This is
a rough idea for a film script that would have to be
written by a professional Writer because I'm not one. The
story would be based on facts mixed with fiction because
real life has many lame moments. It would also have to be
done in a humorous way so it wouldn't become a melodrama.
Lots of old documentary films could also be used to give
the film the look and feel of those times.
Here's the story in a nutshell... Karma has not prepared
a conventional life for the hero. But that Karma was
created for him by his Higher Self. So, the life he's had
was a life he's designed himself. There are some reasons
for that but those won't be discussed here. Though the
Higher Self is immortal, the hero is as weak and mortal
as any other human being, and his soul reincarnates
through a genetic transfer of memory that does not
manifest itself in full with every birth.
The story begins with a free flight between the stars in
space until the blue planet Earth appears below in a
distance. At that instant, the viewer is beamed down to
the planet at a great speed like as if it was done with a
close up down to a street view level on Google Earth. Now
comes the next scene... A crying newborn baby wrapped in
white cloth is shown and the scene fades out. Now, it
fades in again and we are in 1961 where we see the hero
as a young boy sitting before a TV set watching news of Yuri
Gagarin
traveling into space. After that, we move on to the next
scene. Its 1963 now. Our hero is a bit older and hears
the news of President
Kennedy's
assassination through a school PA system in his classroom.
When he returns home, he watches TV again and witnesses
the assassination of Lee
Harvey Oswald
live on TV. The scene fades out and fades in again with
the hero watching the first The Beatles performance on
the Ed
Sullivan Show
in 1964. After that, the hero witnesses the British
Invasion of
other bands such as The Rolling Stones. He grows long
hair, wears high heal Beatle boots, wears rings like
Ringo Star and dresses in Mod Fashions from England. He
experiences some rejection and is made to get a hair cut
by the school Principle.
Next, we see him as a young hippie. He gets introduced to
psychedelic drugs and gets a hippie name after taking LSD
with an older hippie friend that he met in Chicago's Old
Town. After that, he gets involved in the 1960s
peace movement (Anti-Vietnam War movement, Human
Rights Movement), protests with scenes of draft card
burnings and hitchhikes with his friend down Highway 66
to Summer of
Love in San
Francisco in 1967. In the following scene, we find
ourselves in late 1969, just before the hero's eighteenth
birthday and after the Woodstock concert. The hero is at
home and explains the draft situation to his Parents and
tells them about his school friends that were drafted and
died in Vietnam. He leaves Chicago for Montreal, Canada
where he stays a few weeks. Problems with finding a place
to live and getting a residence permit drive him to look
for refuge elsewhere. So, he calls his Mother in Chicago,
explains the problems and convinces her to fund a trip to
the Old Continent for him. Shortly after that, he's in
the middle of the Atlantic on a transatlantic Ocean liner
heading for London, England. He's not met with open arms
in London and witnesses a Police raid on a pot party that
he is about to attend. He leaves London for Copenhagen in
Denmark, which was the bicycle capital of Europe at that
time. But he doesn't stay there long either. In the next
scene, he catches a cargo ship to Rotterdam in Holland.
Goes through a fierce storm on the North Sea. In
Rotterdam, he becomes a street musician and rents a
sleeping room from a Dutch hippie in a canal houseboat.
He visits coffeeshops, smokes hash, meets a girl, makes
love and gives a concert in a hippie coffee house with
songs he's written for guitar and harmonica. He then
leaves Rotterdam and takes a train to Amsterdam where
John Lennon & Yoko Ono are holding a "Love-In"
in 1969 (scenes of hippies on Dam Square and in parks;
coffee shops etc. from documentary films). He hangs out
with other hippies on the Dam Square and sleeps in
Vondelpark for a few days before finding shelter on
another houseboat. Then, due to the high cost of living
in Holland and lots of other hippies playing music on
streets, he finds it difficult to get by. So he decides
to head for the Polish mountains on the Czech boarder
where his Mother has arranged a place for him to stay
with her friends. He's eighteen now and starts drinking a
lot of beer and vodka with exchange students he met in a
mountain resort town. Later he's invited by his friends
to play harmonica with their blues band at a coffee house
concert that they've organized and gets a standing
ovation. In the next scene, he goes to Prague and brushes
shoulders with other American hippie students. One of
those students resembled young President Clinton, who was
studding there at that time.
After living in Europe for about a year, he gets a ticket
in the mail from his Mom for an Ocean liner from Gdynia,
Poland to Montreal. He returns to Chicago in 1971, finds
a retail sales job in a downtown hotel across the street
from City Hall. He's in conflict with the law because of
his unresolved draft situation but he's lucky not to be
questioned about it. Attitudes about the war have changed
from those he remembered before he left the country. He
also comes out of the closet and gets involved in Chicago's
vibrant gay scene. Election of President Carter in 1977
changes everything. The end of the Vietnam War follows
and President Carter gives amnesty to draft evaders. The
hippie hero registers for selective service right after
that. In his job as a cigar stand Manager, his everyday
costumers are the City's Mayer, Senators, Judges, FBI
agents, journalists, mafia bosses and other prominent
city figures. Many of those persons appear to be fighting
with each other in the media when he watches TV at home
after work. But to his surprise, in real life they act
like friends when they hang around his cigar stand, read
newspapers and smoke Cuban cigars that he sells them from
under the counter. But later, the hotel gets sold and
demolished to make room for a new high-rise office
building. So, he finds a better job and rents a studio
apartment with a beautiful view of Lake Michigan on Lake
Shore Drive. He spends time biking, going to Chicago Film
Festivals and rubbing shoulders with beautiful people,
models and Playboy Bunnies on Oak Street Beach and on
Michigan Avenue.
The hero is now in his early thirties and finds himself
unemployed during the late 1970s recession. Then he is
offered an opportunity to return to Europe to save a
difficult family situation (too much to explain about
here..) in mid 1980s. There, he witnesses the underground
Solidarity
Movement in
Poland and fall of the Berlin
Wall. The
hero is now a middle age man in his forties when he meets
a young straight student in whom he recognizes someone he
knew in a past life (a flashback to ancient India).
Together, they start talking about Yoga, which the hero's
been practicing since the late 1960s. They get others
interested in the Yoga and are some of the first to
manage to register a none Christian religion in
predominantly Catholic Poland. After that, they are faced
with intolerance and rejection from Catholics, bad Press
coverage, intrigues by clandestine foreign agents, Police
monitoring, attempts to derail the group and other things.
The group is struggling for survival, holds public
lectures and meetings in a hostile environment. The bad
Press leads to a decline of interest in the group. That
in turn leads the hero and his friend to decide on
closing the group. Now the hero realizes that religions
don't unite people but divide them. From now on, he
looses interest in religion and just in time... A New
Millennium brings media reports of mass suicides, child
abuse in the Catholic Church and other problems in other
religions. The film ends on a live TV broadcast of 9/11
attacks that the hero and his friend witness on CNN.
Suddenly, during that live broadcast the hero's TV goes
out with a small bang shortly after the last plane hits
the WT building. The film ends on a close up of the TV's
black screen. Final credits follow that scene on a black
background.
The movie would have to be filmed in several countries on
two continents. It should have lots of music of the era
because there was great music through those four decades.
The hero has original music that he writes and plays
throughout his travels. There would be Mod
Fashions, Austin
Powers style
international espionage scenes (BTW, Mike
Myers was an
actor from Chicago's Second City Theater). The film would
have to be done with humor and perhaps with some Matrix series special effects and
time travel for flashbacks between distant past and
future events, which could be material for other film
scripts. The story would also take us back to ancient
Indo-European times, to India and to a space city on
Earth orbit where the hero and his friend find themselves
again due to radioactive pollution of the planet after a
nuclear war...
It may be difficult to get rights to use many popular
music recordings that accompanied us through those years.
But the Author has his own music that he recorded for a
demo, which could be used in some places instead. Those
recordings are here.
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