Mooga (harlem slang for money)
A Harlem orphan must face the federal Government and the world's largest corporations after he mysteriously wakes up on his 18th birthday with $458 Billion to his name.
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IS there a reason it has to be $485 Million? If it is drug money they do move it but not all together. a smaller amount might be more believable. If your are 18 and broke even $5 million is going to have a huge impact
I like the general premise: that money, enough money to enable him to dramatically change his life, suddenly shows up in his bank account. Maybe its drug money deposited in the wrong account. Maybe the orphan takes the money and runs with the drug mob and the Feds in hot pursuit. Or some such.
What I have difficulty swallowing is the amount. $485 billion isn’t believable — unless the genre is fantasy or absurdist, like it’s all happening in a dream, or a parallel universe.
I think the angle you need to take on this is like one you would take if your story was “a kid wakes from a coma to find out he won nearly a billion dollars in a lottery….. what does he do with it?” You have the government after him for some reason, which is fine if you can figure out why, but explore WHAT this person would do with the money based on WHO they are (maybe before they woke up). Does the money change them or make them MORE of who they are? Once you understand your hero’s motivations you can better understand why the bad guys want to take him down and how he would react to that. Definite possibilities there mate. Good luck.
Okay, but unfrozen for what specific purpose? Why would the boy fight to keep money he knows he hasn’t earned, knows isn’t his? Okay, sheer greed. Greed is good for motivation. It can kick start a story.
But for the audience to sympathize with the character all the way through the story, he eventually has to be fighting for something better, more altruistic than mere money. (Look at any heist movie. It’s never about the money and only the money; it’s always about something else more important than the money.)
Why do YOU, Carter, as the reigning god of the world of this story, want this orphan to wake up with $485 billion dollars in his bank account? What is your grand design, your overarching purpose?
Well the good news is, this is a great set-up for a story. An orphan discover he’s the richest man on the planet. It’s just the What’s next that is a bit confusing. Still great start!
Thanks guys, I’m 17 and don’t know much about money. If I need to I could have the government freeze his account and he is fighting to get it UN? frozen.
Carter Breaux:
You might want to research U.S. tax law. The Feds don’t have to try. They can immediately freeze the account and seize the asset if he can’t account for where it came from, prove he acquired it legally. (And the burden is on him to prove it’s legally his, not the government to prove it isn’t.)
My picky point is that one can take dramatic liberties in a movie, but only so far. Unless the genre is out-of-the-normal world fantasy or farce, the premise has to be reasonably grounded in reality to be credible.
Anyway, so what and why the face off with corporations? And what must he do about it?
“After 485 Billion is deposited in his bank account on his 18th birthday, a Harlem Orphan begins giving away the money when a greedy I.R.S. tax auditor comes after him and his newly acquired money.”
This logline attempt still needs work. but the idea would be he realizes the government is going to take the money so be attempts to give away as much as he can before they freeze his accounts.
The government is trying to take the money from him since it isn’t his, though they don’t have any roots to their arguments.
What does “face” the Feds and Corporations mean?
Who wouldn’t love to wake up $485 billion dollars richer. What’s the problem in that?
I don’t have enough to go on for a good logline re-write, elements are there but I don’t understand what “Face the federal Government and the worlds largest corporations” entails.
“After 485 Billion is deposited in his bank account on his 18th birthday, a Harlem Orphan must…”
After that you should be specific about what you mean by face the government. (And the bad guy should have a face. One guy who we can boo)
Anyway, I love the setup!
Hope that helped, good luck with this!