Playing With the Truth: Film in 2010

Based on a true story.

Inspired by actual events. 

I'm not sure if it was an actual trend in 2010 or just a common trait of the few movies that I saw, but phrases like those above seemed to appear on screen in quite a lot of films, including 127 Hours, Conviction, Howl, Carlos, North Face, and even more that I didn't see, such as Made in Dagenham, Casino Jack, Eat Pray Love, I Love You Philip Morris, Mesrine: Killer Instinct & Public Enemy #1, and Nowhere Boy, to name only a few (and to say nothing of the tricky-truthy documentaries like I'm Still Here, Catfish, and Exit Through the Gift Shop).

Are there this many films based on true events every year and I only noticed it in 2010, or is this a newly developing trend? Either possibility would surprise me. If this is common every year, why have I not picked up on it so acutely, particularly considering I usually see twice as many movies as I did in 2010, and that I have a running series about movies based on real life? On the other hand, if this is a newly developing trend - why?

I'm almost positive it's the former, that this is not a new thing at all, but in any case it doesn't matter. I'm always more interested in how these films depict the truth they are meant to represent and, in doing so, how they shape our understanding and perspective on past events. For example, when I ask you to imagine the sinking of the Titanic, what images come to your mind? What about Roman gladiator fighting in the Colosseum? What do you picture when you think of John Smith and Pocahontas, or the Zodiac killer who terrorized San Francisco, or the fate of United Flight 93, or the storming of Omaha Beach on D-Day?

You see where I'm going with this: for many people, films based on true events serve as the primary influence on the subconscious in remembering or imagining those events. If you've seen those movies - Titanic, Gladiator, The New World, Zodiac, United 93, Saving Private Ryan - you bring their images to mind without even realizing it, particularly when a.) the images are astonishingly rendered (Titanic), and b.) there are few other film adaptations, documentaries, or other visual aids to provide alternative images in your mind (United 93). In essence, perception becomes reality; what we see becomes what actually happened, even if it didn't actually happen.

But does it matter when those images and those memories produce a reality that didn't actually exist? Where does the truth end and the dramatization begin, and is the truth ever interesting enough to stand on its own, free of embellishment? I'm sure it's a question as old as film itself - as art itself, really - but I'd like to consider it in the context of five films I saw in the last few months of 2010: The Social Network, The Fighter, Fair Game, The King's Speech, and All Good Things.

Reel Life #7

Don't ask me why it's been nearly a year since my last installment of Reel Life. Suffice to say I've marked dozens of news articles over the months and the process of separating the wheat from the chaff was fairly tedious. So I'm simplifying these descriptions a bit - herewith is Reel Life #7, and my usual disclaimer: "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..."

______________________________________

"China's Cyberposse"

I had never heard the term "human-flesh search engine" before reading this fascinating article, and I'm still not entirely sure I understand how it works, but my take-away was that you can't get away with much in China if the public decides to point their collective finger at you. All it takes it for someone to call a renrou sousuo yinqing on you, and then: "The goal is to get the targets of a search fired from their jobs, shamed in front of their neighbors, run out of town. It’s crowd-sourced detective work, pursued online — with offline results. " Online vigilante justice, completely legal and shockingly effective at tracking down "one person in a nation of more than a billion".

Project Possibilities: Feature length film series, feature length documentary

______________________________________

"The Jihadist Next Door" or "Profile: 'Jihad Jane' on Main Street" or "Imam's Path from Confronting Terror to Teaching Jihad" or "For Times Sq. Suspect, Long Roots of Discontent"

Laura Poitras, I have found your next film. The Oscar-nominated director of My Country, My Country and this year's The Oath is reportedly planning to finish her trilogy of documentaries about Iraq War/War on Terror by focusing on a domestic subject. You can't do much better than recent profiles on Omar Hammami, Colleen LaRose (aka "Jihad Jane"), Anwar al-Awlaki, or Faisal Shahzad. How and why did these Americans turn on their own country?

Project Possibilities: Feature length film, feature length documentary 

______________________________________

Reel Life #6

One of the news stories I proposed for a film adaptation in my last edition of Reel Life has seen some additional developments in the last month worth noting. The second story from Reel Life #5, about a group of young Somali men mysteriously leaving Minnesota for their homeland, received several thousand more words of coverage in a front page, above-the-fold article in a recent Sunday New York Times. In "A Call to Jihad, Answered in America", reporters Ramla Bile and Margot Williams present what has to be considered the most in-depth coverage of this story to date.

Some filmmaker, documentarian or producer had to have read this story with some interest. How could they not? Four young men (among a group of many that are naturalized American citizens) from Minneapolis have been killed in Somalia in the last 8 months, including one of the men profiled by the Times, Zakaria Muraf, who was reported killed just two days after the article ran. This material - about the cultural clashes in the U.S., the secret recruitment of these young boys, and their on-the-ground experience in Somalia - is ripe and ready to be taken to audiences on screen.

In the meantime, it's on to Reel Life #6. The set-up, as always: "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..."

__________________________________________________

"A Slow Burn Becomes a Raging Fire"

I suppose if you've seen one C.I.A. spy story you've seen them all, but this bombshell about septuagenarians Walter and Gwendolyn Myers is tailor-made for a star-studded dramatic thriller in the same vein as the underrated Breach. Walter Myers was a career-long State Dept. political expert and intelligence official who, along with his wife, now faces charges of conspiracy and "being agents for a foreign government" (specifically, Cuba).

The American couple is thought to have turned against their home country as far back as 1978, though they kept their anti-American ideals quiet: "as the couple were allegedly passing information to the Cubans, they never indicated any interest in the island, according to friends and colleagues -- even at long dinner parties in which guests discussed world affairs." Fearful of raising suspicion, the couple rarely traveled to Cuba (although in 1995 they went to meet Fidel Castro) and are not even known to be fluent in Spanish. Instead, they met their "handlers" in "third countries, including Brazil, Ecuador, Jamaica and Italy" and "passed along information over a shortwave radio given to them by the Cuban government, and by exchanging shopping carts with handlers in grocery stores". This movie is writing itself, and A-list actors will swarm to the opportunity to reveal their love for Cuba under the guise of "character".

Story Potential: High
Project Possibilities: Feature length film, feature length documentary

__________________________________________________

"Doctors Baffled, Intrigued By Girl Who Does Not Age"

It's as if The Curious Case of Benjamin Button was based on a true story. In the photo on the right, 13 year-old Carly Greenberg is cradling her sister, Brooke. Brooke is 16 years old. Weighing 16 lbs., she still has her baby teeth and cannot speak; her hair and nails are the only things that grow. Alarmingly, "she has never been diagnosed with any known genetic syndrome or chromosomal abnormality that would help explain why." Surrounded by sisters and raised by loving parents, Brooke receives special education at a Baltimore Public School and generally lives as anyone her size would live.

It literally baffles the mind, so much so that her family finds it easier to tell people she is 16 months old instead of 16 years old. One of the many doctors and researchers studying Brooke compares her condition to having discovered the Fountain of Youth: "Without being sensational, I'd say this is an opportunity for us to answer the question, why we're mortal, or at least to test it...And if we're wrong, we can discard it. But if we're right, we've got the golden ring."

Brooke's story has actually just been made into a documentary, Frozen in Time, that will air on TLC on Sunday, August 9. In the meantime, someone could get to work on a feature film adaptation - not necessarily about Brooke, but using her mysterious condition as a jumping off point.

Story Potential: Very high
Project Possibilities: Feature length film, feature length documentary

__________________________________________________

"Drug Sub-Culture"

Picture a combination of A Clear and Present Danger and the drug saga Traffic, and then set the movie in the Pacific Ocean. This unnamed crime thriller, possibly directed by someone like Fernando Meirelles (City of God), could focus on all aspects of the drug trade, from the seeds to the streets (American Gangster did this fairly well).

The key to this story is the detail about "Bigfoot", a new experiment thought to be responsible for transporting up to 30% of Colombia's cocaine exports: "This kind of vessel — a self-propelled, semisubmersible made by hand in the jungles of Colombia — is no longer quite so mythic: four were intercepted in January alone. But because of their ability to elude radar systems, these subs are almost impossible to detect; only an estimated 14 percent of them are stopped."

Story Potential: High
Project Possibilities: Feature length film franchise, feature length documentary

__________________________________________________

"Amid Hard Times, an Influx in Real Superheroes"

In The Dark Knight we saw a group of "well-meaning" citizens donning capes and masks to fight crime in Gotham until Batman actually stepped in to do the job. I'm pretty sure the same thing happened in one of the Spider-Man movies, too, and of course Watchmen is based on just such a storyline. In any event, it turns out these wannabes are based on a lot of real people - nearly 300 worldwide and growing. Using names like Mr. Ravenblade, Mr. Xtreme, Dark Guardian, and Geist (pictured on the right), these self-identifying superheroes volunteer their time "helping the homeless, handing out fliers in high-crime areas and patrolling areas known for drug-dealing".

Having your neighbor watch your back (especially if they're wielding a sword) sure sounds like a good idea, but there are some real-world implications to consider that aren't really addressed in the movies. A legal director for the ACLU warns that "people who do this are running a serious risk of getting arrested for kidnapping, and being liable for false imprisonment," while a police spokesperson clarifies that "vigilantism is never a good thing."

I never saw that Ben Stiller-starring dud, Mystery Men, but has this type of superhero movie already been made? If so, I'd still be entertained by a documentary about these people. How do they get started? How do you choose a costume and name? Are they on call, or do they work from a regular schedule?

Story Potential: High
Project Possibilities: Feature length film franchise; feature length documentary

__________________________________________________

"Michigan Man Claims He Was N.Y. Boy Who Vanished in 1955"

I've always been intrigued by the idea that your memories of your childhood, and even the reality of your childhood, are essentially based on the photos that exist of you as a child. For example, that's how you looked at 4 years old - but without stories and other photos accompanying a given picture and verifying details, how do you know it's actually you? Such is the dilemma, or one of many dilemmas, faced by the unidentified man in Michigan who claims to be Steven Damman, a toddler who went missing outside of a Long Island bakery in 1955. " Thousands of searchers looked for the toddler, but the boy was nowhere to be found. Hitting one dead end after the next, the Dammans packed up and moved from New York back to Iowa...until now, they thought there was little chance of ever seeing their son again."

Lots of possibilities with a mystery like this (the man has not yet proven he is Steven Damman), from a fish-out-of-water comedy about the man reuniting with his family to a suspense thriller about a person discovering that the "family" they've known since childhood is not actually their real family.

Story Potential: Moderate
Project Possibilities: Feature length film, feature length documentary

__________________________________________________

"Times Reporter Escapes Taliban After 7 Months"

This story pretty much speaks for itself as a brighter, alternative ending to the Daniel Pearl tragedy, recently brought to the screen in A Mighty Heart (and in that overshadowed by an Oscar-baiting Angelina Jolie). New York Times reporter David Rohde, who was researching a book and accompanied by a local reporter and a driver, was kidnapped by the Taliban in November and held in captivity in the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan until just a few weeks ago.

Stunningly, Rohde and the reporter escaped from their remote compound by simply climbing a wall and making their way to a friendly military base. That nobody knew of this kidnapping for the last seven months was the point; the Times and other media organizations kept the story under wraps so as not to give the kidnappers any free publicity, and thus any possibly negotiating leverage. The book that Rohde was researching will obviously be written in a different way considering his ordeal, but you can bet to see it on bestseller lists in the next year or so, followed by, perhaps with this seed, a film adaptation that shares nothing in common with Body of Lies.

Story Potential: High
Project Possibilities: Feature length film

__________________________________________________

"Stolen Wallet Found in Cherry Tree After More Than a Quarter Century"

I don't know exactly where to go with this one, but it's an odd enough story that somebody could get creative with it. In 1982, a woman watching the New York Marathon in Central Park had her wallet snatched out of her purse. After 27 years, a park supervisor chopping down a tree just a few weeks ago found the wallet inside the trunk, full of all of the woman's information and cards, but missing $20 cash. This could go in a number of different directions - comedy, horror, romance, sci-fi (time traveling), or some kind of fateful, coincidental, time-spanning intergenerational drama. Maybe a stretch, but all it takes is a seed...

Story Potential: Moderate
Project Possibilities: Feature length film

__________________________________________________

"Informant Leads FBI Sting Operation"

What do more than 40 New Jersey mayors, lawyers, and rabbis have in common? Ties to a vast money-laundering network that was just broken up, and a story with all the potential for an entertaining legal thriller - hopefully better than Tony Gilroy's Michael Clayton, with the flair of Steven Soderbergh's upcoming The Informant! and the dry wit of the Coen Brothers' Burn After Reading. The F.B.I. used an allegedly fraudulent real estate developer to, over the course of a few years, act as an informant and collect piles of evidence about the group as it laundered millions of dollars and dealt black-market kidneys and fake Gucci handbags. As you can imagine, "negotiations often took place in parking lots, diners and boiler rooms, with thousands in cash being stuffed into cereal boxes before being passed on." Some version of this movie has to be made.

Story Potential: Very high
Project Possibilities: Feature length film

__________________________________________________

"Main Line Murder Case Echoes 30 Years Later"

When David Fincher showed that notorious cold cases could make for highly intriguing thrillers (Zodiac), I expected we'd see a lot more similar period thrillers. But it hasn't happened, and with the limited interest I have in such stories I can find few more fitting for a film adaptation than the Main Line Murders out of Ardmore, PA, the 30-year anniversary of which recently passed.

A school teacher and her two children went missing, a fellow teacher and the school principal were separately accused, and the teacher was ultimately convicted on questionable evidence. Three books have been written on the case and a two-part TV miniseries apparently came and went sometime ago; not surprisingly, "with its themes of manipulation, betrayal and stolen innocence, the Reinert mystery continues to hold Philadelphia in its thrall -- and haunts the few people connected to the case who are still living." I wouldn't want the families of the victims to go through anymore than they already have, so this would have to be handled delicately.

Story Potential: Moderate to High
Project Possibilities: Feature length film, feature length documentary (but not too Dateline-y)

__________________________________________________

"Japanese Fisherman Brace for Giant Jellyfish"; "Identifying the Great Blob of Alaska"; & "Jumbo Squid Invade San Diego Shores; Spook Divers"

I don't know if I've stated my great fear of the deep sea before, but if not let me provide these three articles as evidence why I prefer swimming pools: giant jellyfish (6 ft, 450 lbs.); a mysterious blob of ocean algae stretching for miles ("...but people are still uneasy. It's something the mostly Inupiat Eskimo residents along Alaska's northern coast say they cannot remember seeing before."); and 100-lb., carnivorous jumbo squid ("...divers report tentacles enveloping their masks and yanking at their cameras and gear.").

It's been more than 30 years since Jaws arrived (not that its effect of keeping people out of the water has in any way diminished), and few if any sci-fi/ocean thrillers have been worth watching (Deep Blue Sea, anyone?). These three stories provide perfect material for a fresh take on the horrors of the deep. The CNN/jellyfish article even poses the idea: "Sounds like a great sci-fi flick. But it's not." Well, at least not yet it's not...

Story Potential: Very high
Project Possibilities: Multiple feature length film franchises, IMAX documentary

__________________________________________________

Reel Life #5

It's been too long since my last edition of Reel Life, the occasional feature where I highlight news stories that have the potential for future film adaptations, so this edition is jam packed with material from the past few months. Here's the explainer from my first installment:

"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..."

__________________________________________________

"Child Elopers' Africa Plan Foiled"

When I was 3 or 4 years old I proposed to a girl in my preschool class, whispering in her ear, "Let's get married when we grow up" - or something to that effect. She shrugged her shoulders in affirmation; I don't remember her name. Maybe not the best story to base a movie on, but not too far off from this amusing report out of Germany about two romantic kids, aged 4 and 5, who stole off to the airport in the middle of the night to get married in Africa, "where it is warm", as they described it. Packing sunglasses and bathing suits and with an official witness (one of the kid's sisters) in tow, the trio made it less than a mile to their destination before being picked up by a security guard as they waited at a train station. Not the ending they might have hoped for, but obviously not the ending that we'd see in the movie. Done tastefully, this could be an adorably adventure movie for kids.

Story Potential: Moderate
Project Possibilities: Feature length film

__________________________________________________

"Recruited For Jihad? What Happened to Mustafa Ali?"
and "Somali Youth from Minneapolis dies in homeland"

Living in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, home to more Somalis than any other place in the U.S. or Canada, I don't really have a sense of what the majority of people elsewhere know about Somalia or its people. My guess is that the general knowledge is tragically limited to the jingoistic Black Hawk Down and the recent Somali pirate madness, which is why a film about someone like Mustafa Ali, an 18-year old from St. Paul who was among a group of almost 20 young Somali men who disappeared earlier this year and are suspected to have been recruited by terrorist cells back in Somalia, could be extremely illuminating.

Although I admit Gran Torino tackled intercultural understanding in questionable fashion, the majority of people left that movie with a much better understanding (or likely an initial understanding) of the Hmong people and their culture. This movie, or a related documentary about Ali, could also shed light on the challenging transition many Somali refugees have had to make in Minnesota and elsewhere in the West.

Update: This story was published in February, and just this weekend it was reported that Burhan Hassan, a 17 year-old teenager from Minneapolis who left Somalia as an infant and returned around the same time as Ali last year, was recently killed in Mogadishu, the details of his death unclear. What is going on...?

Story Potential: High
Project Possibilities: Feature length film; feature length documentary; documentary short

__________________________________________________

"Komodo Dragons Kill Indonesian Fisherman"

So there have been tons of movies already made about killer dragons, alligators, lizards, and other scaly reptiles, but has there been one specifically focusing on the venomous and razor-sharp-toothed Komodo dragon, the threatened species native to Indonesia? Not that I'm aware of, though monster movies aren't really my bag so I've probably missed one. This story about the horrifying attack on a fisherman who was "trespassing on a remote island in search of fruit" is tailor-made for an Anaconda-like thriller.

Story Potential: Moderate
Project Possibilities: Feature length film

__________________________________________________

"The Tigers' Last Days"

Until a few weeks ago, Sri Lanka had been mired in a brutal civil war for 25 years. Fighting between the government and the rebel Tamil Tigers claimed the lives of 70,000 civilians during this time, with hundreds of thousands more displaced by the fighting. This violence, compounded with the devastating tsunami of 2004 (31,000+ killed in Sri Lanka), has to have caused severe physical and psychological damage to the people of this island country. What's going on in Sri Lanka now? How has this country recovered, and how did this horrible war eventually come to an end?

Story Potential: High
Project Possibilities: Feature length film; feature length documentary

__________________________________________________

"Galaxy May Be Full of 'Earths', Alien Life"

While the graphic looks right out of Danny Boyle's Sunshine, the story is right out of Alien, Contact, Star Trek, or, well, any movie ever made about intelligent beings living on other planets in our galaxy and beyond. With this new "evidence", why not one more? Or how about a documentary on the subject, from an expert's perspective but for a layperson's understanding? I'd like to know what the future plans are for space exploration, and I'll probably never tire of sci-fi movies about it.

Story Potential: Extremely high
Project Possibilities: Feature length film franchise, feature length documentary

__________________________________________________

"Dutch Harbor, Alaska: The Police Blotter Read 'Round the World"

This article makes the Dutch Harbor area of the port city of Unalaska, Alaska sounds like the Wild West - drunkards, brawls, wild animals, crazy people, etc. Though kind of amusing, the actual police blotter doesn't appear to show anything too exotic. Nonetheless I think there might be potential for a zany comedy - maybe even a Shaun of the Dead style horror comedy - to come out of this piece.

Story Potential: Moderate
Project Possibilities: Feature length film, feature length documentary

__________________________________________________

"How Do You Get to Sesame Street?"

Recently I read that President Obama is the first U.S. president to have grown up watching "Sesame Street", or at least grown up within the first generation that watched it. Surprisingly, this show has been broadcast into the living rooms of American households going on four decades now. What is the lasting power, the secret behind its success? Also, what about the controversy in recent years that older versions of the show (from the 70's and 80's) are no longer appropriate for children to watch (you know, Oscar the Grouch being homeless, etc.)? I want to know more.

Story Potential: Very high
Project Possibilities: Feature length documentary

__________________________________________________

"Young Couple Moves In With Her Ex-Husband"

For as quickly as Hollywood is able to fasttrack movies through production, it's almost surprising there haven't been more "recession comedies". How about this one? To save money, a woman, her husband and their two children moved in with the woman's ex-husband (20 years older than the new husband), who lives with his mother. Get me Kristen Wiig as the woman, Danny McBride as the new husband, Kathy Bates as the ex-mother-in-law, and - why not - Will Ferrell as the ex-husband.

Story Potential: Moderate
Project Possibilities: Feature length film, reality show

__________________________________________________

"S.D. Rancher, 23, Lassos a Powerball Fortune"

Boom, you wake up tomorrow and you have $88 million in the bank. What happens next? I'm always curious as to how and why certain types of people win the lottery, like the most recent winner, a 23 year-old rancher from South Dakota who insists he'll just keep on ranchin'. I'm not really interested to see another Mr. Deeds or Billy Madison style comedy, so give us the straight story - maybe even make us feel a little better that we didn't win (or didn't even pay to play). How about a thoughtful drama or a documentary about the winners of these massive lottery purses?

Story Potential: Very high
Project Possibilities: Feature length film, feature length documentary

__________________________________________________

"Chinese Hunger for Sons Fuels Boys' Abductions"

From China comes this horrifying story about abducted children in the southern rural areas of the country, "where a tradition of favoring boys over girls and the country’s strict family planning policies have turned the sale of stolen children into a thriving business." It's a nightmare of a situation that at the very least deserves some consideration as an awareness-raising documentary. Perhaps framed like 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, somebody also could make a powerfully affecting thriller from this piece.

Story Potential: Very high
Project Possibilities: Feature length film, feature length documentary, documentary short

__________________________________________________

"Is Abu Omar al-Baghdadi a Terrorist or a Mythic Symbol: A Tale of Iraqi Politics"

In the last 18 months we've seen a sharp decline in the number of movies about Iraq, though that will be on the uptick again this year with The Hurt Locker and Green Zone. I think the combat situation has been covered enough for the time being, but there's so much more going on behind the scenes of this war. In this story lies a potential mystery thriller about Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, a jihadist leader and vapor of a man who's impossibly been captured, identified, and killed multiple times. The Iraqis have somebody in custody right now but aren't entirely sure who it is, or if al-Bagdadhi is even a real person. Why is this an important and/or otherwise interesting issue? As one source notes, "“the jihadists have been pledging allegiance to a state and a man they can’t see, and they have willingly given up their lives for that.”

Story Potential: High
Project Possibilities: Feature length film, feature length documentary

__________________________________________________

Reel Life #4

Time for another edition of Reel Life, the occasional feature where I highlight news stories that I believe have the potential for future film adaptations. Here's the background if you haven't caught on yet:

"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..."

__________________________________________________

"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
__________________________________________________

"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
__________________________________________________

"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
__________________________________________________

"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
__________________________________________________

"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
__________________________________________________

"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
__________________________________________________

"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
__________________________________________________

Reel Life #3

I'm overwhelmed with articles for Reel Life, the occasional feature where I highlight news nuggets that I believe lend themselves well to film adaptations, so I might have to do another edition of this sooner than I thought. I'm trying to keep up with what's been in the news in the last month, but I still have some old ones I haven't checked off so it might be a while before I'm fully current. The running motto, as usual, is:

"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. As always, please share your comments on these stories and feel free to suggest or email me others that you find. All rights reserved if any Reel Life stories ever make their way to the big screen..."

__________________________________________________

"Do they really think the Earth is flat?"

This is outrageous. Truly mind-boggling. You've heard of people who hold onto conspiracy theories about America's moon landing being a hoax, but how about those who also refuse to believe the Earth is round? The Flat Earth Society, comprised of people from around the world (or should it be across the world?) believe the Earth is flat and horizontally infinite. The North Pole is the dot in the middle, and Antarctica is the border around the disc that prevents you from actually sailing off the edge of the Earth. A documentary needs to be made about these "flat-earthers" because I'm endlessly fascinated at how they can deny reality. Or, somebody could take the story and run with it - "Journey to the Center of the Earth" but inside out: "Journey to the End of the Earth". Brilliant, so long as it doesn't star Brendan Fraser.

Story Potential: High
Project Possibilities: Feature length film; feature length documentary

__________________________________________________

"Minnesotan teens are sick freaks"

Actually I made up that headline, but enough disgusting stories have popped up recently that it's curiously disturbing, and two articles in particular lay out the depraved behavior going on around here. In Lakeville (possibly known to you as the exurb where an unfortunate voter thought Obama was an "Arab"), four teens lured a mentally disabled man to a rural location and tied him to a tree, beating, burning, and torturing him before knocking him unconscious over the course of two days (and not before dragging him behind a motorcycle for 200 feet). If you're psychopathic, I guess you would psychopathically say he "deserved it" if he had done something terrible. But he didn't - he didn't do anything, in fact, other than befriend a crazy 16 year-old girl who sicced her crazy friends on the completely defenseless 24 year-old for literally no reason at all. It's the kind of story that keeps you awake at night.

And if you do fall asleep you'll have nightmares about your loved ones in the local nursing home. In Albert Lea (two hours south of the Twin Cities), six teens were charged with sexual abusing and taunting the elderly residents. Read the attached abuse reports for the horrific details. The only thing more disgusting than the story itself is the fact the teens, pictured in the article, will probably smile and giggle their way out of their just punishment: hard time in prison and years of psychotherapy. Even worse, one of the girls' fathers came out in their defense after the girls admitted the abuse, explaining that they were simply "carrying out the duties of their job."

I'm not interested in a horror movie made from these stories, but a documentary on the terrifying future of America. How do humans like this exist, and how can their behavior, if not their reproduction altogether, be stopped immediately?

Story Potential: Limited
Project Possibilities: Feature length documentary

__________________________________________________

"Combat to college"

When the U.S. went to war in Iraq five years ago, I kept on finding dead ends in conversations with people when I brought up the number of veterans we were going to have in this country in the future. Almost two million men and women, mostly from my generation, have served in Iraq or Afghanistan since 2001. Of them, "only" about 4,000 have lost their lives (medical technology and military strategy have significantly decreased casualties, but increased the number of wounded). The rest will be living and working with you and I for the rest of our lives, depending on our taxes to support the social services they need to survive. Apparently people are only now waking up to this fact? The short-sightedness is breathtaking. Anyway, veterans have already seen some time on the big screen (the best examples being The War Tapes and Stop-Loss), but this issue is not going to go away anytime soon (it's about to get much bigger in our lives, actually), and this article about returning vets heading to college provides some interesting and fresh material for future projects.

Story Potential: High
Project Possibilities: Feature length film; feature length documentary

__________________________________________________

"In Mexico drug war, sorting good guys from bad"

In Mexico in the last year alone, nearly 5,000 people have been senselessly murdered, many of them innocent civilians caught in the crossfire of one of the most shocking drug wars of our time. The police are the drug kingpins are the prosecutors are the mob bosses, and all other people are potential pawns, fair game to be used as ammo, collateral, and ransom payment. No one can be trusted and everyone's corrupt. It's articles like this that need to be read by Americans having fits about an influx of our neighbors to the South, if only to understand that these people are almost approaching refugee status in Mexico as it becomes an increasingly lawless place. I would argue that building up our borders is not going to stop those desperate to flee that country, so energy might be better spent developing Mexican infrastructure and stopping this out-of-control drug war, thus killing two birds with one stone? Maybe a movie will provide some insights.

Story Potential: Very High
Project Possibilities: Feature length film; feature length documentary

__________________________________________________

"Chinese girl gets 'kiss of deaf'"

This screams "silly romantic comedy for February or March release": a 20-something Chinese girl went partially deaf after receiving a passionate kiss from her boyfriend, prompting a series of media warnings about the "dangers of excessive kissing". Isn't Drew Barrymore permanently on call for roles like this?

Story Potential: Low to Moderate
Project Possibilities: Feature length film

__________________________________________________

"Pirates' luxury lifestyles on lawless coasts"

Crawl out of your cave if you still haven't heard about the unprecedented pirate attacks off the coast of Somalia. With ransom payments going over the $30 million mark, these pirates are essentially creating a new industry for a nation desperately trying to keep itself together. While the West wrings its hands about how to get its ships through the treacherous waters, rural villagers in Somalia can hardly complain about the luxurious benefits they're receiving as a trickle-down effect of the piracy. Will this story end - and how?

Story Potential: Moderate to High
Project Possibilities: Feature length film

__________________________________________________

"Mysterious piano in woods perplexes police"

A Baldwin Acrosonic piano was found by a woman walking in the woods near Harwich, MA. The piano was in tune, in good working order, and was positioned with a bench in place for an inspired passerby to sit on. You could go in all kinds of directions with this one: a documentary about pollution, a horror flick about musical ghosts, a sci-fi drama about an ancient piano that travels through time and gets played by famous people in history, a kid's movie about a piano-playing forest animal, and so on and so forth. Alright so maybe I wouldn't make a very good producer, but something about this one makes me feel like it could work well in the hands of a creative writer or director.

Story Potential: High
Project Possibilities: Feature length film, documentary short
__________________________________________________

Reel Life #2

Back again with another installment of Reel Life, an occasional feature where I highlight news nuggets that I believe lend themselves well to film adaptations. As I explained in Reel Life #1, 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. As always, please share your comments on these stories and feel free to suggest or email me others that you find. All rights reserved if any Reel Life stories ever make their way to the big screen...

__________________________________________________

"In Poverty and Strife, Women Test Limits"

I suppose it's not surprising that news and public interest about Afghanistan has been low in the midst of a presidential campaign, but it's likely that attention will soon return to the war-torn country. The U.S. is sending additional troops as the Taliban regroups, and the poppy growing business is going gangbusters.

Which is why it's interesting to find a story about the province of Bamian, where women are regaining their identity after years of mistreatment and abuse. I feel like there is a story of hope in this similar to "The Kite Runner", which aside from being one of the most popular novels of the last decade, also made for one of the better movies of last year.

Story Potential: Moderate
Project Possibilities: Feature length film (based on novel); documentary short

__________________________________________________

"1 Man's Goal: 50 Jobs, 50 Weeks, 50 States"

Remember Christopher McCandless, the young nomad idolized by Sean Penn in last year's Into the Wild? Daniel Seddiqui doesn't appear to be as irresponsible or even as interesting a character as McCandless, but his story is still unique. Having "failed" upwards of 40 job interviews, the 26 year-old Californian (he holds a degree in economics from USC) set out to work 50 different jobs in 50 different states, holding each position for one week. At the time of this article, he had just finished up working as U.S. Geological Survey hydrologist in Colorado and then a rodeo announcer in South Dakota.

At its best, this could be an inspirational goofball story, something like Forrest Gump. At its worst it would just be like any of the hundreds of reality TV shows that profile random jobs. Either way, let's hope Seddiqui has improved on his job interviewing skills by now.

Story Potential: Limited to Moderate
Project Possibilities: Feature length comedy; feature length documentary

__________________________________________________

"Sixth foot washed ashore in Canadian mystery"

The most tragic aspect to this story from last summer, aside from people actually having lost their lives, is that it's probably going to be picked up as a "C.S.I." episode long before it's made into a film. I'm not a fan of horror movies and I generally don't like to let my imagination run wild about how people die, but the circumstances around this care are too bizarre to forget: six feet wash ashore near Vancouver, British Columbia. Five of them are right feet, one of them is a left foot (I believe this last one was recently found out to be a hoax). All of them were wearing tennis shoes, and no other body parts were found. What happened?

Even though there is no proof these deaths were the work of a serial killer (the theories are wild and the identities of the victims are unknown), I'm imagining something along the lines of Zodiac.

Story Potential: High
Project Possibilities: Feature length film

__________________________________________________

"Indian beggar gets bank account"

Pretty much what the title of the article says: Laxmi Das, a beggar in north Calcutta who was disabled by polio four decades ago, has opened a savings account at the Central Bank of India. During those years of desperate poverty, she collected over 200 lbs worth of coins - it took bank employees three days to count the change.

Beyond the incredible fact that Ms. Das was able to physically secure so many coins for so long, her story illustrates the brilliance of that archaic ideal known as "saving". What's the average American's credit card balance? $5,000 or something outrageous like that? Our economy is in the tank and we can't afford our previous vacations and TVs and commercialized holiday gifts this year.

Hmm, maybe we should pay attention to the story of woman who has so little but has saved so much. I hear President-elect Barack Obama is accepting applications for Treasury Secretary...

Story Potential: Limited
Project Possibilities: Feature length documentary

__________________________________________________

"Siblings accused of killing Andover man"

Perhaps the most disturbing story of this Reel Life installment comes from my own backyard (not really, but Minnesota at least). It's the horrific tale of two grown siblings accused of murdering their estranged older brother in cold blood (using weapons including a crossbow) and disposing of his body in a bonfire. The motive? Money, of course - an inheritance.

Actually there's no way I would ever want to see this movie, but there's something horrifyingly intriguing about the dissolution of family bonds that lead to something like this. It's impossible for me to understand how people can deliberately murder their own flesh and blood.

Story Potential: Moderate
Project Possibilities: Feature length film

__________________________________________________

"Obama wins history-making election..."

Seems like it was right out of a Hollywood movie, doesn't it? Well, not yet at least. It's extremely premature for me to promote the idea for a movie about Obama, but it seems like an appropriate follow up to my MLK, Jr. biopic.

The questions is when, not if, a movie will be made about Obama. Personally I hope it's not for another few decades, but considering the timing of Oliver Stone's W., who knows how soon we might see it?

Story Potential: High
Project Possibilities: Feature length film; feature length documentary