Thought I’d waste a lot of time today working on something inconsequential.
I’ve had a movie script idea floating around in my head for many years, and finally got around to writing the basic story down into something resembling a complete plot, but can’t come up with a decent title for it, so I thought you guys might be able to help.
It’s set a long time ago, say 400 years, in somewhere that’s sort of like rural France or Italy or somewhere. An elderly inventor, somewhat of a Da Vinci-level genius but without the same access to resources, formulates a plan to build a flying machine, a glider, that, though he doesn’t know it at first, will turn out to be right and will actually work successfully.
Most of his day-job is helping the local Mayor of the town to engineer projects, or assisting the Surgeon with anatomy, or devising mathematics for the Accountants. A general all-purpose scientist-for-hire, but in the 16th Century. All goes well for many years, but then things start to go wrong, projects fail, causing illness and injury, and he gets blamed, even if it’s not his fault.
Blah blah blah, he gets ostracised, yadda yadda yadda, builds his glider, etc etc etc, saves someone’s life and regains their trust, and so on and so on.
It’s a gentle story, not one with a lot of conflict or excitement, and I picture it as being a very simple tale about a man’s relationship to his neighbours, recognising the difference between a friend and an employer, that kind of thing.
But I can’t come up with a good title. The two major ideas in the story are his poor treatment and increasing distrust, and the building of the glider. I’ve tried to come up with a pithy title involving the words “flight” or “sky” or “wings” and none of them really describe both themes adequately, or at all, so I’m just going round in circles.
The best I have so far are “Dreams of Flight” which is awful, and “Father of Invention” which maybe implies he’s actually Leonardo Da Vinci though he really isn’t. Even though he kind of is.
Any ideas?
