Too Controversial? Or Not Enough?

[Legion]

I think it's the basis for a great screenplay. I'd want to see a story like this.
However, I wouldn't telegraph my punches - by that, I mean call the son Luc (as in Lucifer) rather than Legion.

Aw, I don't get to be in it?

I like this, good story. I'll keep track of it and see what it becomes.

[Jenny]

As a viewer, I would want the motive (either the church's or the failed members') for such exceptionally painful methods of suicide well established. The businessman who dismembers the prostitute apparently has a really incredible brute human strenght, and I don't mean "really incredible" as in "totally cool."  I understand that he's programmed perhaps to kill only in this way, but even the most desparately vengeful start out with their teeth or a blunt object; human flesh is (necessarily) resistant.

Incidentally, my twin sister graduated from high school with a student everyone knew as Luke. It was only when the MC announced his name before a gymnasium full of parents and grandparents that anyone knew that his full first name was Lucifer. It's really something to hear thousands of people gasp in unison.

Best,

Jenny

[robogabs]

I think it's the basis for a great screenplay. I'd want to see a story like this.
However, I wouldn't telegraph my punches - by that, I mean call the son Luc (as in Lucifer) rather than Legion. It's a little more subtle, the sort of thing people can go back to and say, "Why didn't I see that coming?"
Best of luck with this idea. I-i-i-i like it!
Robo

[Katanasting]

Well, that's almost there! Thanks!

Only I would shorten that logline to read:

"Change of Mind" is a story about an ex-cop who discovers a religious cult uses mind control to convert members.

I envisioned this as more of a Michael Crichton-styled story, like LOOKER or THE TERMINAL MAN, which it's much closer to. The bottom line that's supposed to grab the audience is that the cult is doing something much worse than murdering its converts...the experiments performed on them have programmed them FOR murder, and not just anyone, but their own families, or loved ones in their lives! The microchip implants in the brains of the test subjects are suppose to reinforce the conditioning that "changes" them into 'normal' people, but it also alters some other key processes that regulate that part of our minds that keep us from throttling each other. The hero figures this out and has to expose New Life Ministries in order to stop them.

I like this tagline a little better:  "Some people would die to have a New Life. Some did."

That does sound much better!

I understand that it should still be more of a "people" story, which is why a movie like THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE works. The problem I have is figuring out how stike that balance: to give the audience enough information without putting them to sleep. But also not to overemphasize the 'people' aspect without having it stray into bad soap opera territory.

Don Normann
Arlington, VA.

[ScriptNurse]

Let's start with the logline. Is this a fair one-liner?

"Change of Mind" is a story about an ex-cop who discovers a religious cult uses mind control to convert members and murders those that don't.

I like this tagline a little better:  "Some people would die to have a New Life. Some did."

Nice hooks ... very visual.

Be careful that this story doesn't become too "cluttered" with all of these details ... it's a story about people, so you'll want to make sure the focus remains on the people and the methods they employ take center stage just enough to make it work. BRAINSTORM comes to mind as a similar storyline where high-tech mind-control plays a pivotal role in the story.

[Katanasting]

This is one of my pet ideas that I've been sitting on for a while, and I wanted to get some feedback on it. I tend to think in terms of ad campaigns, so please bear with me.

The idea is called CHANGE OF MIND, and the ad tagline would be "Some people would die to have a New Life. And some already are..."

The "Log Line" (if I'm doing this right): An ex-cop investigates a series of brutal murders, and the trail leads to diabolical experiments at a fundamentalist cult.

So here's the story: for apparently no reason whatsoever, mild-mannered, law-abiding guys across the country are going postal. In the three instances that kick off the movie, a man visits an old high-school flame and shoots her multiple times; a businessman who makes an appointment with a prostitute literally dismembers her with his bare hands before jumping twelve stories to his death, and another man throws himself face-first into the whirling blades of the riding mower he was repairing as his horrified family looks on.

The last victim was actually the estranged brother of the hero of our piece, the ex-cop. At his brother's funeral, he talks to his wife, from whom he's been separated for about two years. She happens to mention that one of her friends from high school was killed for no apparent reason by the man who had a crush on her back then when they were all seniors. The detective begins to look deeper into these two seemingly unrelated deaths, and while talking to one of his former partners, learns about the murder/suicide. 

He does finally discover a unifying thread: all three men had once been connected to a "super-church" - a Christian fundamentalist movement called New Life Ministries, which specialized in "helping" people with sexual addictions and problems...specifically people who want to "change" from being gay to being straight. He then crosses paths with the founder and leader of the church, the "Reverend" Jeremiah Thornhill and his son, Legion. The Rev. Thornhill claims that New Life has a 98 percent success rate in helping its congregants find "the righteous path", and our hero rightly concludes that he already knows what's happened to the other 2 percent.

A disgraced scientist, a government-subsidized experiment involving mind control and electronic implants and more than a few murders and cover-ups await the detective, leading him to the discovery of the ultimate nightmare...New Life's "shiny, happy ex-gay people" are now ticking time-bombs set to go off all across the country...and someone very close to him may be in grave danger.

And that's as far as I've gotten.

Comments?

Don Normann
Arlington, VA