I woke up looking for a MacGuffin

Cafe Society
1

I’ve mentioned the ‘title sequence’ I want to film for my demo reel. And I’ve mentioned that I think there’s a story in it and that I’d like to write a full-length film to go with it.

I went to bed early last night. I woke up a bit after 4:00, which, because of the time change, was actually a bit after 3:00. I think I was having a dream about filming. So I’ve got this guy. He’s driving his car along an alpine road while the titles play. He gets to a gravel car park and gets out, and is promptly funned down. Up on the mountain, a red-headed woman with a high-power rifle picks up her brass and walks away. Not bad, I think, for the title sequence; but what about the rest of the story?

I’d thought about calling it The Girl With The Gun. Who’s the guy? Why was he killed? Who’s the girl? Was she hired to kill him (she certainly looks professional)? Or is she an amateur motivated by vengeance?

The guy could be a mobster. Perhaps he’s stolen the MacGuffin, so his rivals hit him hoping to get it back. Only if he has it on his person, it makes no sense to shoot him from so far away that it can’t be retrieved. The police will surely find it before anyone can get it surreptitiously. And the car would probably be given at least a cursory glance, so it would have to be well hidden in it. Too sloppy.

Or maybe the guy is an agent. He’s been found out, so the Bad Guys (spies or a terrorist cell) kill him. Hey, it worked in Dr. No. Then there could be another agent sent out re-infiltrate the group. But that’s too much like Dr. No. Hm.

What kind of film would it be, anyway? I like spy films. A caper film would be fun, too. Hitchcock made several films around mistaken identity. A nice little suspense film, then? And what’s the MacGuffin? Top Secret documents (spy film)? Jewels (caper)? The car he was driving? Let me think… The guy is killed. The car turns up on a used-car lot. Someone buys it. Who? An innocent person who is hounded because the Bad Guys think s/he’s someone else? The girl with the gun, who buys it as a trophy or because she’s connected to it somehow?

Back around 1985 I had an idea for a caper film. I wanted to film it so that it looked like it was made in the '50s, only it was present day. That is, I wanted the same kinds of shots and similar colours to those classic films. Would that even work nowadays? Modern films seem to be all close-ups and fast editing. Would audiences be able to just sit and watch a story? Well, the ‘look’ will sort itself out. Only I need to come up with a story first.

See, the thing is that I think in sequences. I’ll get images in my head that I’d like to see on film, but no story to go along with them. And even if I could come up with a story, it would have to be written such that I could afford to film it. That’s one of the reasons I like the ‘classic look’. The fewer set-ups and S/FX, the cheaper it is to make. (OTOH, speaking of S/FX, we’ve been thinking about getting a green screen. A process shot of people driving would add to the classic look.)

And so I woke up looking for a MacGuffin. Once I find it I can build a story round it.

But there’s still the current film to finish first…

2

Maybe the guy who was shot has stolen some sort of supervirus from the military. She shoots him at a distance because she fears he has caught the virus somehow. She realizes after the car is towed and sold that he hadn’t, but that he had hidden the virus in the car, which was sold to the chump, and now everyone is after the car.

3

Not bad! And I get a Hitchcockian feel from it – a bit of grim playfulness.

4

It was a suicide. The woman was his wife. They arranged his death to hide the Great Secret from the Mafia.

5

No, no, I got it.

After the credits, the new (blonde) James Bond walks into MI5 Headquarters. People give him funny looks. M asks him if he has been shot recently. Bond says no.

Turns out the girl thought she was shooting Bond. The guy had the same car, same road. Bond was in bed with someone that day and did not take his usual drive.

6

As a big fan of the James Bond movies (especially the Connery ones) I need to be careful about that. The drive on the mountain road was inspired by The Italian Job (a great caper movie, and funny), but it also recalls Goldfinger – especially when you throw in a girl with a rifle. I must be careful that my inspiration does not turn into plagiarism.

So one thing I’d really like to avoid (though I did think of it) is a Secret Government Organisation. Actually, I’d like to focus on the characters instead of the organisations because the latter might require expensive locations and props. By focusing on characters I think the story will be better, and I’d just need a few people and some easy-to-get (read: cheap) locations.

7

I’d like to see more details about this brass that the gal has. Does she use it to fun the guy down, or is it something she set aside while funning the guy down and then picks up when she’s done?

8

How about your scene, except as she starts to pick up her brass, she gets sees an identical car coming up the mountain road, blinker on to turn into the same overlook. She scrambles to reload, emotion in her face for the first time. Fear, anger, confusion, resolve, as she raises the rifle for the second shot.

9

Oh and the MacGuffin is a weapon prototype.

10

He’s referring to the brass cartridge ejected from the rifle.

Whenever someone mentions a MacGuffin, I always think of The Case in Ronin. Not only is The Case a MacGuffin for the plot of the film, it is also a MacGuffin within the story itself, a fact the DeNiro character (symbolically named “Sam”) makes clear early on by repeatedly asking about the contents of The Case and at the end of the film answering Vincent’s question of what the bait was with, “I don’t remember.” (Rule 2). I guess a lot people get really irritated with not being told or shown what was in the case, but it’s clear that David Mamet (under the pseudonym “Richard Weisz”–yuck yuck) was playing with the conventions of a spy thriller in his inimitable, self-referential way. (I love the scene where he’s talking to the retired spy about the story of the 47 ronin and how he keeps deflecting questions of his identity and purpose.)

Anyway, back to your problem; perhaps you could make the MacGuffin the case itself, with whatever is inside being a diversion. You could make the thing inside a statuette of a plaster falcon.

Stranger

11

I like the 2nd car. (Now where am I going to find an identical MGB?) Only I’ve been thinking about it and I think that it could play like this:
[ul][li]Close-up of the girl sighting along the gun.[/li][li]Close up of the spent casing with its distinctive longitudinal striations as she picks it up.[/li][li]Low angle on her feet as she walks away from the camera into the forest.[/li][li]Pan from there or a higher angle from the woman walking into the forest to the car park down below. The car and the body are there. An identical car, only with the hood up, pulls up near it.[/li][li]Cut to an interior of the duplicate car, looking through the windscreen. We see the first car and the body. The driver reverses.[/li][li]High shot (from shooter’s vantage point) of the duplicate car speeding away from the scene.[/ul][/li]The woman doesn’t find out she’s made a mistake until she gets called on the carpet by her boss.

12

It doesn’t have to be identical. Maybe she was just told MGB. She is told by her boss he meant the red MGB, not the green one. Hilarity ensues.

13

Hmm…how about a twist on a classic angle? That angle being the standard “I’ve left documents with an agent that will ensure your downfall. If I do not return safely, those documents will be published.”

The guy she shoots is the agent–a lawyer, perhaps, or a reporter–thinking he’ll have the documents on his person. With the documents out of the way, her boss is free to axe his nemesis. Unfortunately for her, the agent has made arrangements of his own, and now she’s forced to engage in a scramble to find out who really has the documents and how to retrieve them. It could be played as a thriller, or you could take a comedy of errors tack with it.