They Call Me Mr Love

A Comedy of the Ant and the Grasshopper

Reg’d © Library of Congress

A serious woman falls in love with a frivolous man and tries against all odds to hang on to her Greek-island hotel.  

Colorful carefree gigolo Toby—the grasshopper—

—comes to a holiday island with elderly but attractive Beverly—and the owner of their little hotel, Friederiki, the ant, sees immediately what he is. 

Proposed cast: Kristin Scott Thomas (Friederiki)

Friederiki, the ant, is serious, struggling, still in black a year after her husband’s death.  She doesn’t approve of Toby—especially when Beverly dies in her sleep and he leaves the arrangements to her. 

No mourning for him—he takes nothing seriously, not even death.  With Beverly’s cards he cleans out her cash accounts—and what the hell writes himself a check in her name.  He’s got to eat!  But he can’t leave the island till the check clears so he parks his money in the hotel safe and lingers. 

We’ll have to count it, says Friederiki.  So they count it together and come up with different sums.  Let’s split the difference, he says.  He takes nothing seriously, not even money.

Proposed cast: Alan Rickman (Alden)

Alden, a developer who has acquired Friederiki's mortgage and is buying up the island,  arrives at the hotel and threatens to foreclose on her unless she makes good her arrears. 

Proposed cast: Silvana Maimone (Marie)

With him is his wife Marie, patient and dutiful but she wants something better out of life, and soon realizes it’s Toby. 

Proposed cast: Catherine Tate (Claudia)

Also with Alden are his niece and her lover Claudia.  (He’ll put a stop to that.)  Claudia, butch and abrasive, is the co-mother of his niece’s daughter Lisa, and snarls at Toby whenever his gaze wanders to one of the women in the party.

Proposed cast: Eve Newton (Lisa)

When Alden tells fourteen-year-old Lisa he wants to take her away from her lesbian parents she accidentally knocks him off a cliff and kills him.

At the desk Toby overhears Alden threaten Friederiki with foreclosure and simply slides him over a stack of cash.  Keep the change.  At this she weeps—and, well, it happens.  Her mourning is over.

But not her problems.  She must go to Athens and get a loan to cover the mortgage, and leaves Toby in charge of the hotel—a risky thing to do but who else is there?

Bad enough the humiliation she suffers trying to get a loan: the only creditor she can find requires that she sleep with him—and then dies in her arms!  Big help.  

But while she’s gone the worst that could happen happens: a family feud, the hotel catches fire, a bulldozer knocks some of it down—and Lisa accidentally kills Alden, which Toby, her family and the villagers conspire to cover up.  (Alden held several mortgages.)

Friederiki comes back to a half-demolished hotel and police all over the place.   Where’s the body?  Well—don’t order the mousaka.

And a seventh character is the tiny no-car island of Hydra. 

The Worst That Could Happen is part of the Toby series:

Pretentious Pictures presents a romantic comedy.

Reg’d © Library of Congress

The "Character Arc"

Shakespeare shows us the difference between tenderness and sentimentality. He is always tender, but never poisons a moment by getting sappy.

Hollywood movies, on the other hand—well. Which accounts for the curious feeling of disappointment we have even before the lights go down.

This is so even (no—especially) in action films. Consider Clint Eastwood, or the current James Bond: the tougher the sloppier.

(To be fair, Dickens is just as schmaltzy. "One must have a heart of stone," Oscar Wilde said, "to read the death of little Nell without laughing.")

One aspect of this questionable taste is the “character arc.” "Character,” to etymologize, is the “mark” or defining quality that distinguishes one from other people. But since the Puritan 1600s it's come to mean “moral strength,” as in “he has no character.”

It's no surprise, then, that the cinema of a country arising out of that tradition insists that characters have an “arc” of moral development. (See Greece versus the Puritans.)

In the other mode—Catholic, for want of a better term, though hardly Christian (Joyce, Nabokov, Fellini, Hitchcock)—mystical rather than moralistic—the self cannot be indicated. There's no character arc there, only a change in circumstance brought about (I've been checking my Aristotle), not by sin but by mistake, or by dumb luck—which some call grace. There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.

Or as Hemingway said, “A writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature.”

"You can say anything about anybody," said Ingmar Bergman, "and it sounds right."

Also by Robert MacLean:
Mortal Coil: A Comedy of Corpses at Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon FR, Amazon DE, AmazonIT, AmazonES;
The President's Palm Reader: A Washington Comedy at Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon FR, Amazon DE, AmazonIT, AmazonES;
and the Toby books: 
Foreign Matter at Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon FR, Amazon DE, AmazonIT, AmazonES and Smashwords; 
Total Moisture at Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon FR, Amazon DE, AmazonIT, AmazonES and Smashwords; 
The Cad at Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon FR, Amazon DE, AmazonIT, AmazonES and Smashwords; and
Will You Please Fuck Off? at Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon FR, Amazon DE, AmazonIT, AmazonES and Smashwords.

ALICE, A Psychological Thriller

"To kill a human being is after all the least injury you can do him."—Henry James 

When a writer kills his editor by letting him back in front of a taxi, no one sees but the editor’s lover and colleague, Alice. But how can she prove it?

She inherits the writer’s book, and him as a lover, and plays a sinister game with him, threatening to electrocute him in her shower: which will win, love or death?

But then, angered by his infidelity, she actually tries to kill him, and fails, and falls into depression. And when he does die in there by accident it’s as if she had done it.

His abandoned girlfriend thinks she did, puts her on antipsychotic drugs that change her grotesquely, holds the “murder” over her head—and kills Alice’s boss.  And frames Alice.

And Alice, to survive, must release that murderer we all have inside.

Book editor Alice takes her lover’s murderer, novelist Bill, to bed, but warns him, when he’s about to shower, to turn off the power: there’s a short in the system.  He could die.  That, she tells him, is how she’s going to kill him.

Proposed cast: Peter Sarsgaard (Bill)

Seduced by this danger Bill moves in with her, their lives spiced by the running joke of his impending death until he does die, all on his own, but just the way she had told him she’d do it—

Proposed cast: Olivia Williams (Beryl)

—and just the way he’d told Beryl she’d do it.  Beryl supports Bill's writing career with her work as a nurse till he leaves her for Alice.  She adores him, and now feels not only vengeful but snubbed, left out of the games these high-toned people play.

Proposed cast: Chris Hemsworth (Kenyon)

Kenyon is Alice's junior associate and protégé at the publishing company, and her lover.  When he quits his job over his inability to get along with Bill she talks him into going back and giving it another try—and when Bill murders him she feels responsible.

Proposed cast: Tom Wilkinson (Hollis)

Senior editor Hollis loves Alice and has seen her through affairs with two younger men.  Blaming herself for Bill's death and on drugs prescribed by Beryl that distort her horribly, she avoids him—until she rebels and Beryl kills him in front of her.

Pretentious Pictures presents a psychological thriller.

Director's statement on EMMA BLUE

I had made a short comedy in London called The Moment of Accepting Life that was invited everywhere and won awards—and on the strength of this began to plan a feature-length romantic comedy.

But every time we got to the stage of financing the project collapsed because I had never directed a feature.

When this happened for the third time I decided to pick up a home-movie camera and shoot ninety minutes of film so witty and compelling that no one would ever doubt I could do something that big.  (If I were doing it today I'd shoot it with a phone.)

So I wrote a script for a minimal shoot that wouldn’t take too much lighting or propose sound problems—and as soon as I started to cast it I was approached by people eager to work for deferred payment—not only superb actors but famous technicians. The DOP on this movie, Giorgos Arvanitis, is one of the best known in Europe—and it shows in the result.

And that's how I shot Emma Blue.

DARK IN HERE, A Quick Comedy

INT. BEDROOM - DAY
A MOTHER and her LOVER are having sex. A NOISE.

INT. HALL - A SECOND LATER
Wrapping her robe on, the MOTHER meets her nine-year old SON coming in from baseball WHACKING his ball into his glove. She kisses him, hugs him and puts him into a closet.

INT. CLOSET - CONTINUOUS
Her SON stands there in the dark. SOUNDS OF SEX O.S.

INT. BEDROOM - MEANWHILE
The MOTHER and her LOVER are doing it. A NOISE. She looks out the window.

INT. HALL - A SECOND LATER
The MOTHER hurries her LOVER into the closet. Her HUSBAND COMES IN. She hugs him.

INT. CLOSET - MEANWHILE
The SON and the LOVER stand there. SOUNDS OF TALK O.S.

SON
Dark in here.
(no answer)
I have a baseball.
(no answer)
Want to buy it?
(no answer; makes to leave)
OK, I’ll ask my dad.

LOVER
(holds him there)
How much?

SON
Two hundred and fifty dollars.

Pause. The Lover takes out his money and counts it.

INT. FRONT HALL - ANOTHER DAY
The SON comes in from baseball with the glove. His MOTHER in her robe kisses him and puts him in the closet.

INT. CLOSET - MOMENTS LATER
The SON stands there. The door OPENS and his MOTHER pushes her LOVER in. They stand there. VOICES O.S.

SON
Dark in here.
(no answer)
I’ve got a glove.
(no answer)
Want to buy it?

LOVER
How much?

SON
Seven hundred and fifty dollars.

Pause. The Lover nods and reaches into his pocket.

INT. FRONT HALL - ANOTHER DAY
The SON is on his way out, his FATHER coming in.

FATHER
Want to throw the ball around?

SON
I sold it. And my glove.

FATHER
You sold them? For how much?

SON
A thousand dollars.

FATHER
That’s not honest! They’re not worth that! I hope you’re going to tell this in your next confession!


INT. CHURCH - ANOTHER DAY
The FATHER comes out of a confessional and nods at his SON, who GOES IN.

INT. CONFESSIONAL - DAY
The SON kneels by the screen.

SON
Dark in here.
 
The PRIEST turns his face into the light: he is the LOVER.

LOVER
Don’t start that shit again. 

Also by Robert MacLean:

Mortal Coil: A Comedy of Corpses at Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon FR, Amazon DE, AmazonIT, AmazonES;

The President's Palm Reader: A Washington Comedy at Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon FR, Amazon DE, AmazonIT, AmazonES;

and the Toby books: 
Foreign Matter at Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon FR, Amazon DE, AmazonIT, AmazonES and Smashwords; 
Total Moisture at Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon FR, Amazon DE, AmazonIT, AmazonES and Smashwords; 
The Cad at Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon FR, Amazon DE, AmazonIT, AmazonES and Smashwords; and
Will You Please Fuck Off? at Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon FR, Amazon DE, AmazonIT, AmazonES and Smashwords.
And they're at Sony, Nook, Kobo, Diesel, iTunes—the whole street.

CHOCOLATE AND CHAMPAGNE, a comedy with a dark center

A Beverly Hills woman wakes up middle-aged and finds her life with a younger man undignified.

Think of...

...only this is her movie, and she gets the younger guy.

Diana, a woman of a certain age, deals with a birthday by throwing out her younger live-in Jim. 

They're right for each other, and she regrets it immediately, but she can't take him back: her daughter Jackie, who idolizes and competes with her, tells her Jim has seduced her, and Diana believes it.

So she makes do with the respectable but empty new life she'd thought she needed—with older lawyer Griff.

Jim gives a driving lesson to frantic neurotic Betsy, who almost shoots them off a cliff.  He calms her down and she takes him home. But he can't forget Diana.


Proposed cast: Meryl Streep (Diana)

DIANA, the Hamlet at the heart of this comedy, is a clothes designer with a boutique on Rodeo Drive, a house in Beverly Hills, and a younger lover, Jim, her kept man for two years now. There’s nothing she can’t handle—except getting older.


Proposed cast: Ethan Hawke (Jim)

JIM is happy with a champagne-and-sports-car life, but he’s also a talented script-writer who’s postponing seriousness into a future that never comes.  Together they’re fast company.  They must have been brilliant at her birthday party last night.

This morning, though, even while he’s making love to her, she’s spooked.  She tells him he has to go.  She wants something more presentable, more—respectable—before it’s too late.

Which shocks him.  He takes life as it comes, but this is a bit violent.


Proposed cast: Kathy Bates (Betsy) 

BETSY, the suicidal widow of a husband she drove to suicide, is too scattered to pass a driving test, takes a lesson with Jim, spins the car onto a Mulholland Drive cliff and is ready to shoot over it and take him with her.  He talks her down, and she takes him home.


Proposed cast: John Goodman (Griff) 

Diana's lawyer GRIFF, more her age and on her success level, has been in love with her for years.  Now’s his chance.  When Jackie tells Diana the lie that Jim has seduced her Diana gives up on Jim and tries to make a go of it with Griff.


Proposed cast: Adelaide Clemens (Jackie) 

JACKIE, Diana’s daughter, idolizes her and so misses no chance to pick at and defy her.  Inwardly shaky, she is outwardly impish and sexy.  She thinks she’s in love with Jim; in fact what she needs is a father.


Proposed cast: Jacob Reynolds (Dylan) 

Betsy's son DYLAN—eccentric hair, psychotic eyes, twitches constantly and rhythmically as if keeping time to music he doesn’t much enjoy—is in the same class at UCLA with Jackie, over whom he moans uncontrollably.  He disgusts her.


Proposed cast: Rosie Perez (Maria) 

MARIA, Diana's housekeeper, is the deadpan foil to Diana's Hamlet, secret ally to Jim, and the one person Diana doesn't dare defy.

Proposed cast: Pamela Shaw (Gwen)

GWEN is Diana's mischievous best friend and alter-ego.  She'll take Jim if Diana doesn't want him!  Just kidding.  In an attempt to bring them back together she throws a party and invites both of them, but it turns into a confrontation....

And the final character is Beverly Hills— 

—the tone, the climate, the village size and ambiance that make it inevitable for these people to collide.

The stage version of Chocolate and Champagne was produced by Love Creek  at the Creative Place Theatre in New York.

Pretentious Pictures presents a comedy with a dark center.

Foreign Matter

Toby travels with a woman who pays. He's got it made, except that her nine-year-old daughter is smarter than he is.  Based on the novel:

   

“A very, very funny book"—The West Coast Review of Books 

“Enormously enjoyable”—Kirkus Reviews 

“Fresh and spirited”—Publishers Weekly

Think of:

Proposed cast: Hugh Laurie

Toby Tucker gets along as a tour guide, though all he knows how to do is keep the clients amused.  In Venice he falls for rich bubble-head Marcie but can't afford her style.  "To-bee!  Let's just live on my money!"  Well—it’s awkward but what can one say?  He reclines into the good life.

Proposed cast: Leslie Mann

Marcie Harding, sweet, fresh, blonder than blonde and all heart, is a lonely widow who takes a tour in Venice.    Toby abandons the tour to take her to Rome, and when he runs out of cash is about to abandon her.  He loves her more than he knows.

Proposed cast: Amber Liddicoat

But for Andrea, things would be perfect.  "The child."  Toby and Marcie are no smarter than anybody else; the child is smarter than anybody else.  She'd have got rid of him long ago but her mommy loves him, so she keeps him around to, how shall I say, play with.  When you’re not looking she rotates her head like Linda Blair.

Proposed cast: John Goodman

Marcie’s father-in-law, billionaire Hazelton Turnbull “Hard Turd” Harding IV, loathes Toby, and loathes giving Marcie her allowance to feed him.  But he loves his little granddaughter, and there lies the control.

When Haze spends Marcie’s money on a painting for the Harding Memorial Museum it looks like Toby's meal ticket is gone.


Proposed cast Pamela Shaw:

Johna Nerg is the butch-nightmare artist whose painting Toby accidentally steps in, sits in and sets on fire.  He really doesn't mean it but she thinks, as who does not, that he's trying to destroy it—and gets real mean with him.
 

He has no choice, finally, but to try to steal it.  But until the child takes a hand, nothing works.

Light, charming, sophisticated, and the first of a series, each set in a new pleasure zone.  Total Moisture, one of the sequels, is set in the south of France: 

Foreign Matter is set in Venice and on a Greek island, and is available at Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon Germany, Smashwords, and the usual places: Apple, iTunes, Barnes and Noble, Sony, Kobo, Diesel—the whole street.

Pretentious Pictures presents a summer comedy.

Sand in my equipment

"I have ten commandments. The first nine are, thou shalt not bore. The tenth is, thou shalt have right of final cut."—Billy Wilder

"You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world."―Lucille Ball

"Trust your own instinct. Your mistakes might as well be your own as someone else's."—Billy Wilder

"It’s easier to fall in love than to find a good story."—Stanley Kubrick

When Stephen Frears went to Hollywood to make Grifters he met John Huston and said, "Do you have any advice for me?"  "How many days is the shoot?" Huston asked.  Frears said, "Thirty-five."  "Well," said Huston, "that's thirty-five compromises."

"It's not really interesting to me, at least, to set up a camera angle. At some points in the filming you really want to take the camera and break it for no reason except that it's just an interference and you don't know what to do with it....The most difficult part of working on a film like Husbands is that the opinions of the crew really affect the people in front of the screen, and sometimes they don't see anything happening. They get despondent. You can feel them loosen up. You can feel you're losing the thing."—John Cassavetes

"I survived because I was tougher than anybody else."—Bette Davis

Also by Robert MacLean, the "Toby" books,

Will You Please Fuck Off? at Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon FR, Amazon DE, AmazonIT, AmazonES and Smashwords;

Foreign Matter at Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon FR, Amazon DE, AmazonIT, AmazonES and Smashwords; 

Total Moisture at Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon FR, Amazon DE, AmazonIT, AmazonES and Smashwords; 

The Cad at Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon FR, Amazon DE, AmazonIT, AmazonES and Smashwords;

and these, too,
Mortal Coil: A Comedy of Corpses at Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon FR, Amazon DE, AmazonIT and AmazonES;

The President's Palm Reader: A Washington Comedy at Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon FR, Amazon DE, AmazonIT and AmazonES; and
Greek Island Murder at Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon FR, Amazon DE, Amazon IT and Amazon ES.

Masquerade, A Thriller

Reg’d © Library of Congress

A secretary is left holding the bag when her boss absconds with the company funds—and then tries to have her killed.

This:

 

plus this:

equals this:

Adelaide Clemens (attached)

Faye Fletcher is a bored secretary to whom nothing ever happens—till her boss sets her up in Paris to manage the office of his "new company," and she winds up in the Seine.

The police don’t buy that, and she must find him or face jail.  She tracks him to a rendezvous at an island hotel with the man who is to launder the money, a master thief who steals her heart—finds herself in a den of thieves and must fend off attempts on her life by becoming a killer herself.

Her innocence is far behind her now and there's no going back.

Proposed cast: David Tennant

Barnaby Barnes is the likeable cosmopolitan drunk who helps her get rid of the bodies.  Funny, generous, brilliant but half-unconscious, he’s the warmest of the men she finds there.  If only he weren’t such a fool!

Proposed cast: Ben Chaplin

Handsome Keith Marlowe is a player in that world, an arranger of under-the-table deals and just the kind of James Bond she needs.  She loves him.  Can she trust him?

Proposed cast: Elias Koteas

Her boss Mr. Jonson—attractive, commanding, independent—is setting her up in a Paris apartment.  He says he wants her to field the calls there for his new company but she thinks he’s establishing her as his mistress—until two thugs drug her and throw her off a bridge.

Proposed cast: Anna Friel

Beautiful but cold Ms Dekker is the disappointed lover of Jonson, and then of Marlowe, and the hired assassin who has Faye thrown into the Seine and tries to murder her in her bath.

Proposed cast: Brenda Blethyn

Tiny Beaumont Island in the eastern Mediterranean is where people meet who don’t want to be seen. Former movie star Madame Beaumont has converted her house there to a hotel and is used to playing hostess to shady people.  She takes Faye under her wing—not that it helps.

Locations:

Glasgow, Paris, Geneva, a Mediterranian island.

Pretentious Pictures presents a thriller with a light touch.

Reg’d © Library of Congress