Screenplay for the Adventurous – ‘Adventures in Paradise’ Hackgate Romantic Comedy-Revenge Caper by europabridge

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Anna Hathaway, Audrey Hepburn, British RomComs, Cary Grant, Charade, Christopher Plummer, Colin Firth, David Bowie, Elan Durham Adventurous in Paradise Hackgate Screenplay for the Adventurous, Emma Stone, Emma Thompson, Gillian Anderson, James McAvoy, Julia Ormond, London, Maggie Smith, Michael Buble, Michelle Dockery, Network, Pregny Chambesy Switzerland, Prince Albert, Richard Curtis, Richard Grant, Romantic Comedies, Rupert Graves, Screwball Comedies, Sir Ridley Scott, Taylor Kitsch, To Catch A Thief

Hello all … europabridge author of ‘Adventures in Paradise‘ the London Hackgate romantic comedy-revenge caper screenplay.

Thought I’d tell you all a bit about my casting ideas for the screenplay, an original work recalling aspects of Network, To Catch A Thief, Charade, and British ROM COMs, as well as Hollywood Screwball Comedies … (and that’s more than enough for now).But before I do that, I’ll offer some thoughts about the winning Charade.

What interests me about Charade mostly is the balance between a sadistic world (mob-like murders), and the charms of the two leading stars whose charisma and humor keep the film from toppling over into a twisted exercise in Grand Guignol …

After all, in dealing with Hackgate, as a romantic comedy-revenge caper I’ve had to bypass the heavier issues, such as the death of Milly Dowler or the McCann tragedy or the heinous murder of Daniel Morgan … not because I lack the chops to write a darker film, but because I saw an opportunity to have fun with a landmark media case.  My rationale, not unlike the writers who wrote the Screwball Comedies of the 30’s was to provide a bit of fun at the expense of the creeps. In short, we see the evil-doers get their asses kicked, and we feel better!

And, of course, I also want to avoid lawsuits. People’s lives have been invaded enough … They certainly not need no further invasion by me.

Nevertheless, people do break the law in ‘Adventures in Paradise’, they have intentions that are anything but honorable, and lives are ruined – in the sense of being cheated, invaded, slandered, humiliated, and mocked. But the film hero and heroine–Clive and Aurora–discover who the culprits are, set the media and legal hounds upon them, and live another day to  … well, you’ll have to see the film when it opens — hopefully in 2018-2019 to find out more.

After all, I have a polished screenplay ready for some genius agent, director or producer – weighing in at 130 pages – and a sequel – ‘Return to Paradise’ in the works. Both feature tabloid lunacy, stalking, blagging,  hacking, Hollywood farce, romantic betrayals, comedy, sniveling villains, glamorous cars, drama queens, world travel, 5 star hotels, resorts, and restaurants, Dickensian struggles, and love. And it’s all lots of fun, really.

I have thought about who I think would be interesting choices for ‘Adventures in Paradise’, and wanted to share my ideas about casting possibilities.

After spending many months, nay, years crafting the role of Clive Reade, I’ve decided Colin Firth is a great candidate for this incredible man of the world … A win/win situation, very good deal, indeed.

Colin Firth could easily represent the obsessive aspects of Clive Reade … A man so absorbed in his empire he doesn’t realize he is soon to be engaged to a world-class uber-bitch … A man who deserves only the best, and gets it in Aurora Blunton! A man who can wrangle billions while speaking poetry with aplomb (though not very often, as we do not want Americans throwing up popcorn and KitKat bars in theater aisles) … A man who can trounce a villain at a dinner party with his singular wit, and throw legendary parties in Belgravia. A man who can legitimately romance an intelligent, lovely young woman, and win big despite getting punked by the tabloid press …. Who travels the world via private jet, drives a Bugatti around Lake Geneva, and will act opposite some of the very best talent available …

Jesus Christ, will someone buy this script from me, so the world can experience Clive Reade? Next to Daniel Craig’s James Bond, this is the British man of the 21st Century, (in my humble but not very silent opinion).

And now for Aurora Blunton … Aurora is written for a woman in her early thirties, so she’s not an ingenue but her experiences in the tabloid trade have already put her in an extremely vulnerable position. Later she emerges clearer, harder, and diamond-sharp after her caper-like investigations with Clive remove the third rate junk from their lives.

I don’t want to reveal too much but surely what happens to her at The News Register, The Sentinel, and in between reveals a scummy tabloid underbelly which stands for being lynched by the media, by men with less than honorable intentions, and by misogyny as a whole.

An actress I’ve thought of as a perfect match for Aurora but who would also bring her own unique qualities to Aurora is Carey Mulligan.

It’s easy for me to see her deliver the more wry, comedic aspects of Aurora, as well as the heady romantic and serious side in scenes with Clive, and in her bravura performance at a conference about press reform in London.

Let someone else sort out the casting … These are my top choices but I’ll admit to thinking Benedict Cumberbatch would also make a very fine Clive.

After I had aged Robert Bullock somewhat to be a contemporary of Clive Reade’s (which the plot needed), I thought of many actors who could play him, and settled on Rupert Graves.  He would expertly chew the scenery with Colin Firth, and with whomever is cast as Aurora Blunton … But there is also a key scene that he’d have a ball with, and that is the party scene in Belgravia near the end of the film. This is the kind of front-page Daily Mail tabloid news bust that’s somewhere between La Cage and Richard III that I think Graves would rock  and roll through … My romantic-comedy revenge-caper might need a ‘R’ rating, but I hope ‘MPAA’ will do.

Another key villain role is that of The Mustachioed Man or Tommy Lohan – tabloid stalker, hacker, and smarmy snoop, who conveniently supplies the film with someone to laugh at and loathe … Jack Black has the kind of self-absorbed manic and comic potential to take the role of a despised stalker and make it a winning role – for a lasting impression of comic villainy. 

Michael Buble. I love his vocal qualities, and would like to see him appear at Clive’s private dinner party bash toward the end of the film to sing A Foggy Day in Londontown … How’s that for class?

Emily Blunt would make a great choice for Diane Gregory.

Already she has turned in so many varied roles it is clear she could pull off an outrageous role like Diane, and still have film-goers enjoy her exploits. This really is the key to Diane: she’s outrageous but likable. And this is why, by the way, people love soap stars like Joan Collins – she has a sense of fearlessness on camera that Blunt definitely has in abundance.

Blunt would also understand how to work her mojo for Diane Gregory making her an interesting character to follow in my sequel – ‘Return to Paradise’, where she goes after Clive with the intentions of winning him back.

After reading about Emma Thompson’s EFFIE, I realized my treatment about the Pre-Raphaelites (focusing on other artists in ‘Kelmscott Manor‘) somewhat parallels hers and Greg Wise’s material.Then I recalled Thompson’s screen persona, and promptly plumped the role of Eleanor (no coincidence), as a solid supporting role and investments banker/friend of Clive’s. Frankly, the dinner party scene is a tour-de-force, and having Emma Thompson cast in ‘Adventures’ will make it an even bumpier ride.

Other supporting roles written for major British talents, where they might parade their skills at dinner party banter include: Dame Maggie Smith, Christopher Plummer, Michelle Dockery, Gillian Anderson, Richard Grant, and Phyllida Law.

… I’ve written a supporting role for Emma Stone too, in my reprisal of Judy Holiday’s wacky blonde sidekick, in Iris, a clueless financial adviser at Clive Reade’s dinner. But whomever directs ‘Adventures in Paradise’ will have his/her hands full in this penultimate scene with 20 dinner party guests, fierce dialogue up and down the table, and even cameos by the pets.

Look, I’ve had as much fun as I could writing this script … knowing there are people out there who have not sold their last brain cell into bondage, and can still enjoy a really well-made comedy-caper set in London … So pass the word: perhaps film has not been entirely swallowed up by X-Men and superheroes.

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I inserted this photo just for laughs. Taken at Starbucks in LA; obviously pink underwear was the fashion trend for the day …. No role for this guy in AIP … Sorry!

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Is that all? Not really …

• OTHER LOCATIONS

There are nine major shooting locations, one of them Geneva in the Pregny Chambesy canton … Could anything could spoil this view! Well, maybe …

Thanks for stopping in @europabridge1 …

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• Emma Thompson
• Colin Firth
• Maggie Smith: A legend
• Michelle Dockery – Interview magazine
• Christopher Plummer – GQ interview

For Writers … A Tribute to Colette … Writer-Vagabond-Actress

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Adventures in Paradise by europabridge or Elan Durham, Antonia White, Audrey Hepburn, Burgundy, Cheri, Claudine, Colette Sidonie Gabrielle, Earthly Paradise, Elan Durham europabridge, Enid McLeod, French Writers, Gigi, Michelle Pfeiffer, Paris, Robert Phelps, Stephen Frear's Cheri, The Vagabond, Women Alone, Women Writers, Writing Life

This tribute to Colette is an idea I had after cracking open a book I hadn’t looked at since the 80’s The Vagabond.

I was introduced to her in Southern California by an older friend, which began with the innocent loan of The Vagabond, and ended with my reading until I’d made my way through her entire oeuvre, which includes some 50 volumes.

Along the way, I became enamored of Paris, married a Frenchman — disastrously — and eventually became a writer myself, looking back at Colette with some mixture of skepticism, nostalgia, and love, which is also the way one sometimes regards old friends who become enemies. Or perhaps in the acrimony of a bad marriage, Colette’s own contributions to my life became for a time somewhat tarnished.

Nevertheless, Colette lived a remarkable life.

Growing up in the countryside of Burgundy, raised by a woman who rightly looked upon her daughter as her greatest achievement, she went on to marry a Parisian — Willy — who would lock her up in an attic, and force her (child-labor-style) to produce some talented, and entertaining adolescent books exploring the saucy adventures of one Claudine …

The Claudine books Willy signed his name to, refusing Colette’s authorial rights, which made him a fortune, and a personage in Paris, and Colette a kind of literary slave and ultimate example of demimonde arm-candy.

Eventually they divorced, and she went on to write under her own name, tread the theatrical boards, and become one of the first entrepreneurs of that era — creating her own line of make-up, and merchandising products the way major stars do today, with her ‘Claudine’ and ‘Colette’ brands.

She was the first woman inducted into the esteemed Academie Goncourt in Paris but is known, if at all, in America as the author of Gigi, a play which launched Audrey Hepburn‘s stunning career on the stage and screen, and Leslie Caron‘s career in film.

Actually, it was Colette who discovered Audrey Hepburn … Spotting the gamine ballerina at the Hotel de Paris in Monaco, she pronounced: ‘Voila! There’s our Gigi!’

C’est tout! A star was born.

I could go on about Colette for some time, if for no other reason than her life is so storied … She wrote beautifully, lived dangerously, loved outrageously — while sometimes embracing the most time-worn cliches, yet somehow making them seem exquisitely her own.

She died at peace with champagne on her lips, and a priest’s blessings on her soul who intimated she might be something of a saint.

Not bad for a woman whose very presence in France, not unlike other revolutionary figures in Arts and Letters, provoked debates about the condition of the human soul. Covering the juvenilia of Claudine to the full-bodied and wry observations of Lea about her own Cheri, Earthy Paradise — an amazing collection of writings — forms her autobiography and temple. Edited by Robert Phelps, this remarkable tome is a testament to her generous life, capacious person, fine sensibilities, and implacable reason.

Above, a poster from Stephen Frear’s effort based on Colette’s most famous creation– Lea’s Cheri — the young lover who cannot live without his older Parisian courtesan. So very French!

An excerpt about writing from The Vagabond follows. No comment needed, Colette speaks for herself, as ‘Renee Nere’ in a stirring testament to ‘the old scar that writing represents’. This translation by Enid McLeod is a bit flowery for my tastes but never mind, it was chosen in France as one of the best twelve books of the 20th Century.

(Read from one of the links below to learn more, and check out Antonia White‘s translations.)

I love this photograph … Colette looks like a refugee in her own life.

“To write, to be able to write, what does it mean? It means spending long hours dreaming before a white page, scribbling unconsciously, letting your pen play round a blot of ink and nibble at a half-formed word, scratching it, making it bristle with darts and adorning it with antennae and paws until it loses all resemblance to a legible word and turn into a fantastic insect or a fluttering creature half butterfly, half fairy.

Gigi (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

To write is to sit and stare, hypnotized, at the reflection of the window in the silver ink-stand, to feel the divine fever mounting to one’s cheeks and forehead while the hand that writes grows blissfully numb upon the paper. It also means idle hours curled up in the hollow of the divan, and then the orgy of inspiration from which one emerges stupefied and aching all over, but already recompensed and laden with treasures that one unloads slowly on to the virgin paper in the little round pool of light under the lamp.

To write is to pour one’s innermost self passionately upon the tempting paper, at such frantic speed that sometimes one’s hand struggles and rebels, over-driven by the impatient god who guides it — and to find, next day, in place of the golden bough that bloomed miraculously in that dazzling hour, a withered bramble and a stunted flower.

To write is the joy and torment of the idle. Oh to write! From time to time I feel a need, as sharp as thirst in summer, to note and to describe. And then I take up my pen again and attempt the perilous and elusive task of seizing and pinning down, under its flexible double-pointed nib, the many-hued, fugitive, thrilling, adjective … The attack does not last long; it is but the itching of an old scar.

It takes too much time to write. And the trouble is, I am no Balzac! The fragile story I am constructing crumbles away when the tradesman rings, or the shoemaker sends in his bill, when the solicitor, or one’s counsel, telephones, or when the theatrical agent summons me to his office for ‘a social engagement at the house of some people of very good position but not in the habit of paying large fees.’

The problem is, since I have been living alone, that I have had first to live, then to divorce, and then to go on living, To do all that demands incredible activity and persistence. And to get where? Is there, for me, no other haven than this commonplace room done up in gimcrack Louis XVI? Must I stay forever before this impenetrable mirror where I come up against myself, face to face?

Tomorrow is Sunday: that means afternoon and evening performances at the Empyree-Clichy. Two o’clock already! High time for a woman of letters who has turned out badly to go to sleep.”

From The Vagabond by Colette. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, New York 1955

RELATED ARTICLES:

• Earthly Paradise
• Colette: The Gift & Grandeur of Paris – Style Icon
• MTI Musicals Paris – Colette Collage
• Claudine a l’ecole – French television
• Architectural Digest – Colette’s Palais Royal Apartment
• Secrets of the Flesh – Judith Thurman (Autobiography)
• Reliving Colette’s Riviera – Judith Thurman T&L
• Colette’s Home of the Heart – NYT’s Travel
• Colette’s Obit – NYT’s 1954
• Writers in Paris – Palais Royal
• La Vagabonde (French) – Colette – www.archive.org University of Toronto
• My Mother’s House & Sido – Colette (booklolly.wordpress.com)
• About Elan Durham
• Adventures in Paradise by europabridge Elan Durham