Logline Freebies: “To Kill a Brockovich”
By Burbanked on Mar 14, 2006 in Logline Freebies, Screenwriting | 957 views |
Did you think we’d forgotten about Logline Freebies, in which we haphazardly and ill-advisedly throw caution to the wind and offer up High Concept One-liners for Big Movies as if we simply had no interest whatsoever in Executive Producer fees?
Well, it may seem like a big joke to you, but mark our words: the next time Paul Haggis or Akiva Goldsman is hoisting high their screenplay Oscar, the speech-killing music swelling as they toss off “..and thank you, Burbanked!”, we’ll be the last ones laughing, won’t we?
For today’s Freebie, we pay homage to the Stretch a Nothing Premise Until It Snaps, Breaks, Gets Retied and Stretched Some More model of Hollywood storytelling in this seemingly benign story of a young bride who just wanted to cuddle:
A newlywed gets more than she bargained for when she mounts a legal battle to fight a frivolous traffic ticket - and ends up on an emotional rollercoaster that plunges the depths of despair, passion, redemption…and self-discovery.
Possible ways to go with this:
- Career-resuscitating, Marisa Tomei-centric My Cousin Vinny sequel (with Pesci cameo guaranteed)
- Career-retreading, ends-on-death-row tearjerker with Susan Sarandon
- Ridiculously and clumsily altering the facts of the true story to suit John Travolta
Get to work, screenplayers - we can only point you down the path of studio-sanctioned mediocrity; it’s a road you must travel alone. Unless you’re Ron Bass.
Dedicated screenwriting 101 here: From an interview with Harrison Ford on the MTV Movies Blog in which the inevitability of another Indiana Jones movie is mentioned:
How do I get out of this? I love going to the movies with my boys, opening up their minds to the great pleasures of cinema and all that, but this is a hard one. Please help me: do I suck it up and just go, or can anyone out there provide me with a plausible, kind-hearted, permanent way out? (
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