One of my first b script is one of the oldest, it goes way back to 1985 and it's called Burger Zombies. It's pretty much similar to one of the first movies Steve McQueen made and while it sounds similar, it's a little different. This cover was fishing around for money for Badland and Affinity, a company owned by a friend of mine.
It also was optioned a few times but never made. And it was way before the zombie craze, this one came from another planet. I wrote it several ways, one was more adult and another one was teens and a sarcastic lead girl named Darby.
Logline: Teenagers must save their town from alien bugs raining down from space and taking control of the local burger joint.
It began with the dark objects raining down on a small mid-western town in the American heartland. Nobody takes much notice of whatever fell from the night sky, not that most townspeople even cared. For almost 14-year old finian, it was just another quiet night at the aging burger stand where his dream girl, 17-year old darby, worked slinging burgers. Not that she noticed him all that much, being older and more worldly. Still he hoped.
But something else prowls the empty streets of the little town, something that affects teenagers in a most violent way. It erupts the next day at school when a teen, Glenda, literally turns into a grotesque caricature of herself, a monster who attacks a teacher. Darby barely escapes with the help of Finian.
Finian and Darby are both curious and together begin a dangerous quest to learn more about the strange alien visitors who are taking the town over by possessing the bodies of local teens at an alarming rate. Gathering clues, they’re joined by the last survivors of the town; rudy, the gung-ho 12-year old and clara, nick-named Seer, barely 12 years old but with wisdom beyond her years. That and an uncanny ability to see otherworldly things that nobody else can. And finally wanamaker, an outcast whose strange immunity to the alien creatures will offer vital clues to the alien’s vulnerability.
As darkness falls, more attacks occur and it soon becomes clear to Darby and Finian that something strange is happening to the teens of the small town and that something even more deadly is revealing itself, creatures from another planet intent on taking over the bodies of unknowingly willing teens and the entire planet. With nowhere to escape and nobody to help, Finian, Darby and their scruffy army of two kids and a man with a secret past, face the horrific fate of Burger Zombies to save their little town.
This was more or less the story and was optioned a few times and now lays resting somewhere in my office. I still get a phone call or two a year or a email asking about Burger Zombies.
Another action script is Deadhead, a story that uses a passenger jetliner with eight people flying in it when the jetliner suddenly turns into the northern Pacific Ocean and the pilot can't turn it back. And to ante up the action, there's a creature from space who hitchhiked onto the jetliner. I wrote this from the experience I had with Rough Air (not my title btw). My brother who used to fly guided me through the script. It was done in 2001.
I've gone through a lot of genres; Beneath - a Russian submarine sinks mysteriously in the middle of the Pacific and a U.S. ship attempts to bring it up without the Russians knowing.Beacon - A truckstop in nowhere where a girl arrives from running away from home and meets a handful of characters waiting for a break.Casualties of Love is almost a play, in fact it still might be. It's about three late 30's friends who were a rock band in their younger days and decide to kidnap an older rocker in order for him not to sell out his music. But they weren't expecting a girl hiding out from something that is unsure. Their band, of course, was called The Casualties of Love.Mojave us a cheapie, five menennials go out into the Mojave Desert for a memorium of their dead friend. However a mysterious strange begins to track them down, one by one.Snowman is what it is, the Abominable Snowman of the Himalyas, a movie I had nightmares on when I was 12 years old. I started a book on it but never finished.I do like Random Act, in which a farmer from South Dakota comes to Washington to claim the body of his daughter and suddenly gets into trouble with a cynical female detective until both of them become targets in the city.
Then I have a trio of stories dealing with my friends in various times of their lives. First up is The Silver Harleys, teenagers forming a band way back in 1970's. The next script was Casualties of Love, now in their 30's and finally Salad Days, same characters but 50-ish. I didn't realize I wrote these three stories to be connected and actually up to a few weeks ago, realized all three are the same stories, just the age is different.
These are the screenplays besides the big three I wrote and whom still have shots at being made.
Well, at least I have a lot of work to do before I decide to quit, of course, you know I'll never quit.
What's left?
There are lesser stories ones I did for money, or hopefully for money. But it never works. Well, maybe sometimes it does. I did write and directed 3 movies and 9 more directed by others.
Now about Burger Zombies...