Posted on 12/07/2003 7:01:44 AM PST by geedee
I need a disease where a dying female offspring requires a bone marrow transplant where a parent, preferably the father, is the ideal donor. Or some disease with a similar type procedure -- the key is the father MUST be able to donate what's required and remain conscious.
In my nearly-finished screenplay the father is the boogie man and the mother is the heroine and the father blackmails the mother to do as he wishes AND in return he promises to be the donor. I've found a gazillion "potentially fatal" diseases with "relatively" simple procedures required but most aren't geared towards the parents being the donors. And I haven't found one where the father is the ideal donor for a female child. So I decided if I could fine one where the parents were ideal donors then I could eliminate the mother for some valid reason and that would leave the father.
If it's believable, experimental diseases are okay. LOL.
Right now, I have the daughter dying of leukemia and the father supplying the bone marrow -- with the proviso that it has to be "experimentally" modified by genetic engineering. Kinda lame, huh?
Well . . . that's why I'm asking for your help! So if anyone can help this writer-wannabe -- it is a helluva story by the way -- I sure need it. This is all I need before I can call the screenplay complete and join the gazillion other dreamers pitching their naive ideas to a shark-dominated Hollyweird.
My heroine has DEFINITE conservative streak in her . . . so it's damn sure unique! LOL.
Sorry . . . the papa's gotta be the bad guy. But, hey, I wrote the outline for this twenty-eight years ago. LOL. It might've been original at that time.
Thanks for your disease ideas. I'll look into them.
Good luck.
Okay, okay, feel free to call me a hopeless dreamer . . . but, in partnership with a friend -- a rich, rich friend -- we're going to try and produce it ourselves. She has moola, and access to more moola, and we both have some fringe-contacts where we think it's do-able.
She's been my best friend since high school so she's been around from the time I wrote the outline twenty-eight years ago until now. We're both quite attached to the project.
I'm sorry to hear of your troubles but you're right . . . if I just tossed this into the Hollywood slush-pile, especially since it reeks of libber-bashing and a God-loving, strong conservative belief-system, it would never even get read. That's why I'm not going to even attempt that angle.
My friend and I have planned this for fifteen years . . . maybe it'll work, maybe it won't, but whatever happens to it it'll be on our terms.
It has to be something the father can do and remain conscious AND remain in control of the situation.
The Cliff Notes version of why is he's escaped from prison. He forces a doctor to perform the procedure by putting the doctor's family at risk if he doesn't do it.
Thanks.
Feel better? Have a good day.
You'll share credit, willingly? What kind of screenwriter are you!?
Seriously, if I can say this without sounding insufferable (and I probably can't), you seem to have hung your whole tale on this must-be exacty gizmo-thingy-device whatever--if you can't come up with the perfect maguffin (and yes, I know I'm misusing that slightly), your whole story can't stand. May I suggest that it sounds from here as if you've built your whole story from the outside in, rather than the inside out? Here's one for you: What do you have, in terms of character relationships, if you throw out the disease altogether?
Just thoughts from your precis, from a working pro Freeper with several produced credits.
Sharing credit? Sorry, I already flubbed my first screenwriter's test. LOL. Credit obviously was the wrong word. I meant more of the "Thanks to . . ." variety of crediting. But you drove home a point I need to keep in mind . . . in the word business "precise" wording is imperative.
I can throw out the disease without too many problems. I just need a hook to "fully" explore the unique traits of five of the main characters AND to be the primary motivation for why ALL the characters react the way they do and ONE disease borne by the most sympathetic character fit the bill rather than trying to piecemeal together various other motivations.
I appreciate your comments. The only way us novices can learn is to listen to the veterans. You're the pro. LOL. I'm just the dreamer. Anyone who can't take constructive criticism had best search for a monastery where the monks don't speak.
now lets see... what would really get the Hollywood and the Independents frothing would be......... that the bad man father donor IS the REAL MOTHER, who had a sex change opperation and lived his life as a male.
The best part would be if he was a Republican Conservative Christian male ....hypocrite (of course)... then have him have to come to terms with "coming out" and being a "bastard/bitch" (whatever..your choice)..
he/she turns the tables on his hypocritical Republican Christian friends (you pick the denomination... I'd choose Southern Baptist, of course)...
If you can get some digs about 5,000,000 children without health insurance....... ...
And this was all caused by Reagan's bad environmental policy...
..........And the bone marrow disease was one of several hundred thousand illnesses that have occured since May 1st, when President Bush declared an end to hostilities in Iraq..hahahahahhaahha. ...
God I should do a "treatment", huh? hee hee hee... oh yeah for an ending have him push his Chevy Suburban off a cliff and drive off in a Yugo or Electric Car..... (I have got to write this down and mail it in hahahaha)
Hey, thanks! I'm researching them now.
You have no idea how much I appreciate your taking the time on a Sunday morning to help me. Thanks. Thanks a lot.
My story, by the way, is original. I didn't want to bore everyone with an outline.
The father is in prison. The mother put him there, and has been on the run ever since -- because of worries about what the father might do in retaliation and what some of the father's victims might do to her for not coming forward sooner.
Blah, blah, blah.
The daugher's illness is what gives the mother the courage to make drastic changes in her life. Battered by her ex-husband, then battered by guilt because of the victims, then battered by her ex-husband's notoriety . . . the mother has a lot to overcome. But I'm sure mothers will tell you that the love a mother has for her daughter, her only child, is quite motivating.
Then, of course, there's an escape or two, and murder and mayhem, and shifting allegiances and self-doubts, and all manners of conflicts . . . BUT the anchor that keeps the mother focused is that her daughter is dying.
But your ideas sure sounded juicier as I read them. LOL.
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