On Screenplays...

“Battle of the Blue Hairs”
I got this idea while driving down S.E. 39th Avenue in Portland last summer. I saw a Goth-type teenager with her hair dyed blue, waiting at a bus stop. I started thinking about the clients of my mother’s wig shop growing up. They would come in to have their grey hair dyed, and it always seemed to turn out blue.

I started thinking it would be funny to see a movie with Youngster Punkster types in a battle with the older jet set in some kind of turf war. I have been tumbling this story around in my head for a while now, trying to figure out what would give the story enough purpose to produce it. Here’s what I came up with. Initially, the punksters and the oldsters would be at odds [like a granny running over a skateboarder]. As the story unfolds, a real estate developer wants to build some heinous condo conversion building that would destroy the park where the punksters hang out and the oldsters feed the ducks. The punksters and oldsters would unite forces against the evil developers empire. I have hysterical visions of the oldsters riding skateboards and scooters and punksters learning walking cane Tae Kwon Do and souping up the oldsters’ golf carts in a Pimp My Ride style.

I think this would make a great summer feel-good comedy and perhaps unite grandparents with teenagers.

See, I’m not always dark.

[This is funny: My spellchecker doesn’t like the word “punkster,” but it is letting “oldster” slide]