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10 Movie Plots One night (it happened to be Thursday, August 7, 2008), I was thinking about movies, and wondering what it takes to write one. The first thing, I realized, is that before you can write a movie, or even a treatment (summary) for a movie, you need a plot. Then I started to wonder, how difficult is it to come up with a viable movie plot? So I decided to try for myself. Before long, I had written 10 different movie plots. Two and a half years later, I came across the file and reread it. These are pretty good, I said to myself, I think I'll share them with my readers. So here they are, 10 interesting movie plots for your reading pleasure. See what you think. All you have to do is use your imagination.
A beautiful, young woman travels to a large Southern city to become a cheerleader for a successful professional football team. She falls in love with the handsome vice-president of the team, but when people connected with the enterprise begin to be murdered (including the star quarterback, who dies under mysterious circumstances), she begins to see that there is a big-money plot to fix the point spread for the upcoming Super Bowl, and that various clues point to her boyfriend as being involved with the plot.
A rugged, iconoclastic outdoors man, who quit law in disgust to live alone in the woods in a small cabin in Oregon, meets and falls in love with a city woman — a journalist who is sent to his area by a large, metropolitan newspaper to report on the upcoming lawsuit between the huge logging company and an environmental organization regarding the logging of large undeveloped parts of the state. At first, the outdoors man ignores and insults the reporter, as she seems to represent everything he left the city to escape, but as she starts to bring him inside information, he begins to see a well-organized plot, involving collusion between the lumber company and the president of the environmental organization to make sure that the trial ends in a certain way. He falls in love with the reporter and with her help, reluctantly gets back into his suit, goes to court, and reveals the real truth.
A beautiful, 30-ish scriptwriter leaves Los Angeles for the smaller town of Santa Teresa, about 100 miles to the north, in order to get her life back in order after a bad romance, and to escape the culture of L.A. so she can work on a script for a new movie uninterrupted. At first, life is wonderful as she goes hiking, makes friends, rides her bike, goes bird watching, and so on, but soon paradise begins to become scary. One day, as she returns to her apartment, she notices that someone has left a package at her front door. It is the beginning of a script, well-written and professional, that seems to be about her! From time to time, she receives updates, and eerily sees that the screenplay is shadowing her real life. One day, the next installment arrives and leaves off just at a point that looks as if she is about to be murdered. She is suspicious of the man next door, who is tall, good-looking, athletic, but very taciturn. But when she goes to the police, the lieutenant scoffs at her suspicions. Eventually, he finds some clues that lead him to believe her, but by that time she is being chased in the nearby mountains by the man, and the lieutenant has to follow them to try to save her. He rescues her, but as they are trying to escape, the man ambushes them and captures the lieutenant. The screenwriter then has to use her mountaineering skills, and her wonderful imagination and knowledge of human nature, to save the lieutenant.
Three young college friends, recently graduated, decide to turn down lucrative jobs to move to a small island in the Caribbean. Why work hard all your life and then retire?, they ask. Why not retire when you are young? However, fun turns to horror when they get a job working on a fishing boat, and begin to suspect that the crusty, old boat owner is really a drug smuggler. Two of the friends die mysteriously and the third fears for his life. When the boat owner is accidentally killed in a freak fishing accident, the young man comes across a hidden diary that shows him what the boat owner was really doing. He sees that, in spite of his youth and inexperience, he must carry on the work and complete the mission. In this, he is helped by the boat owner's beautiful niece, who has come from New York City to visit her uncle, and who holds the young man in contempt because of his immature attitude towards work and society.
A forty-five year old dancer from New York, is cynical, burnt-out and tired of life. When the head of the dance company quits, she expects to be appointed as the new Artistic Director as she had been promised for years, but instead, the Board of Directors hires a younger woman who became famous for being a dancing frankfurter on TV. The woman gets mad, quits, and just when she doesn't know what to do with her life, she gets a letter telling her that her old Aunt in a small town in New England has died, and that she has inherited her estate, consisting of a small dance school. She travels there with the intention of taking over the school and teaching. However, when she arrives, she finds a dilapidated building, an office full of overdue bills, a small and untalented group of students, unfriendly townspeople, and a landlord who is more interested in get-rich-quick schemes than in fixing the plumbing. However, day by day, she begins to improve the school, and with the help of a strange, unkempt local bum, she begins to recruit students and to teach. She encounters a variety of people. At first she despairs of her new life, but the bum shows her how to have pride in whatever she does, and she begins to teach. The story progresses towards a final scene in which her students put on a marvelous show, and the townspeople finally accept her. Along the way, she learns a lot about herself and life, each student learns to overcome his or her personal problem, and the bum is revealed to be a professional dancer who quit the stage some years ago after his partner died in an accident that he felt was his fault.
A young man from a family of accomplished athletes in Texas, turns down a lucrative offer from a professional sports team to lead a more spiritual life. He starts teaching yoga in a trendy studio in Los Angeles and develops a large following. He makes videos and writes a book. However, he is somehow unsatisfied with his success, and his family does not understand him at all and holds him in contempt. To search for answers, he travels alone to India to study with an elusive guru. At first, the guru will have nothing to do with him, but the man literally camps out on the guru's doorstep and, eventually, the guru relents. He begins the teaching by forcing the man to perform humiliating and taxing duties, in hopes of discouraging the young man so he will leave. However, the man persists and, eventually, earns the grudging respect of the guru. Along the way, he learns many lessons about life, himself and his values. When the young man has occasion to organize and coach a local soccer team, he learns to integrate his athletic skills and Western competitiveness, with his newly developed spirituality. Finally, the guru, who is dying, offers the young man the chance to stay permanently and take over the ashram. The man agonizes over his decision.
A young, bespectacled woman, recently graduated from an Ivy League college with a degree in literature, goes to work in an old bookstore in New York City because she can't find a better job. The only other person in the store is the owner, an old man who says very little, but seems wise, in a quiet, knowing, mysterious way. When the old man dies suddenly of a stroke, the young woman is called upon to run the store herself until the man's family can arrive to settle the estate. In the meantime, she does her best to keep things going and worries about what will happen to her and how she will find another job. While she is cleaning up, she comes across a series of old scrapbooks, journals and photo albums that were kept by the old man. In them, she begins to read the story of his life. She sees (in flashbacks) that he was an educated man, very handsome (when young): a man who had many adventures. As she reads about (and we see) these episodes from than old man's life, she, in spite of herself, begins to fall in love with him: that is, him as a young man. He was so handsome and confident, that his life of excitement provides a striking contrast to her boring existence as a student of literature and, now, a shopkeeper. Eventually, she reads the entire journal and finds out the secret of why such a man would end up as a book store owner in his old age. The old man's family finally arrives. There is only one relative: a nephew who is handsome, young, well-educated and adventurous, and who happens to be the exact image of his uncle at a young age.
One night, the first mate of a small ship in the Florida Keys gets drunk in a bar and starts bragging about how his captain has found a treasure map and that the next day they are going to find a sunken treasure. The regular patrons know the drunk and they ignore him, but a handsome, young man in the next booth is strangely interested. It happens that, on the way back to the ship, the drunk falls into the water and drowns. The next morning, the captain, and his beautiful young daughter are at a loss. They have been searching for treasure since the girl was young (and the mother died) and their money is completely exhausted. From nowhere, a stranger appears who is looking for work (the young man who overheard the drunk in the bar the previous night). Since he is willing to work for next to nothing and claims to have experience on a ship, they hire him as first mate and sail off to find the treasure. As they progress, it becomes clear that the young man actually knows very little about sailing. They have a number of funny adventures and wacky situations in which they finally learn to work together and respect one another. Eventually, they find the treasure but are chased by modern-day pirates. In an inept, but lucky series of encounters, they finally manage to get rid of the pirates and make it back to shore. Finally the young man admits to the woman that, as she suspected, he didn't really know anything about sailing. He saw her on the dock, fell in love at first site, and took advantage of the situation to get a job on her father's boat. However, by this time, the young woman is in love with him. As they land, she asks him what he really does. He says that he works for the IRS investigative division: the part of the government that makes sure that people who find money and valuable property pay their fair share of taxes.
Two women in a big city run into one another after not having seen each other for years. They are overjoyed to meet again and decide to go to lunch. Over lunch, they start discussing old times and how they met, which we see as one long flashback. They are both 14 years old and living on a farm in the countryside. One girl is the daughter of the farmer, whose wife has died. She is tough, hard working, and very much a tomboy. The other girl has been sent to the farm for the summer by her aunt in Boston, with whom she lives. The aunt believes that the experience will be good for her. This girl is snooty, contemptuous of the rural life, and more interested in fashion magazines than in doing chores. The girls instantly hate one another but are forced to share a room and work together all summer. It happens to be the time when both of them are making the change from girl to young lady and, over the course of the summer, they grow up together, teaching each other about life. The farm girl shows the city girl how to work on a farm, and helps her develop confidence in herself. The city girl shows the farm girl how to fix her hair, use makeup, and dress in a more feminine manner. The city girl argues with the old farmer who finally agrees to buy his daughter a dress and allow her to go to the summer dance. The farm girl has an encounter with a neighboring boy after the dance, and then finds that she is pregnant. The city girl helps her and, in a short time, each girl starts to mature in her own way. The situation is resolved when the farm girl miscarries and the city girl takes care of her and makes sure that the farm girl's father doesn't suspect. At the end of the summer, the girls part reluctantly, fast friends who vow to always stay in touch; but they lose track of one another and do not meet again until that day (at the beginning of the movie) when they run into one another by accident.
A janitor — an engaging, but inept young man — who has always dreamed of being a detective, is cleaning a detective's office one day when the phone rings. It is a rich woman who wants the detective to find her daughter who has been kidnapped for ransom. The young man pretends to be the detective and takes the job. When the rich woman meets him and sees how clumsy he is, she has her doubts, but seeing as he was recommended by the police, she gives him the job. He goes from one bumbling encounter to another, but eventually, after being captured himself, manages to find the daughter. In a series of lucky moves, he is able to free the daughter. However, the abductors now start to chase him and the daughter, and he must do his best to evade them. In the meantime, the rich woman has found out her mistake and has hired the real detective to find both the young man and the daughter, and to bring back the daughter. The detective manages to get captured himself, and the young man, working with the daughter, devises a bizarre but successful scheme to free the detective, capture the criminals and collect the reward. Eventually, all ends well and the young man and the daughter get married. With the reward money, he plans to start his own detective agency. The final scene is the wedding, which takes place in the rich woman's mansion. The young man trips over an electrical cord and falls headfirst into the wedding cake. The cake falls over and lands on the photographer, pinning him to the ground, and knocking his equipment case over, which opens, revealing that he was actually a crook who was stealing some of the valuable wedding presents as well as the mother's jewels from her box in her bedroom upstairs.
© All contents Copyright 2024, Harley Hahn
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