Hasbeen Hotel
Retired movie people living in a once-grand hotel, fight the wrecking ball to save their home and earn a new lease on life.
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While you have given us a situation, You haven’t told us who the lead character is. “Retired movie people” is vague.
Also, a wrecking ball” isn’t a good “Bad guy” you should tell us who is behind the wrecking ball.
However, this idea has potential. What if the lead was an old time hero of westerns?
“A retired movie cowboy must put his spurs on one last time to save his beloved hotel when a greedy land developer conspires with the city council to tear it down.”
Hope that helped, good luck with this
We have struggled with this from the beginning. It’s an ensemble piece, so there’s not a specific lead character, although I suppose we could just pick one of the stronger characters as the protagonist. The “bad guy” wins the hotel.in a backroom Vegas poker game and thinks it solves all of his many financial problems, only to find out it’s now run-down and filled with old movie people. His idea is to bulldoze it and turn the property in Hollywood into a parking lot, We never found a way to distill that into a single sentence. I’m sure open to suggestions, though.
The script got a favorable comment from Hallmark Hall of Fame, although it doesn’t fit their current programming profile.
“When their beloved hotel is won in a poker game to a greedy land owner, a group of former movie stars must become heroes once again to save their home.”
Good polish by Richeiv.
But I do have a concern about the original premise:
If the antagonist is that greedy, and that burdened with money problems, why would he settle for converting the property to a paltry parking lot?
It seems to me he must want to leverage the property for maximum return–like exclusive high rise apartments or condos. Suppose the hotel sits on a lot that has suddenly become the hottest property in a re-gentrified neighborhood, the last big lot of its size for real estate development in town.
Honestly, I think I’d see this movie, but the logline is not really working terribly well.
Even in an ensemble piece, there is usually one character whose journey signifies both the start and the end of the story. (I was watching Pulp Fiction last night – and you’d be hard pressed to argue that the film, by the second half, hasn’t become Jules’ story). If you’ve already written this script, you’re writing this logline to pitch to producers to get it made – and they’re gonna want to know who the audience is meant to connect with. I’d say clarify who the protagonist of the story is.
“Movie people” means nothing. Are they actors? The Hollywood elite? Movie people could mean fictional characters for all the audience knows.
Agreed that wrecking ball, for all it stands for, is not a very good antagonist. Who is behind the wrecking ball.
Also “earn a new lease on life” tells us the inner journey the residents will experience; this can be more succinctly implied by assigning an adjective to the protagonist when you describe him/her that gives us the character’s flaw – and thereby, the journey they will go on in the film to either overcome or succumb to that flaw.
I don’t love the title but I also don’t hate it. Could you punch it up?
Great work so far!
>>Even in an ensemble piece, there is usually one character whose journey signifies both the start and the end of the story
Great point by nicholasandrewhalls. The Iliad, written a few thousand years before I was born, has a cast of thousands. But Aristotle in The Poetics sings its praises because the sprawling epic focuses on one character above all, Achilles. His story thread provides the unity of the plot.
“With their grand hotel?s final curtain call looming, an ensemble of forgotten actors band together against a greedy producer in a show stopping performance.”