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Blunder - A Screenplay by M.W.C.
WGA Reg. # 1179547. Effective Date: 02/02/07 Expiration Date: 02/02/12
SCRIPT TREATMENT for BLUNDER
BUDGET
- The MOVIE could be produced on a moderate budget. No special effects required.
- Overhead Helicopter shoots. One stunt man fall is required.
- There are no elaborate sets or high-tech features.
- Licensing rights for the music might require alternative of song choices.
- Interior sets would be easy to find locally or simple and inexpensive to construct.
- Exterior scenes could be shot on the streets and natural areas of Los Angeles.
LOGLINES:
LOGLINE #1
Love and the War on Terror have many similarities; they are both full of blunders and missteps and no matter your best intentions and desires, things usually blow up right in your face. L.A.P.D. and D.H.S. clash. Is it terrorism or just everyday stupid crime? Does it matter? Cops, politics, sex, religion, true love and modern Internet virtual culture make a very bad mixture. This movie is a mixture of mood and characteristics of ‘Babel,’ ‘ Crash’ and ‘Chinatown’.
LOGLINE #2
This movie is a clash of cultures, personal and professional; cops, chaos, contempt, faux-terrorism, true love, accidental death, annoyance, misunderstanding, paternity, assassination and big egos in the wrong places. People have different agendas; so it doesn’t matter what language they speak, they still don’t understand each other.
SHORT SUMMARY
Love and the War on Terror have many similarities; they are both full of blunders and missteps and no matter your best intentions and desires, things usually blow up right in your face. Detective JACK PURETTES knows such blunders all too well. His marriage failed because of his wife’s ambition not his, still he never let it go. He tries everything to get it back. Just like the unpredictable chaos of love and terror, a stupid misinterpreted Los Angeles crime ends up bringing the PURETTES family back together.
An incident at a Los Angeles Bank kills twelve. LAPD thinks it’s a bungled attempt at a non-violent bank robbery. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) thinks it’s a terrorist attack. The LAPD is right while DHS remains consistent and wrong. Still, DHS wants to look good and doesn’t. Detectives JACK PURETTES and PHYLLIS MANILA want to get the criminals and do. DHS thus initiates a campaign to discredit them, threats are exchanged, animosity increases and people die. Jack has to use his skills and his celebrity ex-wife to survive the DHS assaults and rescue PHYLLIS. But JACK is too old to care about right and wrong, he just wants his family back together and his friends safe. Jack’s goals are clear. The best thing about the DHS attack was it did just that.
PACE, SETTING, FORMAT AND CONCEPT
Pace – fast and loud.
Love, sex, drugs and rock and roll, as well as the War of Terror. Told in flashbacks and various media. The pace of the movie will be fast and connected with music. Rap and blues mostly, except for the News Broadcasts, which will use News Music (melodramatic and loud). Twelve people die in the fumbled bank robbery at the beginning of the piece. Jack is responsible for three other deaths; one in the past and two in the present. All were done without weapons. Death is very personal to Jack. Each death made Jack sad, conspicuous and eventually a target.
Setting – Chaos and desperation of Los Angeles.
Los Angeles, the city where the weather is predictable while the traffic is not. L.A. is bureaucratic, congested, annoyed, media centric and infected with wishful thinking; everyone knows they should be a star. L.A.’s form of chaos and bungling is like its traffic; thick, slow, and you get nowhere fast. Most of these would-be stars are stuck, drowning in the unnoticed glacial mass of the L.A. populous. Yet the desire to be the center of attention makes everyone weak and susceptible to manipulation. The flock can easily be made to chase false goals and fake gods. But LAPD Detective JACK PURETTES never wanted to be a star. He knew he was good, the rest didn’t matter. Thus it was hard to manipulate Jack except by love. With love, Jack was like the rest of us, a fool. The modern problem of ‘Too many cooks’ blundering and confusion comes into play too often in LA.
Format – Present linear; Past broken up flashbacks.
Jack’s main goal is getting his family back. The story of his failed marriage and its break up is told in flashbacks. The reuniting of Jack’s family is told in the present and interwoven with the crime story. The notice Jack obtains during the investigations and his eventual shooting brings the family back together.
The story of the crime is told in the present.
Voice over and flashback display the life of PHYLLIS MANILA, the LAPD primary on the robbery.
Concept – Crime drama, Bureaucratic tragedy and Ambition run wild.
The main story driver is a stupid crime that is thus easily solved. Interdepartmental and inter-bureau dysfunction causes more problems then it solves. Liars are everywhere for every reason. Mostly the liars have self-image issues, “Why am I not loved and famous at the same time?” There isn’t a satisfied person in the story, except for PHYLLIS and BILLY.
Despite the best planning and the most intense desires, things either work out or they don’t; life gets in the way of plans. Events and emotions drive life. What you want doesn’t matter, just like the L.A. traffic. It’s a tragedy and a comedy of egos and selfishness, none of it good. Jack’s family coming back together is also meant to be a blunder, but a good one this time.
There are a number of spots for sex scenes. Sex is a subliminal driver of the characters and the viewers. The scenes could even be close to X-rated, but only for the DVD version. The Theaters could have a cut version of nudity and sex. The viewer will definitely get something extra with the DVD.
DRAFT STORY SUMMARY
An odd attempt at a non-violent bank robbery using knockout gas kills everyone in the bank including two of the bank robbers / terrorists. It also ignites a fire storm of ‘Too many cooks’ blundering and misreading the situation. LAPD Detectives JACK PURETTES and PHYLLIS MANILA think simply; it’s just a bungled robbery. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) thinks way too big and complex; it’s a terrorist attack! LAPD is right while DHS in consistent and wrong. This dichotomy sets off a turf war that JACK is more than happy to fan the flames. No one is actually talking to each other about the event, only making threats about consequences. Worse gets ever worst.
Jack is a good detective despite all the politics swirling around him; departmental, city, county and federal. Jack distrusts ambition. It never did him any good. The desperation for celebrity from his wife, JANIS COPLIN destroyed their marriage, although, she did finally achieve stardom in Christian Rock as the performer tRUTH. She hates it.
His friend and former partner, Haw (Howie) Johnson, had ambition. Howie is now his Captain. Howie hates it. Howie relies on Jack to fix whatever is broken, quietly. Howie loves quiet. Howie seldom gets it. Hating the bureaucratic people and maneuvering, Howie has Jack work on not-cases. Jack isn’t directly assigned to a controversial case, he helps things along from the background. Deniability is thus available when things go wrong, as they usually do.
Because of Jack’s cop skills and being around the LA crime scene for over twenty years, Jack rapidly solves the not-case for Phyllis, the actual primary for the investigation.
A long known criminal to JACK, a VINCENT KARY (Beanie Vinnie) was involved and died in the non-violent bank robbery. Beanie Vinnie introduced JACK to his ex-wife, JANIS COPLIN. The connections lead JACK back to his wife, now a celebrity in Christian Rock and to the REVERENT CATS, a Hollywood evangelist and savior of the Hollywood homeless. CATS pushes non-violence to the L.A. street people and druggies, even non-violence in their criminal acts. It was CATS that encouraged the non-violent gas related robberies in L.A. CATS dies while JACK is attempting an arrest. CATS falls to his death from the top of the Hollywood Christian Pharaoh Mission. The fall is videoed. It looks like suicide, but Jack was angry and aided CATS in his fall.
The DHS agents are too bureaucratic and self-promoting to acknowledge the LAPD success and attacks LAPD as well as Jack and Phyllis. Jack becomes particularly vulnerable with the apparent suicide of the REVERENT CATS. Jack has avoided and then goads and badgered the DHS. Jack doesn’t like them mostly because these DHS agents remind him of the man that broke up Jack’s family by making tRUTH famous. Jack was never able to get revenge on that fellow, so he takes it out on the bunglers in front of him.
With the encouragement of the DHS, the fundamentalist Christian media and Internet bloggers come after Jack. They even file a class action lawsuit against Jack and the LAPD. The Christian faithful are whipped into an Internet virtual rage that spills over into the real world. Outside of the courthouse at Jack’s civil suit hearing, within the crowd of anti-Jack protestors, a lone gunman attempts to shoot Jack. Jack kills the inexperienced gunman with a single punch to the throat, but not before Jack is shot. Jack always wears his Kevlar vest in public; however, two bullets still hurt and do damage. The attacks and hero stardom bring Jack and his ex-wife Janis / tRUTH back together, that and the desire and scheming of their daughter, Pamela.
But the bruised ego based revenge of the DHS is not finished. They threaten to deport Phyllis unless Jack resigns from the LAPD. The personal aspects of it were all too obvious to Jack and he doesn’t care either way. He has his twenty years and retires. DHS is happy. Jack gets his family back. And LA stays LA.
CHARACTER GROWTH
JACK PURETTES: Going through the motions at first. He is fixated on a Peeping Tom for no other reason than that’s what is right in front of him. Jack misses his daughter Pamela. Pammy is away at boarding school on the east coast. The divorce papers that Janis’s manager had forced Jack to sign said he couldn’t see Pammy unless Janis said so. Officially Jack wasn’t Pammy’s father, but maybe he actually was. Jack had the paternity information in an envelope on his desk, but he had never opened it. Jack was afraid maybe he was wrong. Uncertainty can be useful in a fantasy. He also misses his wife Janis / tRUTH. He always loved her from the first time he saw her. Every time she is in the L.A. area, she tours mostly, he goes to visit her. He always visited her after the performance. She always got stoned after a performance. She always loved Jack when she was stoned, she still did. So when she was stoned and Jack was there, they made love.
Jack would fabricate reasons to see Janis / tRUTH, just so he could be there when she got stoned. It worked most times. Still, Jack’s desire was to get his family back together. The non-violent robbery case brings Jack a real reason to be with Janis / tRUTH. But being inconspicuous had never worked in bringing her closer to him. Now that he was in the spotlight as both hero and victim, Janis realizes her non-stoned emotions match her stoned ones. Jack’s unrealized anger at the manager of Janis’s success as tRUTH puts Jack at war with the DHS agents. It puts Phyllis in jeopardy. All Jack has to do to fix it is quit the LAPD and go back to being inconspicuous. If it gets his family and Phyllis back, he’ll do it without a second thought.
He moves from angry and quiet to loud and actively pissed-off to quiet and content.
JANIS COPLIN / tRUTH – American white female, 40 something. She has achieved her goal of being a famous rock & roll singer. It cost her everything, even her identity. But nothing was enough. Or enough wasn’t the right thing. Men were an annoyance. Beauty was an annoyance. Fame was an annoyance. They were an annoyance because they were just tools. She still felt hollow. She could only feel loved and love when she was stoned and with Jack. But Jack had been in her way, a roadblock to her fame. So said her manager, Chucky. At least, that was how it seemed at the time. Janis eventually realizes that her stoned perceptions were more correct than her sober desires. Her daughter Pamela was pushing to find out who her biological father was. Jack was always, had always been there to fix everything. Jack was in trouble. Jack had been shot. She finally puts Jack and the family as the priority they were. Being the go-getter she always was, she gets them. Jack agrees, as does Pamela.
She moves from desperate, lonely and seeking to fulfilled and satisfied. She is always strong.
PHYLLIS MANILA – Philippine American woman, proud of her accomplishments as an LAPD female detective, even though her mother hates it. Phyllis is pregnant throughout the story. She is physically beautiful and it has made her strong and tough. She is more proud of the strength and toughness than the beauty. “I’m nobody’s tool.” She liked saying.
Her mother thinks beauty is all a woman needs. Everything else gets in the way of a woman’s destiny, that being; marriage to a wealthy man and children. Phyllis’s mom got the children, but not the wealth.
Phyllis wants it all, except for the wealth. That doesn’t really matter. As a cop she has seen how the pursuit of wealth does horrible things to people. It makes them do horrible things to themselves and the people around them. Phyllis wants to solve this, her first big case. She is not afraid, even of her own government. She succeeds with the help of Jack and her friends in the department.
She realizes she is as strong as she feels and that works well for her.
MAIN CHARACTERS:
JACK PURETTES – American white male, middle 40ish. Jack came from a family of Detroit cops. His Grandfather and Father were Beat cops. His uncle was in the Ohio State Highway Patrol. Jack didn’t want to be a cop. Jack wanted to be a classical guitarist. Jack was a good enough musician to get into Julliard and receive a Masters in Classical Guitar. He came to L.A. to make it in classical music. L.A. was the wrong place for classical anything. Jack tried blues guitar. He got gigs, as a back up musician but wasn’t ‘black enough for the blues’ as some agent told him. Jack thus became the other thing he knew how to be, a cop. He knew he could do that well. Bad things always seemed to be happening around Jack. He could and did fix them. Making things right was in his blood it seemed.
Jack is a faithful friend, but Jack has no ambition. He only transferred from Vice because he couldn’t take the lies anymore. Jack is a fundamentally honest and helpful man. Both of these attributes have gotten him into trouble time and again. Basically, he will help anyone who needs it. He isn’t passive, but he is pliant. He’s also very good at getting things done, so people use Jack frequently. Mostly, he doesn’t fight it, as long as there are no fundamental ethical issues. Ethics are as important to Jack as consistency in those ethics. Jack’s ethical stance has more to do with loyalty and the greater good, than his advancement in the department. Jack could have gotten the promotions; he just didn’t apply for them. He didn’t care about that at all. It seemed to matter to Howie, so Jack helped Howie.
Jack is also afraid of his emotions. When he was a Police Cadet, he was standing in a bank line waiting for the next teller. A man pushed Jack out of the way, telling Jack to “fuck off!” The man took a swing at Jack. Jack got angry and punched the man in the throat, killing him. Only after the punch did Jack see that the man had a shotgun and was going to hold up the bank. Jack became a hero and got a metal even though, as Jack put it, “I didn’t see the gun.” Jack felt his training and anger made for a fatal combination and always tried to keep the anger in check. This conflict with the DHS brings the anger out of him.
Jack’s main motivation in life was getting back together with Janis and Pamela. Jack was crushed by Janis’s departure as tRUTH. Jack suppressed his emotions, like he usually did. But he has been hurting for seven years. The rest of his life was simply going through the motions. Even his obsession with a Peeping Tom was passive until the events of the non-violent bank robbery pushes Jack’s anger to the surface. Once the anger leaked out, Jack expressed it in every direction. He actually kills the REVERENT CATS out of anger by pushing him over the ledge. Jack had sense enough to make it look like he was helping, but he wasn’t. Jack’s rapid sacrifice of his cop career as a ransom for Phyllis thus has a two-fold meaning. It’s Jack’s punishment for his blunders; CATS death, the death of the Bank robber back in 1984, the death of Jack’s would-be assassin, not telling Janis about being the uncover narc, Calvin back in 1994, that Jack is very likely Pamela’s true father, letting Janis go so easily, and signing the stupid divorce degree. Maybe his retirement is a blunder too, but it is a good blunder.
JANIS COPLIN / tRUTH – American white female, 40 something. Janis Coplin’s parents were big Janis Joplin fans. They named their daughter after her. Dad thought it was funny; Joplin / Coplin. They played Janis Joplin all of the time around their daughter. She sung along. Her first words were from a Big Brother and the Holding Company song. In high school she would always do the Janis Joplin guise at the talent shows. She won many of them more by the strength of her voice than the mimicking of her namesake. When she got to college, she joined a band; Little Brother. It did Janis Joplin covers.
Thus Janis Coplin and Little Brother were born. They played California. They played LA. They did a lot of drugs. “Keeping in character,” Janis would joke. The rest of the band did drugs for the fun of it. They had no character. Little Brother broke up after the drug bust engineered by undercover cop Jack, masquerading as Calvin the roadie. Janis would get high and have sex with anyone around. Calvin made certain he was around when she was high. Janis went with Calvin to a hotel the night of the bust. Janis was high so much during that time, she never put long hair and bearded, Calvin and short haired and shaven, Jack together. When Jack met Janis in the courthouse, Janis was a few months pregnant and thus sober. It was the right amount of time for the baby to be Jack’s, but as Janis said, she was a BAD GIRL. She didn’t know whose baby it was. Calvin was as good a person as any.
Janis thus thought Jack was just some nice cop she had bumped into. Jack was madly in love with Janis, so he let her think what she wanted. The rest didn’t matter. Jack married Janis for the baby and love. Janis couldn’t get singing out of her system and kept touring. Janis really did want to be a star. Jack just wanted to be a good father so he took care of the baby, Pamela while Janis was on the road. Upon meeting an aggressive manager, Chucky, Janis changed to tRUTH and became the star she desired, even if it was performing Christian Rock. She then left Jack at Chucky’s insistence. Pamela got sent to boarding school. tRUTH became big. Janis stayed the same. Janis always looked forward to Jack’s random appearances. Being a star is never enough. She never told him that but she did make love to him with passion.
PHYLLIS MANILA – Pilipino - American female, under 30. Phyllis was a well-formed adolescent. She grew up all at once. By twelve she had a woman’s body; large breasts and hourglass figure. Boys and men bothered her all of the time. Her mother watched over her carefully. Her mother kept the family men off of Phyllis. Phyllis’s mother had the same teen beauty and knew what pig’s men could be. Still, her mother wanted Phyllis to use that beauty to get ahead. The family came to the USA so Phyllis could be in the Miss America pageant. Instead of use her beauty against men; Phyllis became a high school athlete. She lifted weights so she could fight off any male advances. It wasn’t going to be the ‘getting physical’ the men had in mind. The only ass involved was a kick in the ass. When she needed money for college though Phyllis used her beauty and great body to make money by Life Modeling. ‘Look but not touch.’ Phyllis was proud of her body and men made too much out of nudity. She was a very popular life model. She met her husband, Billy Manila while she modeled for one of his life painting classes. Phyllis became a cop as much to anger her mother as it being a career that showed she wasn’t afraid of men and a role model for young Philippine girls. They don’t need to be afraid. They don’t need to be male appendage, a tool. Phyllis was nobody’s tool.
BLACK SUIT -1 - American white male, late 30ish to 40ish. He is clean cut and manicured. He always wears expensive black suits. It is his only vice. He thinks a well-made black suit gives him an exact authoritative appearance. His intelligence is high for a person in his line of work. He is cold and emotionless, but he takes everything personally. Despite his insistence upon only doing his job for the greater good, he is really in it only for his own position and advancement. He is not married. He devotes his life to the security of America.
With his devotion in mind, he’ll do anything to anyone to achieve his goal. He is the archetype of bureaucratic evil. He is exactly what the antichrist will look like. A cog in the system, except this cog crushed souls. He believed in God because God was part of his church; was his church. He didn’t have a vision of what God was, but that didn’t seem to matter to the preachers. He believed in God because they told him to and that was okay. It seemed the best strategy to take for a successful career.
MINOR CHARACTERS:
HAW (HOWIE) JOHNSON - Half black / half Korean / American male, late 30ish to 40ish. Constantly pissed about everything, so he likes it as quiet as possible. His father was a black soldier that met his Korean mother while stationed there during the Korean War. They fell in love in Korea, but couldn’t get married until they came to America. Korea was very racist then, just like America was.
One of the reasons Howie is so pissed off is that his Korean grandparents would never talk to him. He even went to Korea as a teen to meet the family. His grandfather and grandmother wouldn’t be in the same room with him. In the US, his Asian friends and family kept pushing him to be a doctor or dentist. His black friends and father’s family wanted him to go into sports. Howie was smart, large and strong, even at twelve. The whole family ‘expectations’ thing drove him crazy. Howie once said. ‘My life is just like Romeo and Juliet without the romance part. The families fighting each other all of the time.’
In college he got a whole new set of friends; the ‘White Folk’. Howie only dated white women. His white friends never seemed to stereotype him as much as his relatives did. His relatives hated his ‘White Folk’ obsession which was fine with Howie. So after college he became a cop in L.A., which really pissed the family off. To Howie’s surprise, he liked the LAPD. He fit in to it somehow that he couldn’t voice. One of his first partners was Jack Purettes, hero of the Bank Que. Jack had always been there for Howie. Howie didn’t understand that but appreciated it. Howie made sure he and Jack were always close in working proximity. When Howie became Jack’s boss, Jack tilted his head and asked Howie if it would be okay. Jack was like that. Howie relies on Jack to keep the Detective room quiet and orderly. Jack did it for Howie, although, Jack liked the streets more. Jack liked it noisy and chaotic. ‘More real life.’ Jack put it. Howie answered. ‘That’s exactly what I want to avoid, real life.’
SAM HOWARD - American white male, late 30ish to 40ish. Had known Jack from the Police Academy. Sam was a ‘Don’t give a shit’ type of guy. A chuckle and a shrug were Sam’s most common expressions. Loyalty wasn’t an issue with Sam. Whatever way the majority was leaning, Sam leaned. He doesn’t give a shit. Sam was a herd type; an average guy on purpose. He did his job. He covered his friend’s back. What more does a guy need to do? Sam’s answer to the question, ‘Are you happy being a cop?’ was ‘I’m just happy to have a job.’ Sam meant it.
REVERENT CATS / JACOB KATZ - American white male, 60ish. A.k.a. Jacob Katz. Failed public relations man. Came from Shaker Heights, Ohio to Los Angeles in the 1960’s with a Cleveland Rock & Roll band, called THE BLACK CROSS BEARERS. They were picking up some fame and fans. They were playing the ski resort circuit. They were from Cleveland, bad weather didn’t scare them, but it did kill most of them. The van went off the icy road going to Mammoth Mountain. Jake Katz and the other roadies followed in a car and watched the van disappear over the brim of the road along with their future. Jake had claustrophobia, didn’t like alcohol or the excessive farting of many of the band members, so he never traveled in the ‘van with the band.’
Also, despite Jake’s warnings, everyone in the van was always stoned. If any of them had survived the fall and crash, they died from the resulting fire because they were too stoned to move and save their own lives. One of the other roadies commented later at a memorial for the band held by some fans, ‘At least they died the way they lived; stoned and unaware.’ The fans cheered that bit of reality.
Jake never went back to Shaker Heights. He couldn’t face the tears of the parents. ‘Nice Jewish boys should never have gotten involved in this rock & roll crap!’ Still Jake could hear their imagined cries at night in his dreams. Jake tried to get into the L.A. music scene but he was cursed. He had been the manager of an up and coming band, but they were dead now and no one would sign with him. He even married a Christian woman to see if that could overcome the curse. It didn’t. He got more and more bitter, as well as desperate. He started drinking and drinking too much. He started ranting at local bars. People thought him funny and sad, the perfect combination for an L.A. bar. Most people there were disappointed and sad. At least, Jake was entertaining. He also learned how to pick their pockets while he was ranting. The pocket picking actually reduced his alcohol consumption. Drunken pickpockets aren’t too successful. His Christian wife would go out with him. She thought he was funny too. He was until he auctioned her off one night. Out of anger she actually went home with the guy who ‘bought’ her. She liked him better than Katz. She also liked the idea of being a white Christian Slave girl. It was romantic for her. She never went back to Katz, but she never divorced him either.
Jake didn’t know how to take his wife’s slave girl fetish, but he always wanted her to be happy. He did love her in his own ‘angry at the world’ way. He wished her luck and moved his bar rants from bitterness to fundraising for salvation. It was an easy jump from bitterness to salvation. Everyone needed forgiving. Everyone needed saving from themselves. Jake’s approach to personal salvation was, “It’s your fault, so do something to fix it.” Direct and true (D&T). For some reason true worked for salvation. It had never worked for music.
Jake felt D&T were good, but to reach the next level of assisting in salvation, he needed some mystic crap too. He thus picked up the Cross from Jesus but that by itself was over used. He added Egyptian stuff. It was familiar but exotic. Exotic was important in a fantasy and fetish. His wife had shown him that. So Pyramids, Jackal heads and of course, CATS. It seemed so fitting. Jake became the REVERENT CATS. He dressed in all white for purity and most importantly, it got you noticed. He always stood out in a crowd. He even had his hair and teeth bleached. When he put his arms out he made a White Cross. White Cross became another of his names. It was a tribute to the band that stranded him in this life.
The guise added to his skills in manipulation. He was eventually so successful in fundraising he bought an old building in Hollywood. It became the Hollywood Christian Pharaoh Mission. He would stand on top of the building, on the roof ledge and preach. At first he did it just to attract attention and a crowd. Soon, he liked the open space feeling of it. His claustrophobia had only gotten worse over the years. The large empty L.A. sky felt good to CATS.
PAMELA COPLIN – American white female baby to teenish.
PEEPING TOM / EDGER VERN - American white male, late 30ish to 40ish. Fat mushy and non-descript. A Trekkie type. Pale and smelly.
BLACK SUIT -2 - American white male, 20ish. Neat and well groomed.
BLACK SUIT -3 - American white male, late 20ish. Neater and better groomed.
GUY SIX – Weak street bum. Indeterminate in age, race and humanity.
PHYLLIS MOTHER – Philippine woman, 60ish. She had been a bathing beauty as a teen in the Philippines. Her beauty had faded, but she continued to dress as if she were that young beauty. The family came to the USA in 1984. Regan was a friend to the Philippines. Marcos was a friend to only his family, actually only himself. She is a combination of modern and traditional. When she was young and desirable, she lived fast and had many boy friends. As she got older she got more traditional, more family oriented. She wanted to come to the USA so Phyllis could be Miss USA. When Phyllis became a high school athlete she was so disappointed, but that made her double her attack on Phyllis to BE A WOMAN. Phyllis resisted. Phyllis became a cop as much to anger her mother as it being a career and a role model for young Philippine girls.
CAMERON – Head of Wells Fargo Bank Security and Investigations. He and Jack had worked on a Cash vault theft ring. The Money handlers were stealing somehow. Jack and he had solved it by looking into the pasts of the cash vault personnel. One of them had a father that had been a magician. Slight of hand and palming was the gimmick. They simply watched carefully with the vault video cameras and caught it on tape.
HERB WALKER – Under cover LAPD officer from Phyllis Manila’s division. He is dressed as a street bum when they meet him at the Hollywood Christian Pharaoh Mission.
VINCENT KARY / BEANIE VINNIE - American white male, late 40ish. Vinnie was a player and not very good at it. He was the road manager for Janis Coplin and her band, ‘Little Brother.’ Mostly he scored them drugs. He did make gigs for the band, but mostly the financial part was poor or sided toward him. Vinnie wasn’t a very good manager or person, but he loved Janis. Even after the prison sentence and the band breaking up, Vinnie stayed in L.A. and tried to succeed by taking advantage of whoever was around him. Vinnie also thought himself a Street Wizard, when it came to making X and a few other drugs. Vinnie blew up a few garages. He was in and out of jail and trouble. Jack met Vinnie as Jack Purettes when Vinnie was being the failed Street Wizard. Jack had actually met Vinnie when Jack was under cover as a Narc / roadie (Calvin) for the Janis and Little Brother Band. Vinnie never figured that out. Jack was so different as Calvin, no one had figured it out. Vinnie kept after Janis, especially when she became famous as tRUTH. He took as much of advantage of tRUTH as she would let him. She had given him money as loans, over the decade. As Vinnie sunk lower into the street, tRUTH gave him less and less. She eventually stopped responding to his phone messages.
CHUCKY - American white male, late 30ish to 40ish. Janis / tRUTH manager for the transition to the big time in Christian Rock. Chucky didn’t care about the religious part of it. He just knew an available market and would fish it with dynamite if he had to. Feelings and emotions were only there as a way to make money. Chucky had found his niche in life and fully utilized his core competencies. Chucky wears a black suit that looks exactly like the suits worn by the DHS representatives. This hate for the black suit is the major reason for Jack’s venom against the DHS Black Suits. But Chucky is very fat and red faced; the expression on his face blank and disconnected.
BILLY MANILA - Philippine American male, 30ish. A painter by personality and passion. Billy doesn’t care about much else than painting. Painting and Phyllis. Philly Manily, as he was the first to call her. When he was a kid in L.A., everyone called him Billy Manily. He always said he was going to marry a Phyllis just so they could be Billy and Philly Manily. When he saw Phyllis for the first time in his life painting class at the L.A. City Arts, he almost passed out. There she was, his Philly. She was more than beautiful, she was magnificent, the woman of his dreams. He kept painting her over and over. He never stopped painting her.
Phyllis didn’t like the nickname but Billy’s passionate approach to life and art swept her up too. How could you not love such devotion? Billy was so intense, it was annoying sometimes. When Phyllis was joking with Billy about artists sleeping with their models, they were having sex at the time; Billy vowed to only paint her, only her naked body would appear in his paintings for the rest of his life. The faces will be different but only her body. She laughed at how silly that was. He replied. ‘Let’s get married and you’ll see.’ They did and so far, Billy had been faithful in both art and marriage. Marrying Billy was a disappointment to Phyllis’s mother. This worried Billy. Asian mother in laws can be a problem even when they like their son-in-law. Phyllis laughed it off with. ‘I disappoint her all of the time. It won’t make any difference.’ Billy was uncertain how to take this comment. It seemed like he wasn’t actually involved in the situation between Phyllis and her mother. He said this to Phyllis and she laughed again. ‘Billy, you are so perceptive. Maybe that’s why you are an artist. You have nothing to do with mom and me.’ Again a perplexing comment for Billy, but he learned like most married men, to stop while your ahead. Billy just did what he was good at; painting.
INSPECTOR MANNING – Afro-American male 50ish
COMMANDER CALIHAND – White female, 40.
THE END
COMPLETE SCRIPT - Available upon request.