Question by Awesome: Is this idea original enough?
I’m a writer working for an independent film company and my boss (team leader) is having what he calls a “free week” where all of us sub-writers sketch out some basic story line, centered around a common theme, and submit our rough ideas into a pool. When we’ve all submitted our ideas we review and collaborate.
The theme topics include crime, revenge, violence, etc.
So I’ve come up with something that I think is not bad (though not my brightest lightbulb). It is the story of a father and his daughter in southern Alabama in the late 1970’s. Let’s call the father Paul.
Paul works at a factory in the town, and the time he doesn’t spend working is time he spends at the local bar. His daughter, let’s call her Alice (these are not finalized names, in the script they are referred to as [unnamed father character], and [unnamed daughter character]), goes to the small public school that sits on the edge of town and dislikes the school a lot; it’s a very small town and she hates this because
Her mother, Paul’s ex-wife, left them both for the city sometime when Alice was young.
Alice is a girl who dislikes the small town, and she’ll do what she can to get out of it soon.
But the story centers around Paul more than it does Alice, as you’ll see.
Alice is solicited by early versions of porno film makers. They promise her that she’ll be a star and it will be her ticket to success in the big city. But obviously those promises fall flat. When Paul realizes that Alice has been gone for over two days, he goes to the local law enforcement, who are surprisingly passive about it. They tell him that she’s probably at some boyfriends house and she’ll be back soon.
Paul isn’t satisfied, so he starts to investigate for himself. When he comes across some evidence that her disappearance isn’t the product of teen angst (which it really is if you think about it) the sheriff of the town comes to his house with some deputies and warns Paul to back off.
Later we find out that the sheriff had played a key role in his daughters semi-abduction and discovers where the office of the early porn studio is.
In short, he visits the local hunting supply shop and goes to the offices and woops some ass, killing the sheriff, the porno filmmakers, and rescuing his daughter.
Now my question is: I know I’ve heard this story before, but I can’t put my finger on where or what movie it was. It has some extra elements to make it a little different than I remember it, but the basic “dad gettin’ mad and woopin’ some ass, followed by the rescue of his daughter” story is something I know is unoriginal.
Is it simply a retelling of a story everyone’s heard a hundred times, or does it have just enough originality to bring it into the realm of entertaining?
Best answer:
Answer by Melissa
I think it is original enough. I mean, any movie out there shares similarities of other movies. I think you have a really good idea and the movie could be highly entertaining. The only movie I thought of while reading this was “Taken” and it is pretty different. There was a Lifetime movie I saw where a daughter kinda gets kidnapped by a man who uses her for his porn movies or pictures, but it is the mom who comes and finds her at the end, and she doesn’t kill anyone. Those are the only two movies I can think of even remotely close to your story-line. All in all, I think you should go with it. I like it. 🙂
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