This is hilarious (in spite of the circumstances surrounding it). I'm thinking what if her ex-boyfriend isn't her ex, he's current? This guy didn't know the girl. The sky was falling and they were in a bar falling down drunk in tandem, so there was a what the hell moment and the cruel dawn doesn't let either of them escape. Obviously her boyfriend is concerned about his girlfriend and is going to great lengths to try and get in touch with her, see her, reach her and she's a sitting uneasy duck. What if the roommate is HIS ex. Now that's awkward. And their contained rom-com could turn into a nightmare. And yes, they are getting married. And when they try and divorce, the city goes on lock down. Again. Will they or won't they?

The idea of a contained rom-com is brilliant. Whoever does this first will make a killing...

Oh sweet jeebus, this is awesome. I've got entirely too many thoughts for this. All of which are dirty.

The moment I saw this story, I had the same thought. Contained rom-com. Using a bombing as a background is pretty grim for a rom-com though, so I was thinking that could be changed to an impending storm. The city's on curfew because a hurricane is brewing in the gulf. Public transporation is shut down, his car is miles away. He tries to walk, barely gets a few feet down the street before the wind knocks him down. So the guy and his one night stand spend the night hanging out with the other residents of the apartment building, who think he's the girl's long-distance boyfriend whom they've never seen but she talks about all the time. After some prodding the guy agrees to play along. But it turns out, the neighbors all think the long distance boyfriend is realy a jerk - they see how unhappy the girl is after she gets a phone call from him and they've overheard long distance fights. So they pull the guy aside all night long to read him the riot act. Now this guy has a mission - to convince this girl she deserves better than the guy he's pretending to be. (Who may bear an uncomfortable resemblance to the guy he really is, sometimes.) He tells the girl he doesn't blame her for cheating on her long distance boyfriend. The girl admits the boyfriend dumped her - that's why she was out looking for a one night stand. "Good! You should be glad I dumped you. I mean, he dumped you. You deserve better than me. I mean him. Actually, you deserve better than me, too." Oh shoot. Now I'm going to have to write this.

YES. There is so much fun to be had with this idea. ...

There already is a script floating with this exact premise. If I remember correctly it was called "Two Night Stand" and was quite good. I gave it a "recommend" when it came across my desk to coverage on. Actually I just did a look on IMDB and it has already been filmed. It comes out later this year.

Your username is so very appropriate to this post! Oh well. I have other things to write anyway.

SandbaggerOne: You're right. Here's the summary from IMDB: "After an extremely regrettable one night stand, two strangers wake up to find themselves snowed in after sleeping through a blizzard that put all of Manhattan on ice. They're now trapped together in a tiny apartment, forced to get to know each other way more than any one night stand should." Listed as a romantic comedy. So my initial instincts may have been right in the first place: Thriller!

As much as my instincts usually run to comedy, my reaction to this is "small, intimate, claustrophic indie drama", in the style of Jean-Paul Sartre's Huis Clos. Two people (not necessarily a heterosexual couple, either) have a one night stand. Some external circumstance justifies keeping them locked in the house the next day. It may be just the two of them or there may be as many as two roommates. Just put those flawed human beings in a touch situation, keep the stakes up, and see what happens. My starting point would be to ask: who would Sartre's 1944 French characters be in the America of today? And then: what is the truth of these characters, these relationships, this situation? I realize that's a process, not a premise, but it's what I've got for the moment. The trick would be to make the stakes high enough and come up with enough business.

Hi, Scott. Thanks for the s.o. above. I'm less a rom-com fan than a writing fan -- good writing regardless of genre, although horror might stretch my limits. In any case, I think the locked-down concept has interesting possibilities. The reaction to my throw-away comment under Dan's essay took me by surprise: 3,200 likes and the general consensus that I had "won the Internet"? Just goes to show that when we throw things up against the wall -- whether screenplays or tossed-off blog comments -- we never really know what will stick. Cool blog. If you ever hear of anyone writing a script based on Dan's booty-call, let me know. I'm good for at least two tickets. Blessings.