Hello all, I'm up against a grant deadline in a week for a few thousand dollars to mount a small opera. I had to change one outline due to the budget size. I could use help on this concept/plot line that I came up with tonight. Be kind, I just wrote it up.. What’s good, what bad, what are the holes in this outline for a chamber music-theatre opera, which mixes, movement, spoken word and opera? If I use no lines from the film are there any legal issues? I also can’t justify why Jack can’t lie under oath, see underlined section. Pardon any grammar or spelling or just plain bad english... Inspired by Elaine May’s Nicky and Mickey The source inspiration.. From Wikipedia When Nicky (Jack Cassavetes) calls Mikey (Peter Falk) yet again to bail him out of trouble—this time a contract on his life for money he stole from his mob boss—Mikey, as always, shows up to help. Overcoming the obstacles of Nicky's paranoia and blind fear, Mikey gets him out of the hotel where he has holed up, and starts to help him plan his escape, but Nicky keeps changing the plan, and a hit man is hot on their trail. As they try to make their escape, the two friends have to confront issues of betrayal, regret, and the value of friendship versus self-preservation. My adapted outline: Jackie and Jack A chamber opera piece. A one act in 45 minutes. A mix of instrumental music, spoken word and opera. Jackie and Jack both work for the mob. Jack stole money from his mob boss - Cadillac Eddie . Before the opera begins, Jack and Jackie are at formal party thrown by Cadillac Eddie. Jack gets freaked when he sees Cadillac Eddie talking to one of his hit men and looking at Jack. Jack flees the party leaving Jackie behind. For several days, Jackie is left alone at her home, with their two children, not knowing where Jack is. When the opera begins, Jackie gets a call from Jack who has been staying at a motel out in suburbs. She meets him at the motel. She finds Jack with a two-day beard wearing the now wrinkled and slept in tuxedo. Jack is an emotional mess. Intoxicated Jack tells her that he believes a hit man ordered by Cadillac Eddie is out to kill him. Jackie assures him that it’s his paranoia and to stay put in the hotel while she makes a call from her cell phone to one of Cadillac Eddie’s men. Jack says “Why can't you make the call in front of me?”. She says it’s too dangerous because you're too freaked out and they might hear you. In her car, she calls one of the men in the mob. We hear Jackie say that she found Jack and he is out of control. She wants to know what to do. We don't hear what is said on the other end. As Jackie listens she smokes a cigarette while an instrumental section plays. She puts out the cigarette and goes back into the motel room. In the room, she tells Jack that Cadillac Eddie is not out to kill him but he wants to talk about the money. She asks him how much money did he steal. Jack tells her it was two million dollars. She is aghast and upset by the situation. “Why did you need that much money?” Jackie asks. Jack says he had been seeing the time come that he had been waiting for years. The police were building a case against Cadillac Eddie for a chain of murders he committed back east. Jack was involved in the murders as an accomplice but not a murderer, however he was witness to Cadillac Eddie killing the men. The police have approached him several times but he has refused to talk. He is sure that when the case gets close to trial he will be subpoenaed and he won’t be able to lie under oath convincingly to protect Cadillac Eddie. He stole the money to form an escape plan. He tells Jackie he did this for their family. Jackie says he really fucked up and he did nothing but jeopardize everything. Jack is frantic and out of control. Jackie convinces him to go to a bar to relax and try to make a plan. While Jack is drinking at a booth, Jackie goes to the bar phone to call Cadillac Eddie. She comes back to the table to tell him that there is no hit on him but they want the money back. Jack tells her that the money is lost from investments he made to make his escape and he only has a hundred thousand left. The investments purchased property, fake identities for him, Jackie and the children, and that he purchased a house in Indonesia, a country which has no extradition treaty with the US. Jackie is upset but retains control. She calls the baby sitter to tell her that Jack nor her won't be back for the night and to take the kids to her mother's house until she hears from her. Jackie and Jack, visit a man named Blake. Blake is troubled that they are both at his place at the same time, since he sees them usually at different times and not together. Jack is now very drunk and sings about his love for both Blake and Jackie. Jack falls asleep on the couch while Blake and Jackie talk about the fact that Jack is in trouble and that Jackie is unsure of how to make things straight and perhaps she must carry through on her orders. “What orders?” asks Blake. Jackie doesn’t answer. She thanks Blake for listening and wakes Jack up to leave. In the streets of the city it begins to rain. In a hysterical and emotional scene both express their love for one another and the anxiety of the trouble about to overtake their lives. Jackie sings that in the end all will be okay. The kids will be fine. Jack screams “Are they after the kids?” Jackie assures him that the babysitter has moved them away from the house to her mother's. Jack wails because he knows what he must do. Jack tells her he must take a flight out that night to Indonesia with the few thousand he has left. He gives her a key of a safety deposit box in a bank that holds tickets and instructions of how she can find him in Indonesia. That she must leave, but not for a few months, once she is convinced, Cadillac Eddie believes has has committed his suicide. the police will discover a dead body in Jack’s car soon. “What are you talking about?” Jackie asks. Jack confesses he killed a stranger that morning and planted him in his car and ran the car off a cliff and and set the car on fire. “What a stupid plan! All these years and you haven’t known how make a credible alibi" she says. "The coroner will easily identify the body as someone else." Jackie sings. Jack sings that the situation has made him irrational and he killed an innocent man for nothing. In a duet - Jackie sings on the phone to Caddilac Eddie that her loyalty is to him and that she will carry out her orders. Jack sings on the phone to a friend to make a reservations to book the next flight to Los Angeles and connect him to Jakarta. When they are both off the phone. Jack realizes he can’t escape his fate. He also knows that that his wife is the hit man that he has been fearing for days. He laughs that perhaps he should cancel the ticket and get her the refund. She says she's sorry and that if she doesn't kill him, that the Cadillac Eddie is going to kill their children. They agree she must carry out her orders. She reveals that Cadillac Eddie has been tracing him for days and working with Jackie to get him killed or he was going to have their children killed, and even if Jack flies to Jakarta Cadillac Eddie has people there. Jack confesses that he always knew his plan was flawed but he couldn’t go let go of his will to live and the life he loved. Now he has put Jackie and their children in great peril. Jackie assures him that Cadillac Eddie has agreed to leave the family alone as long as she carries out her order –Jack must be sacrificed. Exhausted she sits on a park bench while Jack sings about his love for life, for Jackie and rages against the injustices that have brought him to this end. At the end of the song. Jackie faces him and shoots Jack in the chest. He collapses to the ground. She collapses in despair. Curtain
No, this is okay. He is asking for help with his plotline, not a critique of his writing. He's just told us what the plot is (at length), but he hasn't given us the actual written story. If he had put the actual written story or script up, instead of the outline, and asked for feedback, that would have been a Workshop item. That being said, this post is a bit on the long side, which may mean not many folks will respond to it, but it's okay here in Plot Development.
