Bulgaria could probably substitue for the US but it seems a shame to not use it since it gives an international larger scope to the picture and has such a rusty old Warsaw pact vibe to it that just works with the exCIA type story.

Still you said you're thinking about more than one movie so that might work in later. No point shoe-horning something in that doesn't really fit.

I know the characters are loosly based on real people but I was thinking, with all the babbled additions here are some thoughts.

Barney is an excellent martial arts instructor and has been good pals with Leo for many years. He is into streetfighting martial arts and believe situations should be tested to the limit. He is stubborn, strong-willed and willing to bet everything (including Leo's club) on the dream of owning his own dojo and getting his way of streetfighting out to the world. Barney never goes wobbley, he gets angry. When things go bad he's ready to attack the other dojo and has to be talked down. The training is more important, winning the competition is the one goal.

Leo is kind of the dreamer but still grounded. He owns the club where a lot of the action takes place, he's dating the hot waitress, and he took out a loan on his club in order to help Barney establish his dojo because he believes in Barney and he thinks if they succeed they can do the Hollywood thing like a number of Martial Artists before them. Leo stands to lose a lot if the dojo fails and it looks as if his club might go with it. Especially if they head off to the exCIA guys house to train, that's across the state line, that's breaking bail, that's crazy. He is also strong willed and very driven, but sometimes he tries to do the right thing.

When Leo starts to go wobbly they use a night of training to teach the trainees how to clean the club. When Leo starts to go wobbley again the trainees arrive with a large shipment of booze, probably stolen, to help him make expenses. Lastly when Leo starts to go Wobbly the exCIA dude offers to buy part of his club and coown it. Leo is considering this when exCIA is killed (or appears to be killed).

RJSchwarz
San Diego, CA

I think to have the waitress turn out to be an assasin or so at the end of the movie would be too much, what with everything else you could do at the end of the movie. I think she could slowly be realized as the best out of them all, on accident. She could also then end up fighting and winning the competition for them. Just throwing in my thoughts.

"We all have the potential to be great. It is our inability to do so that makes us miserable." C.S.Lewis

Hi folks sorry i couldnt get on yesterday. my internet connection keeps going down. So i have to use my neighbours desktop.

Am still working on it. Rl has helped a lot and the other suggestions have been useful too.

Will be back on here when i can. Ithe connection should be sorted soon.

Keep em rolling. Thanks again folks.

Wayne

http://filmind.meetup.com/296/?gj=sj3

Right folks, RJ esp, have been trying to put some stuff in order and these are my thought. Treatment is in my house as im on neighbours computer but here is a sample layout, due for expansion:

Plan on doing two treatments One aimed uk, the other US.

I think Bulgaria, maybe could work for both, esp if I can use the hunting ground as made to look as if practising warfare (bulgaria could also relocate for russia etc). Will prob be able to get Bulletproof vests that was used in the red army. Just thought today, my neighbour (Demetrius) at the villa is a retired captain from the bulgarian army, He may also like to play a small part if i ask him over some Rakia.

Really like the idea of the old man in the pub.

I think he should be how they get into Mk-ultra and will get the guinea pigs, probably the drunks, as RJ said.

I think he should have been like a scientist (or assistant) in the CIA, but he was also experimented on without his knowledge, and that can be used to good comic effect. I.e when he stops drinking etc.

I think that one of the drunks should have consumed a lot of acid in the past, a hippy type, so it effects him totally different, he can be the one who also puts it into other peoples heads that something isnt quite right.

I think that the old man ordering a whisky off the girl and getting iced tea could work good if done properly.

The drink does affect the old guy but in a good way, he was experimented on without realising and the drink helps him forget images that keep flashing in his head.

Some of these images are where he was on a mission and really killing people.

Not sure where to get the waitress to fit in yet.

I think i might make her the love interest for the geeky one (shane) but he doesnt quite get there. This can provide a good platform for the female lead too. Towards the end of the film it seems as if shayne has undergone a personality transplant, being told in his ears what to do and say. This would be a subplot and wont really advance the movie but can provide great comedy moments and be brought further in Part Two.

After being arrested Barney and Leo lose their jobs working in the nightclub, but still go regularly, nad also go th the 'old pub' around the corner to play pool. The 'old pub' has a mixture of clientelle, including old wastrels and drunkards, as well as several other 'fly by night' characters.
Leo Invessts his money into the lease of the gym. Barney is teaching classes there, but they both know they have to make drastic changes if leo wants to keep the club and Barney can expand his martial arts system universally.

They take a bet with another gym that Barney will win in an unlicensed fight against two other guys.

IN the end barney cant fight because both Barney and Leo have been injured, trying to fly after the acid and mind control plays tricks on them.

So they have to put the geek in fighting against a monster. It looks as if he is going to lose, but then pulls it back towards the end when the waitress turns up

Its not going well at all, until The Old drunk makes an appearance. They have known him a while but dont really want to bother him too much as he can be a pest, This day owever a young mouthy lad starts taking the piss out of him so they stick up for the old guy.

He then starts hanging around them all the time making a nuisance.

While barney and leo are training their students in the daytime, the old guy is doing his brainwashing stuff.

Dont forget though, he is doing this on Leo and Barney without their knowledge as the old guy had had it done to him years before.
Maybe ill let one of them know so it can cause conflict, possibly leo because it would be more of an internal struggle for him)

Various scenes, for this next part as theyre going to play an important part. is is the brainwashing/hypnosis skits. They can also be stungunned on the head to build their resistance up. Leo and barney arent sure about this, The old guy knows it will coe in handy for future interrogation if it ever happens.

quite trippy where they are under hypnosis, with sounds/music being played. Changing images, flashing/altering lights as if its under the subjects eyelids.

Images of fighting, extreme confidence and power, extremeself belief. Images of superhuman powers (see the accident above)

But also of weapon assembly/ use. How to use different weapons, survival and surveillance techniques. This is all thrown in, in small but increasing measures. This is the old guys secret plan, that barney and leo dont know about.

They go to Bulgaria, to escape from the city and the pubs to where they can concentrate their students fully. Also Leo thinks it would be a good idea to get them to work on the house for free.
There all loving it because theyve seen karate kid and just assume its actually part of the training. (it could come in handy at some stage though).

Its while theyre in bulgaria/coming back that they get noticed by the security services, who (rightly so as it turns out) think that theres more than meets the eye with this band of merry men.
Thought on the old gut. Should i keep as a drunk, or should i make it with a bit of a twist that he had actually sought Leo and Barney out, and just waiting for the right moment to introduce himself.

Leo and barney wouldnt find this out until halfway in the third act, begrudging him for it, but then realising its the best thing thats actually happened in recent times.

Its the oldguy that has actually programmed the images in of what originally happened to Barney and Leo, and thats when they kind of forgive him and feel guilty for his (supposed) death

It would set up nicely for the second

i know this is a little topsy turvy in layout and you may have to read to the front of the post for things to come back into place, my computer with the story/treatment so far is next door. But i think its coming together kinda nicely.

I see it as kind of a dark comedy with unbelievable moment.
Also with the scifi element
And quite a bit of action

A bit of morality as well (dont know where yet though)

Let me know your thoughts and if there is anything that you would like to add.

Best regards, wayne

http://filmind.meetup.com/296/?gj=sj3

I like it so far, especially the bit about our heros not really knowing that the exCIA guy is helping them train. At least not initially.

I see the exKGB and CIA stuff as a bit Smoking Aces with larger than life, freaky individuals who are both comical and scary at the same time. I see the unbelievable fighting stuff as somewhat Shaolin Soccer/Kung FU Hustle type stuff using special effects and a lot of creativity, perhaps the whole thing is narrated by someone leaving the possibility that they are exagerating or that there really was LCD in the training cocktail. All of this should be grounded with two very likable main characters who find themselves deeper and deeper into events until they are not sure if they are tripping or not.

I think you need to lay out a basic three act structure and fill things out from there so here goes.

ACT 1 - Characters climb a tree
Character intro, jail, initial fight and loss followed by a second bet involving students rather than trainers.

ACT 2 - We throw rocks at them
Training and assault by rival gym that scares off students. It looks like second bet is gonna be a loss. Intro CIA guy and training of drunks. Assault by rival gym at bar defeated by drunks, our heros find out about extra training. They fight about it but eventually realize it's the only chance they have to win. News report of unusual fight technique causes CIA guys to target heros . Training in flakvests saves lives when CIA assaults gym. Training moves to Bulgarian safehouse. Even the CIA won't track us here. Training missions seem/may be real assaults. Team seems ready for competition when an attack by exKGB appears to take out the exCIA guy and wounds the number 1 student so that he can't compete.

ACT 3 - More rocks, bigger rocks, until they find a way out
The competition. Our heros team isn't doing so hot, they drank the night before because of the funeral and it's semi-damaged the training. They didn't pound booze, but it doesn't take much. Only the geekiest guy is ready and he's pretty much the only student capable of fighting. He does very well. During competition exKGB and CIA attack. Or so it seems at first, actually the exKBG are attacking and the CIA are trying to stop them.

Naturally the bad gym leader can't accept that his guys lost to the geek so he challenges our heros to a fight. For ownership of the dojos and everything. This guy's a bad ass monster, our heros are somewhat wounded and not up to their best after the drinking. The hot waitress/girlfriend agrees to the challenge. Our hero finds it hard to back out. Then they realize the geek drank as well but his training wasn't screwed up, why? Because he puked up the booze. So they beat our hero to get him to vomit which seems to clear his head. And he fights. boy does he fight. he wins.

When he leaves the competition, beaten, bloody, and with some puke stains on his gear, and the hot waitress on his arm he sees the remenents of the CIA/KGB combat. He also sees exCIA, still alive, and he wonders how badly he's been manipulated the entire time. Of course it doesn't matter because his dreams came true more or less.

RJSchwarz
San Diego, CA

cheers rj, just edited a little of my last post, just about the old guy and the videotape, not sure whether he should have known all along what he was doing, but maybe didnt know why.

Will keep adding more stuff.

In the meantime im going to try and do the three acts. Because i read easier off paper (rather than the screen, im going to write it all out, even in topsy turvy order (had to put that in for the sponsors. lol) and cut out placing the different parts in order and trying to expand on them. trying to work out getting from point A to B.

Also want to try and work out the scenes in the film.

R.e one of your questions earlier.

We have access to two gyms, and all their training gear. We can both coordinate the fights etc.

We could probably get access to a nightclub and pub.
And we can show all the training techniques, fighting, surveillance etc, even when were teaching them knifefighting we can say that its just to build there reflexes up.

What i would like to do is maybe work on a small trailer off the treatment, this could be filmed before anything elso just to give people an idea of where were going, and can be updated properly at a later stage. just like a teaser.

What did you think about them trying to fly out of the window and the brainwashing. Need to gen up on all the techniques

My pal Greg hasnt read this yet, so not sure what hell make of the idea of him being a guinea pig. lol.

Cheers for the reply. Going to go back round my house now and get some kip so i can have a good session tomorrow. Might even try get some acid to get the creative juices flowing. Last part was a joke folks.

There will be other parts in there that i may have missed out of the latest summary, but mainly by accident. A lot of the stuff that weve bandied about has come up with.

Some folks will probably look at this and wonder what the hell im playing at, but i think it can transpire into a really good screenplay.

http://filmind.meetup.com/296/?gj=sj3

I like pretty much everything. If Acid is involved in the training than you've got to have some freaky shit. Guys trying to fly could be funny. You said one guy was an old stoner type, have the acid actually straighten him out, make him lucid.

I really like the stungun to the head stuff. Especially as it leaves you wondering is the exCIA guy a sadist or is this part of the training. The more he appears to sober out the more sadistic and assholish he becomes which is why they finally give him some booze to mellow him out again, which leads into his possible death.

Of course you could always have the waitress say at the end that the old CIA guy never drank. He always had ice teas and had me ring them up as scotch, what gave you the idea it was the other way around? Like the club wouldnt' notice the scotch reserves plummeting and the register empty. This leaves it open that maybe he's been manipulating things long before hand. Perhaps he even dated the hot waitress as part of the plan.

I imagine CIA started showing up at the bar a couple of weeks after one of our heros won a big martial arts competition. He started dating the hot waitress not long after. At the start you can introduce the news (cops could read the paper to each other, televsision in the prison, whatever) that some rogue Bulgarian exKGB Smersh type from the cold war was spotted in Bulgaria and the US and Russia have both demanded his extradiction. Then later during the training exercise in Bulgaria the old CIA guy disappears for awhile. We may see him kill the double-agent or not but we hear the guy was killed by Al Queda or something along those lines in the papers/cable news. Our guys don't put it together until they read about old CIA guys death by Al Queda as well, and they know he wasn't killed by Muslims.

I think it works best if you use rogue Bulgarian spies rather than exSoviet spys as it would be less likely to lead to a huge international incident when/if they attacked the Martial Arts competition.

RJSchwarz
San Diego, CA

I think it would be pretty awesome to have it turn out that the guy had sought them out and planned this entire thing. Then, possibly, on top of that they find out that he also isn't exCIA, he's actually still an agent, and the CIA was behind the whole thing. End with our heroes meeting the president and finding out they were used to help resolve an international conflict that they weren't even aware of. Then main character and girl hook up and we have resolution.

"We all have the potential to be great. It is our inability to do so that makes us miserable." C.S.Lewis

Hi folks, as i said not been on tinternet lately. but i have still been working. Ive done a teaser trailer for the brainwashing scenes. There will be different stuff used but this is the freakyish stuff that they will be getting brainwashed with.

Let me know what you all think. cheers

Ps post a comment on youtube good/bad as well if you can please. danker merci, cheers, blagadorya, thankyou

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Xd-y1Z55qi8

http://filmind.meetup.com/296/?gj=sj3