife and kids goodbye and heads to his secluded cottage in the Appalachian mountains for one thing. To get drunk and write. Towards the end of his stay, in which he thinks he has written his best work ever, He begins to notice that things have been moved around in the cottage. Was he just drunk or was someone coming in at night? He can't remember very well.

Then all hell breaks loose when some people wearing ski masks and shooting to kill break in one night. He barely escapes and is on the run. He is then chased through the wilderness of the mountains and his only defense and survival guide comes from one thing... What he's learned in movies.

As he slowly and painfully dispatches of his would be killers he begins to realize... They're all his former students. Are they here to steal his script and sell it? Are they here to hold him ransome for his money? Or did he take something that wasn't his to win that big payday? Good Fucking Luck....

Quoted from Baltis. Giving away your ideas as a writer is like an Olympic track runner cutting his foot off before the big race.

I don't think the analogy quite fits.  Sure we compete with one another for writing gigs but we also help one another out.  It's isn't cut-throat, like a race is.  I don't see trying to inspire other writers as threatening.

Sure, I have ideas I wouldn't share because I think I can develop them into something.  But I also have other ideas that I know I would never develop and if I did I really wouldn't do them justice.  They don't do me much good sitting in a folder, inhabiting the back corners of my mind, using my thought cycles on something I'll never end up doing.  Much better to discard them. Freeing myself from an idea makes room for new ideas to develop.

If someone can use my discarded idea then more power to them. I hope they manage to make a million with it because it wasn't going to make me two cents.      

People tell me all the time about their GREAT ides for a movie.... Big fucking deal! Ideas are a dime a dozen. The hard part is creating a story around it with interesting characters.

Steal an idea all you want. Write a fabulous screenplay around it and I'll admire you...

Quoted from Grandma Bear People tell me all the time about their GREAT ides for a movie.... Big fucking deal! Ideas are a dime a dozen. The hard part is creating a story around it with interesting characters. Steal an idea all you want. Write a fabulous screenplay around it and I'll admire you...

Indeed! Success is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration. I know of lots of great real life stories that would make good scripts if the right people wrote them. Take the story of Aussie surf legend Mark Occhilupo. He was one of the best surfers in the world. Then he spiraled into depression, drugs and put on a shit load of weight by living on a steady diet of junk food. Then he came good, lost the weight and became the world surfing champion at 33 years of age.

Here's his wiki info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Occhilupo

Always thought that Alan Turing's life story would be a good one. I had a crack at it but I never really managed to make it work.
They did make a film called Enigma, which was based around his inventions and his work. Sadly they neglected to put him in it.

Personally, I have no problem with sharing ideas. I have notebooks with upwards of 1,000 in them - good, bad, indifferent. They cover many styles and genres, some of which I have no particular interest in! As has been said, it is not the idea so much as how you create a screenplay from it, that matters. I have seen several films that mirror ideas I have had - some were good, others I felt I would have done, if not better, at least differently.

Anyway, as I have plenty of ideas, and have no worries about sharing them (after all, people share full blown screenplays here, and surely they are more precious than ideas), here is the first of what may well be many...  

***

The southern United States. A major city. Somewhere like New Orleans perhaps.

A Republican politician with links to the Christian Right is rising up the Polls and making a good case for his selection for running mate to a more moderate Republican nominee in the Presidential Elections.

Two Police Detectives - one older than the other, with more experience and more cynical - investigate the brutal murder of a Prostitute. There is a witness, another hooker, who has gone into hiding - as well she might as the killer has sent people after her.

The Cops find her first. And she reveals that the killer was the Politician. He has perverted sexual tastes, and these got out of hand with the murdered girl. There is no way that the Politician will let her live and ruin his future. The cops and the witness are subjected to attacks and have to go on the run - they are framed and become outcasts, hunted by the Police as well as the killer's men.

Then they are made an offer. Hand over the girl and not only will they have their names cleared, they'll be well rewarded. Both men are tempted - but it is the younger of the detectives, who until now we may have seen as the more idealistic, who accepts and betrays his partner.

The veteran cop kills his partner, but this act lives him devastated, and in his vulnerable state, the witness is killed, and he is left for dead.

Now the cop must seek justice for the murdered women and for the corruption that the Politician embodies, as he is selected for the VP nomination, believing all his evil deeds to have been successfully covered up.

Niles,

I liked that. Have you just plotted this idea out or have you had a go at it yourself?

This is pretty much as far as I got with it.

It is many many years old now. I envisaged Clint Eastwood as the older cop!

I can come up with ideas, in detail, pretty much standing on my head! It's the writing bit that is hard

Hm, I would just like to point out that ideas are not copyrightable, and if someone grabs an idea from here or anywhere else and they fail to credit you for it, you can dub them a chode, but you can't do much else.

And for a moment, I thought this was a serious thread, and then it went into ideas that weren't written for some very clear reasons... I think I'd rather look through IMDB for ideas when I get stuck.

Several screenwriters decide to turn The Poem of the Day thread into a script. They write like hell heck for a solid two years, fighting about how it should go and on News Years Eve, under the influence of too much alcohol, decide to fly with it--

All the way to a Vancouver pitch fest.

It turns out that there were many versions of it, but one in particular, was decided upon and maybe because there were sooooo many versions, this one didn't get backed up by all the writers as much as it should have.

So here is this script... acknowledged by a gray haired Biz Man, at first with some puzzlement; then a rise of the eyebrows... a hint of a smile, perhaps?

It's sold!!! Wow! Mama! And Papa Too!

But the most obsessive of the bunch, after securing "the official printed" script in a secret spot, because he's uptight about computers, rushes to get another printed off.

The secret spot is the good old under-the-mattress trick. Fine and dandy if you're at home, but not in a hotel where the maids come in and every so often give the mattresses a turn.

Lucky day I guess, it's turn the mattress day.

Presto! Good as gold. Another copy. But in his rush, he doesn't secure it with brads and woosh! Into the wind it flies.

He made a deal. Get them a hard copy by midnight the next day. (Why midnight? I don't know, but it sounds cool). And he's running out of time.

Back he goes to his computer to print off another copy. His printer jams. No. It's really messed! It won't go no-how-no-way-Jose!

It's already getting late and yes, maybe it's Tommy and he's got a drink sitting nicely by his computer and Sandra, who insisted Tommy bring in a stray cat and take it back home with him on the plane, goes out to buy cat food and Vodka and Mother Parkers Coffee and wasabi peas and... well everyone seems to want a lot of stuff so this is major heavy duty grocery shopping. Is "that" a grocery item? Guess so. ....

So let's see, where was I? Oh yes, so there's this cat in Tommy's room and the rest of the writers have decided to go down to the hot tubs and chill.

The cat, is  busy rubbing up against the computer while Tommy does an obsessive proof of the script yet again. But, all that drinking and...

Nature calls. Meanwhile:

Kitty continues to purr and rub on the laptop. The drink tumbles all over the laptop and it sizzles. When Tommy comes back, he's freaked!!!!

How's he gonna get this thing printed off?! He's emailed himself copies. Just get to a computer and it's all good.

After a verbal struggle with Hotel Management, he's able to pay a hefty price to use their computer and their printer.

Tommy doesn't want to tell the other writers, because he's tweaked the script and believes this one is just a little bit better. (Even if he did, the so called "official script" nowadays isn't on the others' computers anyways. There's just been too many versions.

Tommy's pretty darn happy when he gets online and is working his way into gmail.

But then! Gmail goes down!

What?! No!

Time's runing out and there's only one option. Just go back and get "the official" script and don't worry. After all, it is still online right? And the other writer's have
copies, obviously-- you'd think. Yeah, you'd think that alright. No problem.

Now Tommy goes back to get "the official" script and it's gone. Somewhere in garbage land by now.

What will he do now? Will he tell the other writers? Just get one of "the old official scripts"? No he doesn't wanna do that! He's made some serious improvements...

Another plan's in the works....



Sandra

I have absolutely no problem if someone were to see an idea I have posted here, like it, take and use it, and give me no credit whatsoever. (Though it would be nice if they did acknowledge me, of course).

If I am never likely to write it - and if I were, I wouldn't post the idea here - then why not share it with others who might find some use for it. I know of writers who are very good, but who struggle for ideas - if someone in that position were to benefit from an idea they find here, then all the best to them.

They do say that there is no such thing as an original idea. I know that I have seen films that bear striking resemblances to ideas I have had and thought no one else would have come up with! And not just storylines - I once wrote a script, and it had this great scene in it that I really liked. Then, a couple of years later I saw a movie (a big blockbuster), and it had the same scene in it - and it had been made before I wrote my script (though I hadn't seen it then).

So I see no problem with posting ideas here, in the spirit of open collaboration, and welcome anyone who wishes to use them. The analogy I'd like to use is of The Beatles in the 1960s - when Donovan would help write "Yellow Submarine" (uncredited) and McCartney would sing on "Mellow Yellow" in return! Creative people should be like this and not like the Britpop bands of the 90s who spent their time fighting amongst themselves and slagging each other off.

And after all, no one is forced to look at this thread or use any of the ideas they might find here, are they?

I like Niles.

Thanks

(The cheque is in the post)

Here's an original...an actual script about WWII...to think you can actually write about wars.

He's another... a bunch of people looking for the same thing... in the end you can kill them all off.

Or maybe...zombies attack a town, no one can fight them, only two people survive...and in the end, it becomes day and some how every one is able to kick zombie a**

To move on to something more constructive.

In the 1970s there was a brief burst of films in which American police officers came to the UK and were baffled by the cultural differences and the way the British Police (supposedly) worked.

Here is an inverted version of this idea for a comedy thriller:

In London a tough East End cop, Dirty Harry with a cockney accent (think Jason Statham), is getting on everyone's nerves as he attempts to track down a major criminal. His brutal police methods do not fit in with the modern style of British Policing (that are ineffectual).

When the criminal escapes to America, only to be arrested there on some minor technicality, his superiors see the chance of getting rid of the cop for a bit, and send him off to pick up the suspect.

The American Police are expecting some tea drinking, Oxford educated Inspector, the sort that always appear in American films. So they appoint a well educated, attractive cop to help him out (think Rachel McAdam). She, of course, is shocked when she meets him and realises that he makes Charles Bronson look like a wimp!

The criminal (of course) escapes - and the mismatched pair (naturally) have to go after him and find him, the female cop (previously desk bound) finding herself thrown headlong into a dangerous pursuit with a volatile new partner to whome rules are just a nuisance!