"This feature gets to the heart of my blogging and general film philosophy: bringing that which I see on screen into real world applications for my daily life. With these examples, the flow just happens to be in the opposite direction. Please feel free to share your comments on these stories and suggest or email me others that you find. All rights reserved if any Reel Life stories ever make their way to the big screen...just kidding...but not really..."
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"Neighborhood in Japan Files Lawsuit to Oust Mafia"The Dojinkai is an organized crime syndicate (or "yakuza") in the city of Kurume. It employs 85,000 members, is recognized by the government, and operates openly within the neighborhood. The strategy? "By letting the yakuza operate relatively freely, the authorities were able to keep an extremely close watch on them." Apparently this is common in Japan, but due to recent violence and a number of killings in the last two years, the fed-up citizens of Kurume have petitioned for a lawsuit against the Dojinkai. There are a number of possibilities for a film to come out of this story, not the least of which is a contemporary Japanese version of The Godfather. Or turn it into a story about a group of vigilante citizens fighting the mob for control of the city while the police sit idle. Or, if the details and history of the situation are juicy enough already, tell the story as a documentary for the crime-loving world to see.
Story Potential: High
Project Possibilities: Feature length film, feature length documentary
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"The Scribe's Lament"
How often do you think about your own ability to read and write? Rarely, I would guess. In Mexico City, however, many illiterate citizens struggle with this simple task daily. Fortunately, local scribes are plentiful (or at least they were plentiful. As we take our cars to get oil changes, the illiterate take their letters to get read aloud or their thoughts to be written down (you may remember some terrible scenes from Love in the Time of Cholera). Before the technological boom of the last two decades this was a major industry, but in recent years the literacy rate in Mexico has approached 90%, leaving many of these scribes scrambling for work. With Twitter and texting abbreviations and emoticons and mobile phone and video, who needs to be able to read and write to communicate anymore? You just have to learn the new "language". I'm kidding, of course, but the situation still fascinates me. Make a documentary about the last of these scribes, or a fictional dramedy about a scribe who's been involved in serendipitously important communication that has changed the course of history.
Story Potential: Moderate
Project Possibilities: Feature length film; documentary short
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"An Effort by Deep-Sea Divers to Repair a New York Water Tunnel"An underground tunnel spanning 45 miles provides half of New York City's water supply, but there's been a leak for the last two decades that allows 20 million gallons of water to be lost en route every day. Finally, the city has decided to address the problem by sending a team of six deep-sea divers 700 feet underground to live for more than a month in "a sealed 24-foot tubular pressurized tank complete with showers, a television and a Nerf basketball hoop, breathing air that is 97.5 percent helium and 2.5 percent oxygen, so their high-pitched squeals are all but unintelligible. They leave the tank only to transfer to a diving bell that is lowered 70 stories into the earth, where they work 12-hour shifts, with each man taking a four-hour turn hacking away at concrete to expose the valve." This is clearly a gripping sci-fi (The Abyss, Sunshine) or horror movie (The Descent) waiting to be written, but it might also make for an interesting documentary segment as part of a cable TV series.
Story Potential: Moderate
Project Possibilities: Feature length film; documentary short
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"A Tribe in Brazil Struggles at the Intersection of Drugs and Cultures"
(companion piece: "Ecstasy Ensnares Upper-Class Teenagers in Brazil"
City of God + Traffic = a gripping Brazilian crime drama. In the hinterland of Brazil near the borders of Colombia and Peru, the Tikuna Indians are finding their youth falling prey to drug traffickers. Those who don't become addicts become mules, and the very future of the tribe is at stake. Meanwhile in São Paulo, the spoils of a booming economy have afforded the upper-class all 
the trappings of a luxurious lifestyle, including a raging ecstasy habit. Police are taking advantage of the situation, of course, by arresting teens and students and extorting money from their wealthy parents. Drugs have apparently overrun two sides of this country, and the potential is obvious for a sprawling drug epic or a riveting documentary.Story Potential: High
Project Possibilities: Feature length film; feature length documentary
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"Boys School Probe Stirs Painful Memories"Fifty years ago, a boy's reform school in Florida developed a reputation for "losing" students. Thirty-one boys disappeared, the explanation always being that they ran away or were tragically killed by alligators or water moccasins around the compound. The Florida School for Boys eventually closed down, and crosses were erected to remember the missing teens. People moved on with their lives for decades until last year, when former students at the school, now in their 60's and no doubt having suffered nightmares for their entire adult lives, spoke up in search of the truth: they don't think the boys went "missing" after all. Abuse was the norm at this school, and many times when a boy was taken to the "White House", he never came back. I'm no fan of the horror genre, as you may know, but this story pretty much jumps off the page as some kind of Stephen King meets Eli Roth-type thriller. It would disgust me to see it glamorized into a torture porn fright flick, but in the interest of justice, some kind of movie might help bring attention to this story and lead to the reform of these "reform" schools and boot camps that still exist and that still see students suffer fatal "accidents".
Story Potential: High
Project Possibilities: Feature length film, feature length documentary
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"The Heist at Harry's"In 2009 we tend to think of jewel thieves in the context of stylish Ocean's Eleven-type capers. So do actual jewel thieves, it turns out, since they apparently continue to employ much of these well-worn tactics in completing their jobs. Last December a band of highly organized robbers lifted more than $100 million worth of jewels from the Harry Winston jewelry store in Paris - a a brilliant plan executed at 5:30 PM on a Thursday evening. And just this week in London, a group of motorcycle bandits brazenly robbed a jewelry store in the middle of the afternoon on the city's busiest shopping street (CNN accidentally filmed the heist). So far both of these robberies have been unsolved, and the Paris group in particular has an extremely rich backstory. Somebody get on this, please - we could use a new classic heist movie without the big stars and obligatory romance and glitzy production.
Story Potential: High
Project Possibilities: Feature length film series, feature length documentary
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"Venomous mammal caught on camera"
To wrap up this installment of Reel Life, I bring you the story of the rarely seen Hispaniolan solenodon. Found in the Caribbean jungle and known to "inject prey with a venom-loaded bite", this oversized rat is being threatened by deforestation and hunting.
The title of the article is a bit misleading, as you know, since this mammal had lots of camera time in The Princess Bride. Filmed in their natural habitat, The Fire Swamps, The Rodents Of Unusual Size (R.O.U.S.'s) are sneaky predators and are known to moan and growl like dogs. The horrifying first strike of an R.O.U.S. attack can be seen here.
Story Potential: Done, The Princess Bride
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