7 Ideas For Movies About Death

[Hal Berlin]

I like numbered lists. In fact, I like anything that has to do with numbers. Every humanist yearns for the precision of the quantitative.

So here's an idea for an ongoing brainstorming challenge. Someone (it'll be me here) asks for 7 ideas. They might be seven ideas for movies, for characters, or for lines of dialog. They might be seven different ways a teenager might be killed in a horror movie. They might be seven different unlikely sequels. Seven different anything.


And anyone -- anyone -- pitches in. But you have to pitch in with seven. No more, and no less.

It's a simple game, but might help kick up some good ideas. So lets see:

Seven Ideas for Movies About Death,

[attatt]

Good idea, but ideas for movies about death is a lot less specific than original ways to be killed. I will have to really put some thought into this one

[Hal Berlin]

Attatt, you're right: this wasn't the easiest way to start. But it was my idea so I should lead. Note, I didn't say seven good ideas! There are some incredible stinkers here. These aren't loglines so much as very rough ideas. Comments welcome.

1. Over the last summer of her life, a terminally ill teenage girl sets out to investigate the afterlife and ends up learning about life instead.

2. One Tuesday afternoon, death stops. Life continues on, no matter what. We follow three characters -- a 92 year old woman, a suicidal teenager, and a contract killer - as they learn to live in this brave new deathless world.

3. For all of his pitiful adolescence, Edgar pined after Leonore, the most popular, most beautiful, most intelligent girl in all of Highland Park. But she didn't even know his name. The summer after graduation, Edgar finally gets his chance with Lenore. But there's one twist: she's dead.

4. After being sentenced to eternal damnation, a battle-hardened NAVY SEAL holds St. Peter Hostage at the Pearl Gates and demands to be let into heaven.

5. "Not if You Were the Last Person on Earth" A super-duper flu kills all of humanity --- except for a hyper-macho frat-president from Chicago and a radical Mexican feminist. Can they overcome their intense dislike for each other to continue the human species?

6. As Ivan, a hotshot agent at the top of his career, slowly dies of an unknown disease, he must confront his own life (Apologies to Tolstoy!)

7. Ed's at the top of his game. He has a killer job as an ad exec, a dazzling fiancee. But then the crosstown bus runs him over, and the Reaper comes to collect his soul. Ed's a smooth talker, and he strikes up a deal with the seriously overworked Reaper: if Alex can convince 10 people to kil themselves within a week, Ed gets to keep living....

[nason]

(1) A womanizing dog trainer to the stars has the best job in the world... Until he has to train Cerebrus for Hades in the afterlife.

No need for the other 6, that was FN lame of me.....

I'll Brainstorm on this later.

[nason]

BTW - Your #7 is killer.

[dave243]

Feb 19, 2010 1:06:29 GMT -5 nason said:

BTW - Your #7 is killer.

Ditto. But I'm also including "pun intended".

[echomusic]

I’ve been laid up with a stomach flu so I’m trying to get caught up on all aspects of the board. Sorry I missed this first time around. Here are my feeble attempts…



1. A mobster is about to rat out his section of the mob for government immunity. The paperwork is signed off on, he’s about to go into the Witness Relocation Program. But in order to fake his death, he finds out the government must actually kill him, and then bring him back to life…maybe…

2. An older man realizes that the end of his life is near, so he begins to prepare for it. Only to meet a strange young girl who offers him immortal life – if he kills someone in return.

3. Two estranged brothers take a road trip after their father’s death to uncover what item he has held in a safety deposit box for over 40 years and that his will declares as his ‘most precious valuable’

4. A mad scientist, who has been excommunicated from various universities, vows to get his revenge against all humanity. They will all suffer with his newest invention – Death Rain! (apparently I’ve got Ed Wood on the brain)

5. An assassin is given a contract by his boss. The boss has never been this fearful of a hit before but demands it be done. The assassin begins to hunt down his contract – a gorgeous and mysterious woman. And she seems unable to be killed. The more the assassin delves into this hit, it turns out that he has been hired to kill Death herself.

6. A zombie becomes self-aware one day, and decides to take it upon himself to help rehabilitate his fellow undead with hopes of improving zombie/human relations.

7. A missing man is found. He claims that he has spent the last two weeks in between levels of reality – in between life and death.

[mscherer]

echomusic,

Really like #1 -- you ought'a run with it and get'er done.

Keep Writing!

[Hal Berlin]

echomusic, #5 fascinates me, because it's sort of an action-movie version of Donne's Death Be Not Proud. (http://www5.bartleby.com/105/72.html)

Who puts the hit on death?

[outofcontext]

Hal Berlin and echo: #5 reminds me of the Somerset Maugham retelling of an Arab parable:

"DEATH SPEAKS: There was a merchant in Bagdad who sent his servant to market to buy provisions and in a little while the servant came back, white and trembling, and said, Master, just now when I was in the marketplace I was jostled by a woman in the crowd and when I turned I saw it was Death that jostled me. She looked at me and made a threatening gesture, now, lend me your horse, and I will ride away from this city and avoid my fate. I will go to Samarra and there Death will not find me. The merchant lent him his horse, and the servant mounted it, and he dug his spurs in its flanks and as fast as the horse could gallop he went. Then the merchant went down to the marketplace and he saw me standing in the crowd and he came to me and said, Why did you make a threatening gesture to my servant when you saw him this morning? That was not a threatening gesture, I said, it was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Bagdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra."

[echomusic]

Feb 23, 2010 18:56:50 GMT -5 Hal Berlin said:

echomusic, #5 fascinates me, because it's sort of an action-movie version of Donne's Death Be Not Proud. (http://www5.bartleby.com/105/72.html)

Who puts the hit on death?

I was thinking the assassin's mob boss -- and the big reveal is that he (the mob boss) is dying of cancer, so the only way to beat it, is to kill Death.

[dwight]

I guess I’ll pull myself away from my own writing to participate in this. Fun stuff!

Here's my 7. Some much more interesting than others. I'm sure a couple of them are probably movies already out there, but i can't remember.


1. A female novelist retells moments of her life in a scattered form, even up to her untimely murder. Because who says, when your life flashes before your eyes it won’t be scattered? – Scattered (hehe title adds to the pitch)

2. A recently deceased husband is given one last chance. He is able to appear to a family member, his infant son. He has information that can save the family he left behind, but he doesn’t know how much time he has left.

3. A depressed suicidal individual gets into a car accident with another who has quite the opposite life. It is not the suicidal guy’s time so they send him back. Only he is accidentally sent back as the other individual. Now having totally different surroundings he gains a reason to live. But when they return to fix their mistake will he be able to let go.

4. A man plagued by demons and horrific visions ends up taking his own life. Suicide means hell for most. But an angel takes special attention to guide him through the afterlife to give him a second fighting chance.

5. Father on his death bed asks his son to pull the plug. His son agrees on terms that he is given a week to show his father the best last week of his life.

6. A raunchy a-hole comedian has his world rocked when he gets booked for gig at a terminally children’s ward. With his new outlook on life and death can he change his life even at the expense of his comedy career?

7. Two devoutly religious sisters are torn apart when one is kidnapped. After a year of captivity she escapes. The two sisters want revenge. They have to weigh their individual beliefs with their lust for vengeance.

[pepperdine]

Damn you, Halberlin for creating such a fascinating activity displacement thread...I love it. ;D

OK. Here are my (nearly) deadly seven:

1. A rich old widower denies his squabbling family their inheritance, preferring to gift it to the upkeep of his Lama, Peter instead. When he dies, the two families go to war over who gets to look after Peter.

2. A lonely little boy frets endlessly over the death of his loving Grandma Patty. His parents are at their wits end until he meets 'Flawless' his teenage guardian angel, who promises to take the boy to see his Grandma for one last visit.

3. Bry, a law abiding office worker, wakes up in a random house to discover he's killed a drug dealer. The junkie that tells him this drags him away certain that the dealer's brother will exact revenge on them both. Soon, Bry begins to wonder which one of them did kill the dealer and is his road-trip partner a murderer?

4. Lisa, 17 is a Reaper. Her Mother and her Mother before her were trophy winners three times running. While Lisa's apprenticeship looms near, she's not feeling the family career vibe. She wants to be a hair dresser.

5. Mrs Brackenridge, 50, lives a quiet life in her suburban, white picket fenced home. Saul the dodgy property developer wants her land so bad - he's willing to kill her for it. Mrs Brackenridge has other plans.

6. A psych clinic patient struggles to keep himself on the edge of sanity in the real world. However his best friend, Azrael, the angel of death keeps killing the people round him.

7. Small time criminal, Booker Stone, finds himself on his last dollar and last nerve. He accidentally kills a one-horse town Sherriff and assumes his identity to give him time to get away. However, the Sherriffs real life is something he'd quite like to hold on too.


Interesting exercise.

Any other topics?

[dwight]

#4 seems like an interesting comedy. I personally love shows/stories dealing with reapers as humans/once humans. Dead Like Me was amazing and I miss it often.