Title: Clean Getaway / To the Cleaners / Coming Clean / Squeaky Clean
26 words / Black crime comedy
Mike PedleySingularity
An arrogant crime scene cleaner and her impressionable partner/best friend begin a messy murder spree to provide the work that’ll save their business from going under.
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I can see the absurbity of your story. You’d need flawless execution to make a film about two serial killers funny.
I can think of two films of this genre: Delicatessen (a cannibal butcher) and In Bruge (two professional hit men).
As for the logline, it’s well written and most of the elements are there. What missing is the antagonist. You mentioned in your comments that the impressionable partner would become the antagonist later on. You want to incorporate this item into the logline. Without it, the story has no conflict, and when there is no conflict there is no story.
You may say something like:
‘An arrogant crime scene cleaner and her impressionable partner and best friend go on a messy murder spree to provide the work that’ll save their business from going under until the partner [make a decision that threatens their operation].
Mike:
Thanks for the link to the murder-com article. Now that I’ve had time to think it over — and tweak my daily dosage of Zoloft — I can see comedic possibilities.
However, I would like to suggest that while the easy-to-manipulate side kick may be necessary for the plot, it’s not needed for the logline. More important — good point Vivien — is the need to include the antagonist.
So maybe something like:
A steep decline in murders drives a crime scene cleaner to begin a messy murder spree to stay in business while staying one step ahead of the homicide detective investigating the crime scenes.
(33 words)
fwiw
From a logline perspective, I think it is all there.
I’m perplexed. Who are their clients? Who is going to pay them to clean up the crime messes they themselves create?
Whoever owns the property or a relative of the deceased. This is influenced by a friend who has recently spent a lot of money on a specialist cleaning company to come in and clean up a fairly horrific situation when her stepfather passed away.
Still perplexed. What’s so funny about the pre-meditated murder of innocent people?
Ditto about “arrogant” as a character flaw congruent with either her profession or the plot. Cold-hearted–yes. Arrogant conveys to me the connotation that she considers her work beneath her talents (and ego), that she aspires to a more worthy profession; hence, her objective goal would be to do more than just be able to pay the bills.
fwiw.
I went with arrogant because she believes they won’t get caught since they spend a lot of time around crime scenes. Part of the humour in the first act would be them solving the cause of death when they go clean up the decomp left behind.
The victims they choose would be the primary source of conflict between the two partners. It would begin with people who aren’t innocent but gradually shifts as the arrogant cleaner gets more greedy and power crazy. The first half of the film would focus more on the arrogant one as she pushes them forward but the second half would focus on the impressionable one as she realises her friend is losing it and wants out. I toyed with specifying their victims weren’t innocent but trying to explain the method with which they select people and how that changes was verging on an exposition dump.
As for genre, I think there have been a variety of comedies about pre-meditated murder and I went with this genre to almost highlight the absurdity that you couldn’t get away with in a drama. Most crime comedies focus on the detective type character, so I appreciate that might prove difficult for the audience to accept but that’s why I want the MPR to turn the arrogant one into the antagonist and pull the impressionable one forward as the protagonist. Ultimately, the murderer still loses but I think it’s more likely I’ll get the audience on board with an unlikeable hero if it’s a comedy.
Maybe this logline needs an MPR? Thoughts?
Appreciate your comments as always.
Still not sold on the genre. Scanned my (diminished) memory bank for a comedy film or series with a similar premise (intentional murder of innocents), came up blank. Can you name 2 or 3?
I suggest it might be more marketable tagged as a crime drama with moments of absurd, dark comedy. (The script I’m writing based upon my experiences working in the LAPD in Hollywood has many moments of insanely absurd, dark comedy, because those moments actually happened. But I’m tagging it as a crime drama.)
My final 2.5 cents on that point.
And still not sold on the adjective “arrogant”. Come to think about it, her actions, her objective goal speak volumes about her character; any adjective would be superfluous. She’s cold-hearted, ruthless, cynical — a psychopath.
My final 2.5 cents on that point.
P.S. My multiple notes are a sign that I think it’s an interesting, marketable premise. But…
You’re probably right that it is more of a drama with moments of dark comedy. Interestingly though, as I was researching films/shows where the protagonist is a murderer (The Voices with Ryan Reynolds, and Barry starring Bill Hader both came up) I found this article which I found quite interesting on the subject: https://www.vulture.com/2018/09/tv-comedies-about-murder-barry-atlanta-search-party-more.html
Dpg, two dark comedy of this nature come to my mind:
– Delicatessen (a cannibal butcher and landlord)
– In Bruge (two ruthless professional hit men)