Hollywood it ain't

Don't ask me why, but from time to time ideas for movies pop into my head. Am I weird? Does this happen to anyone else? I don't know, for some reason some event will happen or I'll think of something, and I'll say "Yeah, that would make a good movie." Out loud, too. People on the street think I'm a little off.

So two of the ideas that recently popped into my head recently:

-a woman is trying to call her boyfriend, maybe it's Valentine's Day, maybe not. Anyway, she tries to call him, but dials the wrong number and instead a charming, single, witty, slightly rumpled guy answers the phone. She soon realizes she's dialed the wrong number, they both have a good laugh about the mistake, they have an interesting little conversation, we get the sense that this woman likes this guy, we like this guy, and then the woman realizes she still has yet to actually speak to her real boyfriend. She politely ends the conversation with the Mystery Man, but we have a sense there is a spark there. And, importantly, she still has Mystery Man's number in her cell phone. We see the real boyfriend, who is unsatisfactory/unattentive/boring/pretentious, eventually the woman makes an excuse to call Mystery Man again, they have a platonic friendship, things go sour with real boyfriend, things heat up with Mystery Man, blah blah blah. We'll need some romantic leads here. I'm already in contact with Drew Barrymore.

-this one comes straight from real life, although it's just the beginning of the movie, and sort of along the same theme of mixed-up communications as the last idea. Today, I got a manila envelope with a picture inside it in the mail from my parents, and stuck in one of the folds was a second, normal-sized white envelope. It was stamped and from quick visual inspection contained a check. It was intended to go to somewhere in Newton, MA and had a return address in Natick, MA. Anyway, I thought an interesting thing would be to follow the story of finding the person who sent this letter, maybe something cool happens along the way. Really the story isn't about the lost letter, but what happens after. It's like Simpsons episodes. They never end up being about what they start out being about. I mean, look at the one where Bart divorces his parents. It starts out with them cleaning out the house, then they find Bart's ad for Baby Stink Breath, and somehow it ends up with Homer in a skate-off with Tony Hawk. Now THAT'S a plot.

A third idea (that I think I thought up with Pete) involved two people driving along in a car, having a witty, interesting, insightful conversation, and then as they get to a toll booth, they pull out guns, casually rob the toll booth, and speed away. To where, I don't know. We didn't get that far. The rest still needs to be figured out. But we thought that was a cool way to begin a movie -- until we realized it was almost exactly the beginning of Pulp Fiction, except in a car instead of a restaurant. Damn.