My screenplay

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Redesigning Eva
by Connor Bible

Eva Parker is an 18-year old with no life. Skinny, short and nerdy, she believes she is isolated from the rest of the world. Her best friend, Carmen is a nihilistic Goth close to "ending it all." She and her lover Brian rarely talk, and have not officially consummated their attraction, and she is constantly harassed and intimidated by the Scarlets, a group of hallocinogen-addled rich girls. She goes to fellow nerd Patricia "Trish" Scott to seek existential advice, but to no avail. Eva does some soul-searching that same night, and realizes that to "show them all who [she] really [is]", she must completely "redesign" herself, physically and mentally. But how? She hears word of a bioresearch facility outside of town owned by the Prometheus Corporation. The previous year, the conglomerate had become known for successfully performing gene therapy on mice to increase their vision threefold. Going to the Prometheus Corp. offices (located in a small building adjacent to the labs), Eva meets James Holden, a British geneticist, and volunteers for Prometheus's "pet project", codenamed Aphrodite. Holden advises that she not do so, but Eva brazenly goes foward. Placed into suspended animation with an artificial womb-like structure, the Prometheus Corporation genetic engineers alter her DNA. A day later, Eva awakens to find her old body gone; it has been gifted with an appearance "that seemed to fit a goddess" and her physical attributes (strength, speed, agility, etc.) are increased to superhuman levels. Changing her mindset to that of a good-natured, though blatantly self-centered, superchick, Eva begins to view herself as almost superior to those around her, but eventually finds a flaw in this new "mask" that just might lead her to salvation, perhaps even freedom from the labyrinth of her soul...

So, what do you think? Cinematic gold or surefire flop with mainstream audiences?

I apologize for not adding the following to the original post. A lot of things have come up recently that have prevented me from writing this.

Ever since I conjured up Redesigning Eva in my mind, I've struggled desperately to come up with a director to handle this, an existential sci-fi drama. You may not agree with me on some of these choices, but here I go.

Director
David Fincher- The Curious Case of Benjamin Button was just exhilirating, both visually and emotionally. Why not?
David Lynch- After watching a bit of Twin Peaks on Chiller, I figured he could do well. But then again, he might be too surreal for my tastes.
Darren Aronofsky- I have not seen his works, given their graphic content. However, given the enormous amount of critical fanfare that follows him everywhere he goes, I'll give him a shot.
Ridley Scott- The guy that directed Blade Runner? Definitely!

I was trying to list the entire cast, but ultimately I decided to focus on our protagonist.

Eva Parker- I'd would wholeheartedly say that Molly Ringwald was born to play this character. Why, you ask? Beats me. The only bodies of work of hers I've seen are The Secret Life of the American Teenager and the mini-series adaptation of The Stand. You can laugh at what I've said all you want, because I don't care what those ignorant Ringwald-bashers say. They can just go home and watch their prepackaged Disney crap, because they don't even have the brains to recognize true talent!

Sorry about that! Went off into a little tangent there.

The role of Eva Parker would be a challenge for Ringwald, but mentally and physically. Eva is a far cry from the feminismo-filled heroines Ringwald is normally typecast. Here we have a young woman who is so isolated from the world that she has to completely change herself. Physically, though... Eva, of course, has to different physiques: "awkward" and "divine", so Ringwald would have to seriously hit the gym for the latter. "But Connor, Molly Ringwald's 41-years old! How the hell are you gonna make her look eighteen?" Simple. Remember how in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, the actors were given "digital facelifts" to give off the impression of being young and old? That's exactly what I'm going to have the special effects department do!

sounds to me like a story for a teenage comedy movie, did you plan on making it a comedy ?. no offense but you have to start at the bottom and work your way up expecting to just get a big budget and top directors for a story like this when its your first movie is just not reallistic unless your script is really good. again i dont mean to offend you or anything but this is a pretty standard story if i get this right that you want it to be like she gets more popular and then abandons her old friends for the popular people and then she goes back to her old friends at the end ?.

Last edited by TB on 17 Jun 2009, 11:47 am, edited 1 time in total.

This is in no way a comedy. Also, I not intentionally making the story simple; I'm stuck writing the script, and am trying to find an effective means to explore Eva's psyche.

I don't know if this can help but maybe it could help you explore why Eva makes her choices. I was a fat kid. I blamed all my weirdness on the fact that I was fat. I lost weight and actually looked pretty but I wasn't normal because I was still me but I still blamed my weirdness on the fact that I still had physical flaws. I kept thinking if I fixed everything and had no physical flaws, I'd be free to be whatever I wanted and wouldn't be weird anymore.

In time I realized that women and girls don't really want to be beautiful as much as they want to be flawless so that they won't have anything for anyone to target about their looks so they won't feel bad about themselves. It's an impossible goal.

If everyone had the procedure Eva had, then they'd all be flawless and not be something people want anymore. They'd be boring.

Alright... I've got good news and bad news about the progress of the screenplay. Good news: I wrote four short scenes. Yay. Bad news: I have writer's block.

Close, but no Cigar(one of the characters). Body image is not a theme of Redesigning Eva at all; in fact, its much deeper, more esoteric.

A major theme of the script is that Eva is a young woman divided into three Jungian archetypes: the Self, the center of her psyche; the Shadow, the opposite of her ego and the Persona, the "mask". For example, after her procedure created the Persona, her darker aspects, those of the Shadow, come into fold, and are further strengthened by the rigid system of her school (represented by the savage beatings inflicted on students deemed "pathetic" by the gym teacher Christine) and by the influence of the psychopathic Scarlet leader Natasha, to the point that Eva realizes that she has lost any semblance of humanity and has become a number, another test subject for the Prometheus Corporation. At the end, the three sides of her reconcile, and Eva finds happiness in her life.

That sounds good.

Could you explain why? Is it the complexity? My star/director choices?

Waiting for reply...

I think the star and director choices are premature, and might be putting limits on your writing.

If this is your screenplay, then it should be the story that you want to tell, before you start deciding who is going to be given license to interpret your work. If particularly directors and performers help you visualize your story (and pictures are so much more effective, for me), I think that changing them up with each draft will help you make fuller characters, and a stronger story.

You have a strong mechanical element to the story--the sci-fi fairy godmother that turns the heroine into an ideal. But you haven't fleshed out what she does with her new persona, the flaw in her mask (and how she discovers it) or how (or whether) she redeems her original self.

Keep writing!

Sounds like a standard plot, but plot alone doesn't make a story. You need to have compelling characters that interact. You do need to develop what drives Ava, what the flaw in her mask is, and what her ultimate realization is.

I don't follow that.

There is also the issue of plausibility. Even when I have written with the idea just to have things exist and not explain how, I have had critiquers tell me, "That's not possible," "It wouldn't work that way." Or such. There are huge ethical issues in your story with genetic manipulation. That has to be dealt with.

The person was right who said you won't be able to get a certain famous director, and Ringwald is probably in her late thirties now.

God, I suck at writing.

P.S.: The plot summary was from a VERY early version.

No you're not. That's very clever for a teenager. You're story will get better as you grow older. Just don't give up.

You're right about the fact that I haven't fleshed out the themes yet. Speaking of plausibility, this isn't exactly "hard" science fiction, as it places much more emphasis on character and story rather than scientific accuracy. Look at films like Blade Runner(which is a big influence on this project); they didn't go into detail as to how the Replicants were created, and it turned out quite well. You could say Redesigning Eva is a psychological sci-fi piece just by the post I made about the Jungian archetypes. I apologize if said post was not very clear. The Shadow's aspects tie in with a major theme in the script: dehumanization. Essentially, Eva is dehumanized in the process of becoming almost superhuman, devolving into what I call a negative Ubermensch. Let me quote Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Nietzsche:

"What is the ape to man? A laughingstock or a painful embarrassment. And man shall be just that for the overman: a laughingstock or a painful embarrassment…"

This quote ties in Eva's thoughts about her day-to-day existence. In her previous state, as the melancholic, over-worked insomniac, she feels powerless, but when imbued with her perfect traits, combined with her already great intelligence, she becomes a pinnacle of humanity. But the sense of power gnaws at her psyche, compelling her to commit amoral acts, such as one scene in which she, of her own volition, gets high on the hallucinogenic Kubrick Orange given to her by Natasha, who herself could be considered a negative Ubermensch. During this "trip", Eva realizes the self-centeredness of her decision to be "redesigned". After failing to prevent Carmen's suicide, she goes off the deep end, with the internal conflict within her reaching a fever pitch. This psychological breakdown is exactly what Prometheus Corp. wants to see, so they can manipulate Eva's fragile mind(for reason which could be explain in a possible sequel). So not is there a theme of genetic manipulation, but of mental manipulation.

I don't really know why I see Eva bearing a disturbing resemblance to Molly Ringwald. She just clicked with the character.

It doesn't matter if you're good. Just write. And thart's thew only way you can improve. And it doesn't hurt to dream