UPDATE: So, I've found a few websites who give me a template for this and I've begun filling them in... haven't figured out quite house to get them onto here though... I suppose I can put in the web addresses, though not sure if that will work...
https://docs.google.com/document/d/12jcybdrRXbc0NdO4ciuIs1TBVhi8VAlDXLEFxarHRvA/edit
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AzR225LdpB8pQGg0Y2LTPJzx_jVDkqFtoR8g-Hx41dQ/edit
Not much there yet either, but at least it proves I'm working on it some. :)
* * *
I had a dream last night that gave me an interesting idea for a story. The beginning was nonsensical (as my dreams often are), but the rest of it was lucid and made sense and I think would make a great movie.
Main Cast/Characters:
Grayson 'Gray': Convict/murderer (preferably Hugh Jackman)
Weston 'Wes': Convict/child molestor (Gray's younger brother)
3 little girls: (as yet unnamed)
A criminal/murderer escapes from prison - either from the prison itself, or more likely from a hospital where he is being treated. He is running from the police and ahead sees the only possible place he can think of to hide - a tree-house. The next morning, a little girl enters the tree-house and finds the convict (I'm thinking of Hugh Jackman for him just because...well, because its Hugh Jackman - immensely talented, full of integrity, great with kids, and of course, super cute). The convict has no interest in hurting the girl, and the little girl seems completely unafraid of him. She seems to understand that the man does not want to be found extremely well... and takes his explanation at face value. She decides to help him and asks what he needs. It being late fall/early winter, the first thing he says he'll need is some blankets. She smiles and offers him a quilt on a nearby tree-house shelf. He asks if she can bring him back another with not quite so many holes. Anyway, the little girl leaves him with "company", many of her stuffed toy friends and the man feels very odd trying to sleep looking up at a crowd of stuffed facing staring down at him. (comic relief)
The two develop a tight friendship along with the little girl's two older sisters and the three girls try to provide everything the man needs to leave. He is very gentle with them, more so than you would ever imagine a convicted criminal/murderer of being.
Through the story of their deepening friendship (which lasts over several months), the man has dreams and flashbacks that show what his true crime really was. He was primarily a robber for profit along with his younger brother. On one particular heist, his brother and he encounter a small girl asleep in her bed. Gray wants to leave the girl alone and get out of there, with or without what they came for after seeing the look in his brother's eyes. Wes is staring at the little girl as though he wants to devour her... There is a confrontation - Gray refuses to allow Wes to harm the child and guns are drawn. The police break in on the scene with the two brothers guns aimed at each other. Like a coward, Wes shoots his brother in the leg and escapes and Gray is captured by the police and taken into custody at the nearest hospital. Wes ends up helping his brother escape from the hospital, but Gray soon learns that Wes had gone back and molested that little girl anyway. There is a fight, and Gray ends up killing Wes because of his actions and to prevent further harm to other children Wes may (and very likely would) have harmed. So now, Gray is not only an escaped convict, he is a murderer.
Also throughout the story, the tree around Gray and the girls and the tree-house will change its leaves in a symbol of time and the seasons changing. Its where the story/movie will get its name. Its where the friendship grows. At some point, Gray learns that the little girls he is such good friends with are being abused by their father which fuels in him a hatred. The tree-house is the girls hiding place too, and its why they seem to accept his own need to 'hide-out' without question. Its the one place their father cannot find them. Gray is faced with a strong internal/moral dilemma in remaining hidden, or exposing himself to come out of the tree-house and stop their father's abuse.
One day, the two elder sisters come to visit Gray and the youngest (the original little girl who found Gray) is not with them. The two elder sisters explain that the youngest girl has become very sick and must stay in bed. She continues to get worse and is completely bed-bound until one day, nearing death (she has bone cancer and needs a donor and round the clock care), she asks to see her friend Gray. Unwilling to disappoint the girl, Gray steals out of the tree-house while the parents are supposedly out (nurse talks on the phone in the other room all the time, or falls asleep, so the girls think they can sneak him in). The little girl is very weak, but extremely happy to see Gray. Along with being deathly sick, however, Gray sees fresh bruises on the girl.... even through all the health issues she is having, her father is STILL molesting her... Sick.
Right after noticing this, Gray feels a rifle butt against the back of his ear. The girls father has returned home and found this man, whom he recognizes from tv as the escaped convict/murderer in his girls room. Gray slowly turns as ordered, but you can see the hatred and fury on his face for this supposed father who is so wounding his little girls, especially the sick little one who cannot even run away any longer to hide. Once again, Gray is faced with an enormous dilemma/choice. He easily over-powers the father and takes away the gun pointing it at the dad instead. Now... does he kill the father to protect the girls from the abuse, and traumatize them further (as they are watching him and ask amazed what he is doing - please don't shoot daddy)... or does he simply surrender to the police who come storming in at that point (the nurse called them) so the girls are not subjected to seeing their father killed?? Eventually, he decides on the latter, though he does inform the cops of the father's abuse...
Gray is arrested, and the little girl is moved to the pediatric ward of a hospital. One of the arresting officers takes pity enough on Gray that he allows him to visit the girl under heavy guard largely due to Gray's alerting them to the abuse she was suffering. The visit is, obviously emotional. And there Gray learns of the girl's actual condition and that she has a very short time yet to live if a matching bone marrow donor is not found. Gray turns to the nurse on duty and says, "Test me." Obviously, there are all kinds of legal/moral issues with this, but eventually, Gray convinces everyone that, convict and murderer or not, his bone marrow is not 'infected with his crimes', and they agree to test him. While awaiting the test results, Gray is escorted to a maximum security prison where life if not at all fun for him. He himself is molested by some of the prison's men pounding home to him even more the hell that his little friend (the girl) had been going through - and what had been done to the girl his brother had molested. One day, however, after what seems/feels like years in the prison, Gray gets the word. He is a match for the little girl. He is an acceptable donor.
Gray is taken to the hospital and he and the child are prepped for surgery and he is able to see her during the preparation. The little girl is close to death and barely conscious, but when she sees Gray, she reaches for him and cries. Gray reaches and is able to hold her hand and the doctors and nurses allow it because it keeps the child calm while they prepare for the surgery.
...I haven't really decided on the result of the surgery yet - if the surgery itself is a success, yet the girl still dies, if its a success and she lives, if the surgery is NOT successful at all (though I'm leaning away from this), or maybe if the surgery is successful and the girl's body later rejects the transplant and she dies..... Not sure, will have to 'hatch' on that one. Unlike a lot of people, I am NOT particularly a sucker for 'happy endings'. I am a 'sucker for REAL endings'. To me, that means elements of 'happiness', but it also means elements of sadness, and reality... so, it will most likely be a mix of both.
I would also like to give some closer to the fate of the other two older sisters and where they end up afterwards, tie up that end. I don't like lose ends. Obviously, they will be removed from the father, but what happens to them after?
But at some point, due to a more lenient sentencing than he might have received had he not been so cooperative with the police and told the circumstances surrounding his brother's murder, Gray is released - about 20 years older. He returns to the tree-house and walks around it noting the damage, the disrepair of the little room where he had shared such a friendship with three little girls. The tree itself seems to be dying... but on the other side, he sees three tiny little shoots sprouting up from the ground that will symbolize hope. The movie will end after a moving soliloquy by Gray on the strange complexity of life, love, friendship, and hope as the camera pans upward through the dying, but beautifully silhouetted leaves of the tree in the sunset...
Anyway - that's it at this point. Its very rare for me to develop a fully formed story from start to finish in chronological order... dream or not.... So, I'm thinking, MAYBE that this is God's answer - the story I should develop and pursue... If ONLY I knew how to write it in screen-play format....... I wanted to get the date of the story's conception documented somewhere, so... seems like this Blog is it. I think it would make a GREAT movie... would LOVE to see Hugh Jackman in this role as Gray....
As I think about it, I think of Shel Silverstein's book, 'The Giving Tree'. Its ALWAYS been one of my favorites. Perhaps in some ways this would be an homage to that book - or, at least, partly inspired by... I wonder if he/she's still alive...
~Kaylie (Nov. 30th, 2013)
No comments:
Post a Comment