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“Doctor” and “Cruise Ship.” Nothing much there. Seriously? From this you could get anything from something titled Plague Voyage to Love in the Time of Cholera. And “Jockey” and “Restaurant” suggests a restaurant owner or manager discovering that his chef has been cooking up horse meat and the hijinks that ensue when he tries to hide the fact from the health inspector.

Instinctively, my first thought went to that episode of The Twilight Zone where the lousy wanna-be writer summons up the ghost of Shakespeare to help him write a TV script. And my practical mind says that anything Fitzgerald wrote, even if he didn't finish it, is owned by his estate or whatever publishing/movie studio had expressed interest. And personally, I don't know enough about Fitzgerald to do him justice in a script, but I could totally imagine John Mahoney reprising his role as W. P. Mayhew from Barton Fink, but, of course, we don't have the rights to that character. But that got me thinking along the lines of an original character and that led me to think "well, if it was a younger ghost, if it was a more recent death, maybe there's some unfinished business left that our living protagonist has to deal with." You have to clear up those messes before the ending will reveal itself (that's one of the problems I have when it comes to endings, very little experience with a "big win," a satisfying victory to draw upon). So you take care of the real world and the written world will let itself be known. And of course, because it's Fitzgerald, I was immediately imagining a drunk ghost, and realized that Dylan Moran would be amazing in this role. Can you imagine being stuck with THIS GUY? Just an angry spirit that no one can see constantly screaming and bitching into your ear about EVERYTHING. And he totally seems more like a realistically blocked writer, not pining and torturing about how the words won't come, but distracted and just not wanting to do the work. He's realistically and entertainingly stubborn, and a makes for a fun foil. And we haven't really seen him in the "mentor" role yet, that could be interesting.

Maybe our screenwriter found three scripts by F. Scott Fitzgerald: Complete, not copyrighted, and absolutely marvelous. So he posted one of them on The Blacklist and immediately grabbed attention. As usual, the suits asked "what else you got?" He showed the other two screenplays and he got a six figure paycheck, the movies were made and he even got three Academy Awards for Best Original Screenplay. The problem: his agent, manager and studios want more. He's boy wonder of screenplays. And he doesn't know what to do. He hires shadow writers, tries to learn screenwriting, but everything he writes lacks that magic of the screenplays he found. To make things worse a young woman named Zelda knocks at his door. She claims to be F. Scott's great-great-great granddaughter, and have proof that those screenplays were written by his ancestor.

Maybe a rather unknown screenwriter with some money (not millions) hires a ghost writer to write a screenplay and it becomes a huge hit - both with the critics and the audience. So the ghost writer will try to do anything to let the people know who is the real writer behind the screenplay. But of course there are things like the ghost writing contract that could make this writer lose a lot of money. And now that the writer that hired him has money he may even try to minimize the chance that anyone finds out there was a ghostwriter involved and pays a hitman to go after the ghostwriter.

A more modern tech variation: what if our screenwriter finds a USB stick with four or five screenplays, all of them original and great. He decides to register them and pass them as written by him. The real writer appears and is desperate, but he didn't registered them, so bad luck... he has no proof he wrote them. Will he find a way to get back the copyright of his screenplays? Oh, and inspired by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The screenwriter who lost his USB sues the other, and during the trial both screenwriters are asked to write a short story. The court decides who is the original writer because the guy who found the USB has perfect grammar and spelling. The guy who lost it has awful grammar and spelling. The screenplays had awful grammar and spelling, and the guy who found them wasn't careful enough to correct them.

You know, I was doing some idea/character shuffling today and had this thought... what if the screenplays on the USB drive weren't finished... they weren't completed or registered because the original author didn't have the courage to finish them, or didn't want his name associated with them? I have projects where I think "do I actually want to do THIS?" How would i feel if someone stole of one my "worrisome" ideas, followed it to its' conclusion, and got it made? (I should probably point out that the shuffling involved a column for "hot female vampire," but the fact we came up with that together was not what made me think of this issue).

I complete understand that - I also have a couple of unfinished screenplays laying around. Of course there's the "they stole my idea" thing. Have you read about people like "Sophia Stewart" (http://www.snopes.com/politics/business/matrix.asp) who says the Wachowskis stole her screenplay for The Matrix? And similar cases for Cameron's Avatar and other stuff? And Scott mentioned some days ago that they had a great concept but someone beat them with a screenplay? So, people do have similar ideas and concepts. What if your lost USB had some half-baked idea that a couple of months later was featured on a screenplay that got green-lit? Would you think they got your USB? Would you sue them? Would you seek revenge? I'm even thinking that maybe the writer could become paranoid and afraid of showing his work.

Of course, what we're supposed to do is say "fuck it" and write something new, if someone else beats us to the punch. Which we should do anyway, you know? Maybe what happens is that it drives the original writer, who's actually crazy, to finally finish all these other absurd ideas that he has and there's bidding wars to get these projects, and all these nonsensical movies are made off the strength of this first one that was heavily re-done by the original thief.

I'm thinking of mixing a little of "Stranger Than Fiction" or go a little darker like "Death Note".

A mad comic book geek goes back in time in an attempt to stop George Lucas from making Special Editions of the Star Wars and changing the Cantina scene, only to discover if that's what he wants, he has to go back further and make the movies himself. Can stay true to his vision or will he fall victim to the dark side of toy merchandizing?

This sort of connects to the idea I threw out there the other day of the businessman who sees five minutes of Star Wars at an early comic-con and scrambles to make his own before the first flick is released.

That's a nice twist, Alejandro. Reminds me of Season 1-2 of Californication where Mia 'steals' Hank's book and passes it off as her own, then gets published, makes $$, etc.

Well, reading this thread got me to thinking of a storyline that is probably way too 'inside' (Hollywood, that is), but what if 2 screenwriters discover they are working on the exact same story at the exact same time. Killer concept, but they've got to finish the script to get it to market. Dark comedy where they end up trying to kill each other. It's Adaptation meets War of the Roses.

Didn't mean to take your idea. I was more thinking along the lines of someone with a trunk full of scripts traveling back in time to make those movies. This guy *knows* that the movies are sure fire hits, but soon comes to realize that executives/etc... back in the day are just as "mercurial" as those today. More based off the real life thing a few years ago where someone sent in cassette copies of classic million seller albums as demo tapes to record companies, only to be rejected by a&r guys who also didn't recognize the music. The comic book geek twist was just to set some kind of motive. i.e. a guy who's so immersed in that world and the purity of that world, that he'd do *anything* to set things right again.

I love Californication. Guess I was inspired by the Mia subplot.

Also to keep Laptinek instead of Jedi Rocks and avoid Jar-Jar from being incorporated to the new trilogy.

I wasn't saying that you were or you were trying to, I just thought it was interesting that another road led back to that concept. That's happened one or two more times already to me this month, like there's a common underlying theme going on with these prompts that we're just starting to scratch the surface of. The demo tape thing reminds me of... well first, it reminds me of a story where a screenwriter sent "Casablanca" to all these readers to test them and a) no one liked it and b) no one recognized it. But it also reminds me of an article I read about this king of the bootlegger, who made the most famous and just the BEST bootlegs of concerts, he hid the equipment in his wheelchair and found the right spot, and there's this whole archive of "you had to be there" culture that got spread out and shared WAY before the internet made it possible, and now the dude started to destroy his own tapes, and this amazing vicarious experience is disappearing.

Maybe two competing movies about an asteroid approaching Earth?