I’m trying to accumulate twenty pitchable script ideas for the new year. I’ve always had three or four within reach, but I’m making a determined effort to pour every ounce of creative strength I have into a long list of ideas. I don’t want toss-away notions. I want twenty ideas that speak to me, that interest me, that I’d love to spend a thousand hours developing. I want to walk into meetings with a stack of cards, each bearing a potential movie.
I’m almost there. Yesterday I spend my dinner break sitting at Groundwork, the brand new coffee joint on Cahuenga and Sunset, a pebble’s throw away from my work. In that hour I came up with Number Eighteen. It involves an odd gentleman named Jacob “Jigsaw” Johnson, soft spoken and carrying a beat-up duffel bag containing well-guarded secrets. It also involves a girl named Tina, age ten, who tags along with him after their initial chance meeting. And it involves an abandoned, shuttered building whose secrets are as deep and as dark as Jacob’s, and where Jacob expects to die.
…ooooh. Spooky.
