The Movie and TV Show Idea Thread

[V.C. Brunswick]

I'm sure some of you have had that great idea for a movie or TV show rolling around in your head. Here's the place to pitch your idea. Now I can't guarantee that any one of our almost 25,000 members works for William Morris but you never know.

To start things off I once had an idea for a sitcom about a fictitious Royal Family. The sitcom would center round the misadventures of King Richard IV, a somewhat dim but well-meaning person who, more than anything, wishes he could do things ordinary people can do and in contrast his consort Queen Stacey, an Essex Girl and former reality show star who is totally in love with all the perks and privileges of being a Royal.

King Richard is often aided and abetted in his misadventures by his private secretary (chief of staff in American political parlance) who's also his best buddy (they were classmates at University). Episodes could include such harebrained schemes such as the boys sneaking off to a football match incognito and sans security.

The whole premise is not as much about royalty as it is about the downside of being in the public eye, of not being able to do many of the things ordinary people take for granted such as going to the store without a platoon of bodyguards.

 

[BigFitz]

At work sometimes we'll play "Warren Fire Department: The Movie". Not for an actual plot line, but we'll discuss what actor would play our part in the movie. Edward Norton has been suggested for my part which is fine with me. Some of the suggestions for the other guys can get brutal.

 

[Shangas]

There's a book I like called "Fever, 1793". I believe it won an award or two when it came out a few years ago. It's one of my favourites, and I think it would make a great movie.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I've had many ideas over the years, but we don't get too many Hollywood agents around this part of the country:

"Spirit of '37," an intense drama depicting the sit-down strike that shut down General Motors in 1937, told from the point of view of an ordinary assembly-line worker and his wife. The wife is ambivalent about the strike until her husband is killed in a skirmish with company goons -- leading her to become a rock-throwing militant.

"Mrs. Harkness," the true story of dressmaker-turned-adventurer Ruth Harkness, a real-life combination of Myrna Loy and Indiana Jones. There was a feeble attempt to tell part of her story a few years ago, but it glossed over most of the facts.

"Is This Seat Taken?" -- a musical comedy set in a small-town Depression era movie theatre facing an impending takeover by a national chain. All of the character types are based on thirties character actors, so you have a Ned Sparks type, a Patsy Kelly type, an Edward Arnold type, etc. etc. etc, and it can work as either a pastiche or an homage depending on your point of view.

 

[Nathan Dodge]

Here are some ideas I came up with; I even cast them.

THE CORPORATIONIST (1978)
Directed by Werner Herzog.
In Bonn, Germany an office building worker (Bruno Ganz) begins having vivid hallucinations of a chalk-skinned man in a suit (Max Von Sydow) after orange formica and faux-wood paneling is installed in the building's cafeteria. Klaus Kinski; Donald Sutherland; Linda Thorson.

ATLANTA WILL NOT FALL (2008)
Directed by Roger Donaldson.
After an eastern power invades a small, neighboring republic, the U.S. president (George Clooney) makes the "gaffe of all gaffes" by publicly mistaking the country for a U.S. state. Jon Hamm; Meryl Streep; Alec Baldwin; Kathy Bates.

FOR LOVE OF JOHN (2007)
Directed by Woody Allen.
A prostitute (Scarlett Johansen) becomes an overnight millionaire media sensation when her brilliantly creative, expletive-filled rant to a non-paying john (Woody Allen) is filmed by a tabloid TV show. Leonardo DiCaprio; Jon Hamm; Sarah Jessica Parker; Sam Waterston.


AN ANGEL IN THE BARGAIN (1974)
Directed by Sidney Lumet.
Political thriller about a wino (Gene Hackman) who awakens from an alcoholic bender to discover that he is the body double for the U.S. President and is being used to draw out a clever, psychopathic assassin (Donald Sutherland). Jason Robards; Ellen Burstyn; Keith Carradine; Frank Langella; Blythe Danner.

THE APPLES OF AUGUST (1978; TVM; NBC)
Directed by Jeannot Szwarc.
After losing their son to leukemia, a middle-aged couple (William Shatner, Brenda Vaccaro) discovers an apple tree growing in the middle of their fourth floor apartment, bringing comfort to all who eat its fruit. George Dzundza; Joan Hackett; Gary Burghoff; David Speilberg.

TENNESSEE SIDESIPPERS (1975)
Directed by Sam Peckinpah.
Character study about two alcoholic brothers (James Coburn, Kris Kristofferson) who try and kill each other and win the heart of the girl they both love by entering a marathon drinking contest. Ali MacGraw; Bo Hopkins; Slim Pickens; Jason Robards.

AT LAST, PARIAH (1974)
Directed by Hal Ashby.
A college radical (Peter Fonda) quits his domestic terrorist group after passing the California BAR exam and bids a wistful adieu to the counterculture era. Julie Christie, Michael J. Pollard, Darren McGavin, Julie Harris. Songs by Crosby, Stills, and Nash.

CROSS OF WIRE (1976)
Directed by Sam Peckinpah.
Two down-and-out parolees (Warren Oates, Bo Hopkins) take jobs as telephone repairmen, only to overhear the plotting of an imminent jewel heist, then decide to use the plan themselves-- with disastrous results. Kris Kristofferson; Keenan Wynn; Ted De Corsia; L.Q. Jones.

WHEN PERNELL ROBERTS LEFT BONANZA (1998)
Directed by Jon Avnet.
Baby Boomer nonsense about an aging accountant (Kevin Spacey) who discovers that his life was never happier than when he was a prepubescent dreamer in the early 1960s. Frances Fisher; Drew Barrymore; Jonathan Taylor-Thomas, and Robert Duvall. Music by James Horner.

QUIVER & QUILL (1979)
Directed by Herbert Ross.
A socially-awkward, costumed vigilante (Al Pacino) gives a struggling journalist (Jill Clayburgh) the scoop on his crime-fighting activities in exchange for love advice in this romantic comedy. Vincent Gardenia; Claire Bloom; Judge Reinhold; James B. Sikking. Music by Dave Grusin.

YESTERTECH (2004; TVM; NBC)
Nebbishy, amateur sleuth Rod Yestertik (Ted Danson) solves crimes using his vast collection of antiquated gadgetry. First up: a top-loading, faux wood-paneled VCR holds the key to a twenty-year-old political murder. Mary Steenburgen; Denis Leary; Brian Dennehy.


NO GOOD DEED (1975)
Directed by Blake Edwards.
A good samaritan (Jack Lemmon) has his idyllic life destroyed in one unpleasant but hilarious mishap after another when he saves an elderly CEO (John Houseman) from choking on a Swedish meatball. Barbara Harris; Jack Warden; Michael Sarrazin; Ed Asner; Eileen Heckart.

 

[scottyrocks]

I have no title for this, but or the past year or so I've been comparing my wife's office to the characters and situations from the old TV show WKRP in Cincinnati. She works in a small print-media advertising agency so more recently I've begun to think of this new TV show as a cross between WKRP and say the office scenes in Bewitched where Darn worked for an ad agency.

I could throw the whole think back to an ad agency in the 1940s where everyone in the office was a loon in their own way except of course, my wife's character, who would be a kindred spirit to the relatively sane Gary Sandy character in WKRP.

 

[John in Covina]

I have thought about a movie that would be like hiddeb room in a Waxworks type of set up with a Time Tunnel portal back to explosive situations in history. As observers unable to change the past but the heros are able to use it to be treasure finders who find they ahve ruthless competitors.