Unwatched Movie Fest #2: Oz Scott's Bustin' Loose

 Bustin' Loose

Richard Pryor, Cicely Tyson. Dir. Oz Scott, Universal, 1981

I. INT - a typical studio exec's office on the Universal lot. Studio Exec Guy (SEG) sits behind his big mahogany desk. Hopeful Movie Pitcher (HMP) sits across from him. We start as HMP pitches.

HMP: So the idea is, Edgy Comic of Color plays a parolee blackmailed into driving a social worker and eight unwanted children from Philly to Washington State to live on a farm. Along the way we lens a number of seriocomic vignettes as ECoC discovers his worth while helping the kids find their own. It's kind of a heartwarming, humanistic road comedy."

SEG: Fabulous. Some notes. You say Edgy Comic of Color plays a parolee. So he's been in prison?

HMP: Yes.

SEG: Where he was held wrongfully and now he's out to get his own back?

HMP: Well, no. He's been in and out of trouble most of his life and now, in his mid-30s, he's running out of chances.

SEG: Because of all his arrests for vigilantism. Does he wear a cool cape?

HMP: No. He's a con man and a burglar. In fact, the movie will open with a set piece wherein ECoC poses as a race-card-playing delivery driver to rob a warehouse full of electronics. He'll do this criminal-clown character and-

SEG: I don't know, HMP. Audiences are into this "woke" thing. Want to know why we always cast black men as criminals, especially clownish ones. You're sure he hasn't been caught running guns to Haitian freedom fighters?

HMP: My grandparents came from Haiti and-

SEG: Oh, it's great there in March, right? So this social worker. Any chance it's an attractive female ECoC can meet cute and fall in love with?

HMP: Actually, yes.

SEG: Great! Are you thinking Margot Robbie or maybe going younger? There's a new Fanning girl getting good notices.

HMP: So we were thinking another comic, a Cool Comediene of Color like __________.

SEG: Interesting. Isn't she, like, 37?

HMP: I believe she's 29.

SEG: And the Fanning is 17. Think about it. So this parole officer. We're going crusty hardass with his own agenda, a Ray Romano-type, maybe, he's kinda hot now.

HMP: Well, again, our thought was a Goofy Brown Dude like ______.

SEG: An all-POC cast. So this is conceptual. We'd want a Spike Lee to direct. Spike's a pain and his movies only do well if they get nominated for something. I mean, if we pushed the action, we could get F. Gary Gray. If we pushed the comedy, we could get Ice Cube to direct and star.

HMP: Is there a demographic left on Earth that finds 'Cube "edgy"?

SEG: It's a direction, though. Tell me about these 'seriocomic vignettes.' I had to look "seriocomic" up - gonna remember that next Scrabble night!

SEG: Right, so we think our best gag has the bus get stuck in mud and ECoC, who goes out looking for help, runs into a KKK march, and manages to convince them to help push the bus out, while the KKK fall into the mud.

HMP: I like it - here and now, you and me, Klan-bashing's good shit. Thing is, southern neocon asswipes buy a lot of movie tickets and they're pretty sensitive about KKK jokes. If David Duke or StormFront gets hold of this it could mean pickets, bomb threats, kissing off the southeastern market outside, maybe, Atlanta. Memphis is a big black market...

HMP: Your studio considers the feelings of KKK members?

SEG: We have to see them as potential ticket-buyers. Someone has to go to the movies. Speaking of, what kind of budget were you thinking?

HMP: That's the great part. ECoC will defer his salary for points and Goofy Brown Guy said he'd work for scale. Even though it's a road picture, the New Mexico tax credit means enough savings we could just find places that fill in for the south and Washington. We think we could bring this one in at 7, maybe 8 mill.

SEG: That puts the project more in our Focus Features, Oscar-bait division, but Focus is pushing a biopic of a blind polka player and an ensemble dramedy about the early 20th century movement to outlaw blackjack gum. I tell ya, small movies scare us. We don't really know their audience. Could the school bus jump a flaming river at some point?

HMP: There wouldn't be any point! Look, it's simple. The movie shows flawed people finding their worth through each other and people who believe themselves without flaws finding their humanity. It's a meditation, if you want, on how many paths we can find to redemption. We're thinking of calling it Bustin' Loose. It's a humanist/social realism-comedy.

SEG: I mean, have you pitched Searchlight? Or Sony? I think the new Tarantino got delayed again and they're probably looking for an arty kinda thing for fall.

HMP: So even with two ECoCs and a GBG you can't get an uplifting family-friendly movie with a message of love and tolerance made in Hollywood.

SEG: Not this year. You got anything else?

HMP: I mean, my writing partner said something about a grizzly bear who plays the trumpet, but -

SEG: Yeah, we'll make that. You guys do it for 60 mill?