tellhimfred.com

Fancying yourself a writer is all well and good, as is penning entries for a blog on a quasi-regular basis, but in order to maintain the illusion, one has to actually sit down and write something from time to time. Short story, poem, song lyrics, tuneless jingle, whatever. Sometimes just a writing exercise is fun to do. So, I sat down, pen in hand, to try to come up with something.

The exercise: “I’ve always wanted to write about X” where ‘x’ is something cool that you like. It can be whatever you feel like that day: cars, boobs, exploding fish, dead people, whatever. I chose “government conspiracy”.

I let my mind free-associate for a bit, and here’s what I came up with.

- an everyman character, we’ll call him Rob - twenty-thirty something, who has a job and a car, and friends, etc. he’s a little disconnected from things, but nice and friendly. He lives in the city, but comes from redneck stock. His father ran ’shine and was killed by a rival gang. His mom got mixed up with bikers who cooked meth and was killed when their lab blew up. His sister got hooked on coke while in college and ended up losing her scholarship and committing suicide. He hates drugs and everything associated with them, and one summer night at a rooftop/apartment party, after a couple of drinks, he gets into an argument with someone, who reveals that he is a drug dealer. They get into a fight, and Rob kills the drug dealer.

He feels no remorse, but rather feels exhilarated, and after some more character development, decides to do it again.

- the drug dealer was actually a CIA operative. A rogue-ish faction within the CIA has been replacing drug dealers with agents over the years since 9-11. A neat little operation, it makes them money (which they don’t have to declare) which they use to fund surveillance ops. It also gets them intel, since everyone knows drugs and terrorism go hand in hand. The people involved, however, have gotten a little too involved with the selling drugs and making money part, and have lost sight of what little patriotism they once may have had. This group, headed by a sinister senator, is now after Rob.

- a good cop, a female, let’s call her Meghan, investigates the murder of a white male at an upscale apartment party. The body is found the next day on the roof, by the owner, who is cleaning up. She collects evidence, interviews witnesses, begins to formulate a theory, based on the amount of money she finds on him, his lack of employment history, or any real history for that matter, (of course they’ve mostly erased him from the system, given him a false background as a shady character) but after a couple of days is ordered off the case by her supervisor. The federal liaison in her department is in on the setup, and is watching her carefully - a sinister guy as well.

The rest: Meghan figures it out after disobeying orders to quit the case, puts 2+2 together. The federal liaison/black bag guy makes a run at her and she offs him instead, giving her the last piece of the puzzle. She somehow figures out Rob’s role in all this as a vigilante out to clean the streets of drug dealers, who is unwittingly offing federal agents, and realizes she has to save him before the black bag guys get to him.

She manages to catch up with Rob, now in a new city, just as he is being targeted by the black bag guys - she foils their assassination, and goes on the run with him. The inevitable relationship develops, and together they dodge the seemingly-everywhere black bag men, foil their efforts, expose their drug-dealing situation, and save Christmas.

The end.

I sat back, two hours later, with a meticulously constructed plot tree, character notes, and felt as though I had really done my homework. But then I frowned. I looked again at the whole picture. This wasn’t an idea for a book.

This was a bad movie. I took Enemy of the State, mixed it with a little Long Kiss Goodnight, threw in some Bourne, added some of The Island, and then tossed in the CIA-as-drug-dealers angle, then crowbarred the usual cliches into place.

What galled me was that I would probably see that movie. And I would probably enjoy it on some non-intellectual level. What galls me further is that I kind of want to write this screenplay now, and sell it to some unscrupulous producer.

Ah well. I’m gonna cast Jake Gyllenhall as Rob, and Bridget Moynihan as Meghan. We’ll title it “Shadow Game”. Summer 2010.