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I’ve been toying with this concept for a very dark comedy for a while. Tonally a Todd Solondz/Coen brothers hybrid.
An opiate-addicted twenty something, son of wealthy socialites (an air headed ex-politician mother and outsider artist father) is cut off from the family wealth when it dries up. When he goes into heroin detox an runs out of options aside from a few attempts at stealing meds from cancer patients, he has to move back in with his family in some tropical wealth hideaway island (think the Caymans) to rebuild his life. Whir trying to locate the drug scene on the rich island, he meets a mysterious slightly-older opiate user who captures his attentions as he appears to have his shit together WHILE still having easy access to drugs.
What starts as our protagonist manipulating the love interest for pills turns in the other direction as the love interest is clearly scoping tje family’s island home for access to their family jewels, the only real wealth they still have.
The complication is making the choice between going clean and keeping his family wealths safe or following the love interest and engaging in a heist against his own loved ones.
Any thoughts on making the premise more cinematic? At this rate, the complication doesn’t come in until the end of a 2nd act and the prior is just the unlikeable protagonist manipulating people for drugs. Even the romance between the two is clearly transactional. I like the gist of it but don’t want to write another low-concept, high-reader investment thing.
It would not interest me as is. You kind of have an unlikeable protag, doing unlikeable things in the beginning of the film and the conflict is that he has to decide on whether to be a good human being or - be a crappy one for self-serving reasons (love and drugs). A no brainer decision for good people.
I'd be more interested in something like - he's a crappy person like you describe. Then, his mother becomes ill and now he has to go move to that island to care for her - i.e., he has to get over his own addiction to opiates so that he can somehow manage his mother's legitimate need for them due to her cancer. Hope that makes sense
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