Billy Shakespeare said, "All the world is a stage and we are merely players, fucking shit up."
Or something like that. This show's main character is obsessed with being his stage's playright, bending his reality in wildly amusing ways, creating excitement and drama with all the players in his life.
Events are loosely based on true stories of yours truly.
I'm calling him Frank McFeral. Each episode opens with Frank as an ancient, 100 plus year old man on his deathbed, surrounded by the ghosts of people who played rolls in his wild and risky life.
Driven by the music, culture and events of the baby boom generation, an episode from Frank’s long and crazy life “flashes before our eyes” and his face morphs to an earlier time with one of the wild stories about his fascinating family, friends, street racing, violence, a star-crossed love affair, summer of love in Haight-Ashbury, the war in Vietnam, the 1980’s punk scene in NYC, arrests, jail time, making music with legendary musicians, his long and creative advertising career, the scandals surrounding “The King of Beers” family, finding a soul-mate and raising a rock power trio and their struggles with success, and his obsession with teasing death and bending life to it’s limits.
It’s on his name tag: “Stew” Head Chef – 50-60 year old unhappy asshole, fastidious starched
apron, control freak.
Film opens in slo-mo on his tag and moves up to his face – deadpan, eyes closed – his face
slowly becomes scrunched and squinting as he begins to get really angry and starts in real
time to chew somebody out: (his voice ramps up in speed) “Ayyyyyyye - I can’t believe how
stupid, stupid, mindless, retarded you are!!! Where did you learn to make bacon? Are you
stupid? Are you retarded? Get out of my kitchen! Go home and practice making bacon!
Then don’t come back! You’re fired!
Everybody else get your lame asses to work! Our owner’s dinner party is waiting. We see
the owners dinner party of fat horrible people, in a small private room where they are being
rude, mean, flirting inappropriately with sweet innocent wait sta>.
The kitchen has a small crew of young people who are frozen in fear. The bacon guy looks at
his iron skillet and picks it up. Cut to Stew CU face. His face vibrates with the sudden, very
loud, dull PROING! sound of an iron skillet striking his head and leaving his face frozen,
dumbfounded, and he falls forward below frame revealing Bacon Guy holding the skillet
where Stew’s head had been in frame.
The crew is shocked, but excited and not sad about Stew. They pick him up and put his
body on a prep table and check his heart. He’s dead. Somebody says dead. Somebody else
says, “Fresh meat.” A montage of the crews’ bewildered faces turn to fun and excited as
they set to work stripping his clothes away, shaving his skin and butchering and carving and cooking making meat dishes. Some grinding meat, some boiling, some saute – a leg of lamb-looking “Leg of Lame” – cutting up with veggies to make a stew. Cut to Bacon Guy
stirring and tasting, “Stew” – Other cook says “Perfect”
We cut to the owner’s impatient dinner party – “Finally!” as they are served a delicious
looking but somewhat recognizable array of meat dishes from Stew’s dead body parts.
A roasted leg, a pair of breaded and deep-fried testicles and a small shriveled penis looking thing, a pasta dish with lots of fingers and toes, roasted veggies with ears and eyeballs…..
The dinner party enjoys every bite. The owner/host of the group declares, “ Stew! Stew! This is excellent! You’ve out done yourself!” He pops an eyeball in his mouth.
Bacon Guy and crew in the kitchen are celebrating themselves and trying some of the
dishes. Several crew members are puking in the background. A server runs in and pukes
into the stew pot. Bacon Guy is smugly satisfied.
A 28 year old man gets involved in Ancestry.com and meets previously unknown family members. But only a few. They strike him as somewhat oddly guarded, like they are hiding something.
A friend suggests he get his DNA analyzed.
Shortly after he mails in his mucous sample, he almost gets into a terrible car accident. We get the feeling he is being watched.
When his DNA results arrive, the pie chart graphic shows many tiny multi-colored slices (like <1%) representing ancestor genes from every imaginable country and region around the world - Europe and the Middle East, Africa, Mongolia, and Native American, Antartica even some lower primate and Neanderthal. What is troubling about the results pie-chart graphic is that the largest section of his DNA make up is marked on the chart and in the cover letter as "86% OTHER.". They call it OTHER as if they don’t recognize those gene molecules. The letter says that the "86% OTHER" DNA results are of an origin that they or the genetics lab have no record of or any knowledge or experience with them.
Truth is that they have seen it before in DNA taken from Area 51 tissues discovered in UFO sightings in New Mexico and from DNA on the shroud of Turin. We get the feeling that these mysterious results are other-worldly or maybe evil or maybe super human.
The DNA Lab invites Frank to visit them, where things get weird and he is confronted with examples of OTHER DNA individuals, and he meets a forensic biologist from the Exceptional Human Research Dept at Stanford University.
Other important characters that join the quest with our hero are a Catholic Priest investigator, our hero’s bright nerdy sexy girlfriend, a man who has always claimed to be our hero’s uncle (revealed to be a Gov’t agent) and our hero’s best friend, a talented writer and film maker, who is a great asset as a thinker, researcher, idea guy. He makes his mysterious identity a quest for truth about himself and "Others" like him, who are drawn to each other and appear to have a common mission, once they are "reunited." There are moments that we suspect are evidence of possible super human talents or traits, but only sensory or clairvoyant, limited to personal intellectual genius or hightened levels perception.
Every episode exposes something new about these rare individuals and steer the viewers into a complicated string of wild possibilities.
An accomplished young psychiatrist is an absolutely dull and boring man who wants for more excitement in his life, which to all his friends and family looks very complete and well rounded. His only glimpse into a more exciting existence is through the stories he hears from one of his patients. He envisions the wild events as told by this one outrageous, insane criminal patient. He is so exhilarated by this patient's stories that he wants to hear more. Soon he decides to seek more of these kind of patients and he volunteers at mental hospitals and prisons.
One night as he is driving home from a session at a mental hospital, he stops at a convenience store. While he's waiting in line at the cash register, a crazed gunman threatens everyone and demands the money from the cash register, and from all the patrons. Our shrink flashes back to some action as described by one of his more colorful patients and he suddenly assumes the point of view and personality of his wild man patient. He acts as his patient would act in this situation - with decisive and brutal violence to overcome the gunman and save everyone in the store. He displayed heroic and decisive and successful action when it was needed and he is celebrated as the man he has never been before.
This new behavior sends a shockwave of both approval and concern through his small circle of friends and family, questioning who he is and how this could have happened. He is humbly quiet and introverted as usual and seems as befuddled by his own actions, as is everyone else.
The truth is that he is excited by his own actions as he never has been before. The plot plays out through a series of wilder and crazier patients who our hero shrink learns to emulate and assume their behaviors in ways that both help our shrink make his life more exciting, but equally make his life more complicated and drive him into deeper and deeper trouble.
Through the examples of his patients, he studies martial arts, learns to play the blues harmonica, he buys a motorcycle. And he associates with all the people and has the exciting kind of adventures that come with the subcultures that these behaviors collect. His circle becomes several circles of wildly different kinds of people. He finds himself in a new world that holds violence, death, passion and the adventure he has always wanted. Isolating and managing these new sub-circles of characters causes some embarrassment, drama and comedy as they collide. His male friends wonder what has got into him, and his female friends find him "more interesting."
Based on his autobiography. The single most deadly gunfighter of the "Wild West" tells his own story as he is a product of his environment and his voice is educated and Victorian like newspaper and dime-novel writers of the period, or Nicholas Cage's overly proper narration in the movie: "Raising Arizona.". He was the well-educated son of a Southern Urban Pastor. He was forced into the life of a fugitive from the Law of the Reformation South and soldiers of the Union Army. At the age of 15, his mother is assaulted and attempted robbery by a gang of young freed slaves. John comes to her rescue and kills one of the robbers with the knife he used to threaten them. Family advisors all urged John to ride west til it all blows over. Over the next 20 years, his auto biography, in the most captivating frontier Victorian English voice-over, ala Horace Greeley, recounts the many times he helped a friend or settled a score, or simply protected his freedom with his pistol that he never pulled first, but only pulled and fired in self-defense. Some history has it that John Wesley Hardin killed more than 70 men, not including Mexicans or Native Americans. Or more than 40 men when he was tricked by law enforcement to visit Florida where he was captured and sentenced to prison. He filled his time by studying law and earning his Juris Doctor, and after his release, he passed the Texas Bar Exam and practiced Law in El Paso Texas until his murder in 1895. He has many stories including shooting a man through the hotel's wall for snoring. And spending several days carousing with Abilene, Kansas Sheriff Wild Bill Hickock, who is said to have befriended John Hardin so he wouldn't find himself in a gunfight with John that he would certainly lose. He practiced law in El Paso and continued to kill men, mostly Texas Rangers and Federal Marshalls sent to capture him. He killed so many lawmen and had so many eyewitnesses to his gunfighting strictly in defending himself, that the State of Texas eventually pardoned him. It was rumored that the state was running low on Texas Rangers. Federal Marshalls still sought him out, each to his demise by John's lightning fast and deadly accurate pistol. It is said his bullet would always kill his opponent by striking him in the cheek or eye. Sadly, in 1895, he was murdered, shot in the back in cold blood, by the son of a man who John had beaten severely for mistreating a prostitute who was a friend of John's. The whole city of El Paso was said to mourn for several days after John's death. He was El Paso's greatest celebrity of the day and he had many loyal friends as he was a loyal friend to many, and a deadly enemy to others.
Or "Sons of Apathy" – about biker wanabees.
A contemporary group of 5 wealthy, directionless, idiotic young men search for a way to get more out of their spoiled, silly lives, looking for a way to be “like men?”
The characters, story and dialog are edgy, ridiculous and broad – more like “Always Sunny in Philadelphia” than the old school “Wild Hogs” movie.
Each episode opens with a montage of these idiots as they try different activities in search of something to define them as masculine. With SLAP-STICK disastrous results they try a cowboy cattle drive, skydiving, mountain climbing, scuba diving and finally, seeing an old movie on TV – “The Wild One” – they remark: “Whoa, bikers, choppers are coooool.”
They go to a local Harley-Davidson dealership and look stupid, and out of place, knocking over bikes and trying on helmets and jackets, and bad-ass t-shirts - until they meet “Hard D” a motorcycle salesman and genuine article biker (Mathew McConaughy type) who helps guide them. They take to his uber coolness and buy five big bad-ass HD road bikes. The owner's hard looking biker wife and sexually precocious teenage daughter each intrude on "Hard D" in slutty fashion and he makes comments like, "careful which boxes get your tool." Our idiot heroes gab about how cool Hard D is "banging both these bitches" and they are overheard by the dealership owner. Hard D closes the deal on the 5 bikes and the owner fires him. No commission. Our idiots follow Hard D to the bar next door where they decide to hire him to be the leader of their wannabe MC (motorcycle club.) He's not interested until they "hire him as a consultant for $100k salary - cash, in advance resulting from a quick run to the bank. Holy Shit? He's never seen so much cash, and he is suddenly very happy to lead these rich idiots.
As a test of this new arrangement, he insults them as they are handing him a bag full of cash. They respond happily to his calling them clowns as they continue to count out and hand him $10,000 stacks of cash.
A lot of the charm of this comedy comes from the teacher-student relationship between Hard D and his followers as they slowly become cool dudes, and how Hard D benefits from knowing them and learning how things are done in the responsible, educated world. They help him start a savings account, work on his credit score and even buy a house. The boys have hilarious cast of characters enlisted to help their "new enterprise." A pubicist like Fran Dresher, a lawyer like John Goodman, a CPA like Bob Newhart. All of whom are reluctant about Hard D until he wins them over with his street smarts.
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