In order to save his life, a grief-stricken mother must simultaneously rely upon and fight the medical system that caused her son’s brain injury, all the while learning to let go of the boy he would have been and accept the boy he has become.

Ooooohhh.. getting juicier with every post!

Seriously though. I'm immensely grateful for your feedback @dpg and @gilgamesh. Thank you very much. You're really helping me get clear within my process and on what matters to the story and the audience.

L.

After hospital malpractice leaves her only son permanently brain-injured, an alcoholic mother struggles with her addiction as she tries to come to terms with her son's grim prognosis.

>>> a nice juicy piece of irony

I love stories that tease out and build to an ironical denouement. It takes skill and insight to pull it off convincingly.

But I don't suggest working it into the logline because you are, in effect, giving away the ending, the solution to the dramatic problem.

>>> a nice juicy piece of irony

I love stories that tease out and build to an ironical denouement. It takes skill and insight to pull it off convincingly.

But I don't suggest working it into the logline because you are, in effect, giving away the ending, the solution to the dramatic problem.

My opinion is that so many films have been made about parents who have to cope with tragedies (death or disability) that afflict their children, that it's a given the parents will have to weather their own emotional hurricane in coping with all the consequences. And it's something any normal adult, all parents, can immediately identify with and empathize.

Addiction, however, is a good complication and character flaw (for dramatic purposes). So I am inclined to omit "anger" -- save it for the story, for the pitch -- and focus on addiction in the logline.

Loglines are skeletons of the concept -- not fleshed out bodies. Ideally in 30 words or less. Never more than 40. The madness of the method.

fwiw.

My opinion is that so many films have been made about parents who have to cope with tragedies (death or disability) that afflict their children, that it's a given the parents will have to weather their own emotional hurricane in coping with all the consequences. And it's something any normal adult, all parents, can immediately identify with and empathize.

Addiction, however, is a good complication and character flaw (for dramatic purposes). So I am inclined to omit "anger" -- save it for the story, for the pitch -- and focus on addiction in the logline.

Loglines are skeletons of the concept -- not fleshed out bodies. Ideally in 30 words or less. Never more than 40. The madness of the method.

fwiw.

Perhaps better (or more accurate) still:

"After hospital negligence leaves her son profoundly brain-injured, a mother consumed by anger risks alienating him as she struggles to let go of the boy he might have been and accept the boy he has become."

Perhaps better (and more accurate) still:

"After hospital negligence leaves her son profoundly brain-injured, a mother consumed by anger risks alienating him as she struggles to let go of the boy he might have been and accept the boy he has become."

Super. Thanks again. So, if I were to say something more like..

"After hospital negligence leaves her son profoundly brain-injured, a mother consumed by anger and battling addiction struggles to let go of the boy he might have been and accept the boy he has become."

..would that be more along the lines of what you're suggesting works better? I'm finding it difficult to use the "botched medical procedure" bit because it doesn't accurately represent what happened, which was that medication was given to him that should not have been. It was a lack of due diligence on their part, however I hear your point around that.

Also.. there is a nice juicy piece of irony in here in that he is the one that ultimately becomes her teacher.. demonstrating how to live in the present vs. cling to the past and I'm still dying to work that into the logline somehow, but don't see how that's possible without weighing it down with too many words.

p.s. I love your question re: "..demons that require CGI to manifest on the screen". You provoke great thought and make me realize how lazy we (as in I) can be with the use of language.