When during the 1896 depression a na?ve student learns he must have money to marry his girl he goes to Australia where he suffers emotional scars that affect his later decisions as the 31st US president.

First of all, please don’t hide the game ball. ? Logline readers don’t like to be left guessing, googling to find out who the 31st ?U.S. President was.

Just put the ball in play: ?the story is a biopic based about the years Herbert Hoover, future U.S. President, worked in Australia. ?That’s the hook.

So what is the plot? ?Is it about Hoover venturing to Australia to establish himself in the world so he can afford to marry?

If it’s how some vaguely defined “emotional scars” in Australia had fatal consequences ?during his Presidency 3 decades later — well that’s not exactly a plot. ?For one thing, it lacks an objective goal. ? It casts Hoover as the passive victim of circumstances rather than as the ?agent of his own fate, for better or worse. In modern cinema,?Protagonists are expected to be proactive in spite of bad things that happen ?to them, in spite of emotional scars they collect.

If the story is about how some bad experiences in Australia foreshadowed his failures as President, does it also dramatize how these experiences also foreshadowed his magnificent success with food administration during World War 1? ?Foreshadowed his heroic food relief efforts during and ?after World War 1? Foreshadowed his humanitarian relief work during the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927?

Hoover is a worthy character for a story, one with a plot trajectory worth of Greek tragedy. But IMHO the man and his bio has a more complicated etiology than emotional scars suffered in Australia.