SCREENPLAY SYNOPSES
(All are copyrighted by NADJA PRODUCTIONS)
ANGELS IN THE DUST: This is an action film set in the airplane racing milieu. Skip and Stephen Spencer are brothers, scions of a pilots' dynasty. They race propellor-driven airplanes around pylons at speeds of four hundred miles per hour, often as low as fifty feet above the ground. Their relationship, already saturated with lifelong competitiveness, is twisted further when their father tells them that he has designed a radical new plane, the UR-1, and that whichever of them wins the Tahoe Cup at the Reno Air Nationals will fly the plane next season. How far will the brothers go to win the prize? Sabotage is the least of their sins. Famed pilot Mira Slovak, who won the first Reno Air Nationals in 1964, served as Technical Consultant for the script, about which Isacson Productions' script evaluator wrote, A well put together story of gripping action but also possessed of a touching, even timeless tone. The brother versus brother conflict is as common as mankind's many other cares, which adds the balance of pathos. Just the right mix of eccentric and incidental characters adds the real life credibility and counterpoint. Positive lessons of loyalty and fraternal love largely reinforcing assertion of the positive side of thought. There is the whole element of the buddy picture as well as the triumph of the individual over a corporate bimbocracy that is made to seem most sinister. Sort of a Cain & Abel 'Top Gun' with the underdog out on top. Features a title song. (Semi-Finalist, 1997 Monterey County Film Commission Screenplay Competition)
BAHIA DE SANGRE: Two men (Lenny Winner, a monumentally successful luxury resort developer, and Bruce McCoy, the surviving member of a world famous musical duo), meet again after nearly four decades when Lenny offers Bruce $75,000 to perform at the opening of his new Baja California resort on La Bahia de la Vida, or “the Bay of Life.” Lenny and Bruce were childhood friends in a Los Angeles suburb before Bruce's musical interests set him on a separate path from Lenny the entrepreneur. When Lenny witnesses a startling videotaped confession by Bruce, and pockets the tape, both men must bear the weight of conscience. (2005)
CHIRICAHUA: Based on a true story. During the late 19th century, the Apaches were hunted by the American and the Mexican armies as they plundered several thousand square miles across two countries. Helping them to elude superior forces for twenty years was a woman named Lozen, sister of Chief Victorio. Lozen was a shamaness and a warrior who, before soldiers could be seen or heard approaching, would stand in the center of a circle of Apaches, raise her palms, and slowly spin around. When her palms turned purple, she would say, “They are coming from that direction.” Lozen, who never married, was famed as a cunning and ruthless fighter. Only one photo of her exists. It was taken outside the railroad car that would carry her, the medicine man Geronimo, and the other survivors of the band to an Alabama prison, where Lozen died of tuberculosis.(Commissioned; Optioned, 2000; Semi-Finalist, scr[i]pt magazine screenplay international competition, 2001; Honorable Mention, Best in the West Screenplay Competition, 2001)
CITIZEN COPS: This is a two-hour television series pilot script about unarmed volunteer civilian "police" set in New York City. These men and women come from every walk of life. An ensemble piece, the series is designed to cover three aspects of each character's life (personal and work lives, plus what happens each night on the beat), thereby ensuring dozens of different episodes. Features a studio-recorded title song. (Commissioned)
CONQUEST: The year: 60AD. The place: Southeast England during the Roman Occupation. King Prasutagus of the Iceni has just died. In order to appease Nero, Prasutagus has willed his two virgin daughters to the Roman emperor. The widowed queen, Boudicca, is outraged, and because of her public outburst Suetonius the Roman governor has her flogged while his slaves rape Boudicca's daughters. The new Iceni queen raises an army of 200,000 rebel Britons, and they burn down London after massacring every man, woman and child in their path. Facilis Cerealis, a retired forty year old Roman legion commander now living in a splendid Roman-style villa he built on English land granted him by a grateful emperor for his work in the legendary Caratacus campaign, is pressed back into service by Suetonius as part of the plan to destroy the rebels once and forever. In the final confrontation, ten thousand Roman legionaires, led by Facilis, battle over one hundred thousand Britons. Based on the writings of Roman historians Tacitus and Dio Cassio, CONQUEST also features Druidry's esoteric practices as it dramatizes what Sir Winston Churchill called "...[T]he most horrible episode our island has known. We see the crude and corrupt beginnings of a higher civilisation blotted out by the ferocious uprising of the native tribes. Still, it is the primary right of men to die and kill for the land they live in, and to punish with exceptional severity all members of their own race who have warmed their hands at the invaders' hearth." (Written on spec, 2001)
EAST OF SOLEDAD: This film arose from Mr. García's voluntary service on the 1995 Monterey County Grand Jury, during which he learned (a) that the county grand jury is administered an altered, phony oath which prohibits these ordinary citizens from investigating criminal allegations lodged against the rich and powerful; (b) that the County Sheriff had committed voter fraud in the previous election, as well as other crimes; (c) that the District Attorney covered up the crimes; and (d) that a Salinas policeman born in Mexico was an active drug smuggler, protected by the county's legal machine. This screenplay centers on the fruitless efforts of a retired Sheriff's deputy to bring the Sheriff to justice through a grand jury system designed to fail. While pursuing prosecution of the Sheriff, the ex-deputy discovers the drug smuggling scheme, in which bags of drugs are dropped from airplanes flying over the Salinas cop's mountain ranch, east of the small town of Soledad. The echo of Steinbeck's EAST OF EDEN is intentional: EAST OF SOLEDAD tells what is being done to the descendants of Steinbeck's Tom Joad by a system as ruthlessly corrupt as any encountered during the Great Depression. Features the studio-recorded song "Smoking Gun (A Backwater Tale)." (Written on spec)
IN A DREAM, DESCENDING: This is the second part of Mr. García's MEXICO TRILOGY, and is freely adapted from the Greek myth of Orpheus. Set in Mazatlán, Mexico City and the Sierra Hidalgo, this script tells the story of Orfeo, a resort gigolo who, with his politically active partner Rodolfo, seduces unhappily-married American women in his beachfront villa and induces them to acts of depravity in front of a two-way mirror, behind which his partner photographs them. Then they sell the photos to the outraged gringo cuckolds. Orfeo is saving his money to move to Denver. His partner Rodolfo is buying guns and attempting to finance a rural uprising. The story kicks into gear when the duo victimizes an American oilman with ties to the Mexican police. When the pair appear outside the Mazatlán hotel with their latest photos, they're met with gunfire. In the confusion, Terry Brinkman, Orfeo's latest conquest, decides she'd rather be with her androgynous seducer. She leaps into his Ferrari just as he's burning rubber, headed for a Mexico City hideout. From there, they drive to Orfeo's childhood village high in the mountains, where they are tracked down by a professional government assassin. Features the song “Yolanda.” The first scene can be found on another web page. (Written on spec) View the opening scene.
IN THE TEMPLE OF THE LIVING GOD: It's 1980 in Monterey, California. When two men come into his parents' home, a young boy overhears a threatening conversation in the living room. Seems the two men, restaurateur Tazio Senestreri and Monterey Police Lieutenant Joe Cass, want to buy their Mom 'n' Pop Cannery Row market, and Mom and Pop don't want to sell. A week later, their charred corpses are found in the smoldering ruins of the market. The boy is sent to a military boarding school. Cut to the 21st Century: The boy, now an ex-Special Forces intelligence officer, has come back to Monterey, and he wants to know who killed his parents. Suspect Number One: The King of Cannery Row, Tazio Senestreri, now fabulously rich and politically potent. The film's explosive climax comes just after the John Steinbeck Centennial Celebration of January 27, 2002, at which former Clinton Chief of Staff Leon Panetta, good friend of Tazio Senestreri, was the keynote speaker. Based on the famous 1980 Cannery Row arson fires and their aftermath. (Read the entire screenplay)
KEEP MY HEART HALF BROKEN: Due to his uncovering of corruption and criminality in the Monterey County Planning Department, investigative reporter Reinaldo Garcia spent two years fighting politically-motivated criminal charges filed against him by Monterey County for a legal storage shed on his property. After the costly case was dismissed by a Deputy DA who compared the county's public officials to a lynch mob, Reinaldo wrote this fact-based narrative which blends a political thriller with songs he wrote while under prosecution. His 2003 CD, The Bright Twist of My Soul, forms the soundtrack for this screenplay about one man speaking truth to power, and the price he paid. (Read the entire screenplay)
LIBERTY & LIBERTAD: In 1835, three passengers (Mexican intellectual Luz Ofelia de la Cruz, her slave Alma, and Boston businessman Thomas Larkin) emerge from a sailing ship docking in Monterey Bay, California. Using the cover of a church-supported theological investigation, the two women stay at the Carmel Mission while planning their real task: the theft of a priceless 16 century Aztec manuscript depicting the Spanish Conquest. They are aided in their quest by prostitute Daneen “Liberty” O'Brien, whose own agenda is ultimately revealed. As Californios plot their revolution against the Mexican government, Larkin and other foreigners manipulate the chaos to their own ends by financing La Compania Extranjera, a ragtag militia. In November 1836, the insurgents overwhelm the sparse Mexican Army and declare California an independent nation, with Monterey as its capitol. Meanwhile, Luz Ofelia, Alma and Liberty struggle with a treasure chest containing the manuscript, plus unexpected golden Aztec relics. Based on historical events. (Winner, "Monterey County On Location Award," 2002 Monterey County Film Commission Screenplay Competition; Honorable Mention, 2001 Monterey County Film Commission Screenplay Competition; Honorable Mention, Best in the West Screenplay Competition, 2001)
MISTER MACDOUGAL & I: The year: 1962. The place: Iowa. Twelve-year-old Robert Williams' mother has abandoned him and her plumbing contractor husband. Robert's father has married a shrewish materialist with two unruly sons, who pick on the delicate Robert mercilessly. Robert, who believes he is a displaced British aristocrat, copes by calling himself Lord Rupert Pentland, and he speaks with a dead-on upper-class English accent. At night, he fantasizes himself a knight on horseback, saving his absent mother from a castle. Only one adult, half-Native American songwriter Jimmy MacDougal, an employee at Rupert's father's plumbing business, understands the boy, whose heart is broken when he learns that soon Jimmy will drive west to Los Angeles to record his song "Seven Times Monday" with jazz singer Carmen McRae. Because Los Angeles is the city where Rupert's mother has resettled, Rupert hatches a scheme to accompany Jimmy on the drive across America. After many adventures, they arrive in Santa Monica, at the dead end of Route 66, on the day Marilyn Monroe died. Features the David MacKechnie-Dave Dillon "Seven Times Monday," plus an improvised folk song after the climax, when Rupert sheds his prissy persona and reunites with his mother. (Written on spec for Jimmy Smits; Honorable Mention, Best in the West Screenwriting Competition, 1999)
MY ARABIAN DRUMS: This film investigates the AIDS epidemic and political opportunism. Set in the imaginary Central Coast town of Santa Lucía, MY ARABIAN DRUMS (named after an image from the Bob Dylan song "Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands," which is featured in the film) tells how unemployed white heterosexual male Perris Romano ends up working at the Santa Lucía AIDS Project, or SLAP, disseminating AIDS pamphlets and condoms to Latinos at a gay beach north of the town, where Perris observes sexual activities he'd never dreamt possible. (Romano, married to a Mexican, speaks fluent Spanish.) Romano's plight gets even stranger when he reads a newspaper article about the troubles of U.C. Berkeley molecular biologist and tenured professor Dr. Peter Duesberg, whose open break from the AIDS scientific establishment caused him to be branded a heretic, while his grants dry up and his reputation goes down the tubes. Perris, a 1960s Berkeley alumnus, drives to Berkeley and interviews Dr. Duesberg. (As did Mr. García.) After reading Dr. Duesberg's scientific papers, and articles about him, Perris attempts to re-educate his co-workers. Big mistake. They've invested their entire lives in a shared and profitable victimhood. And then there's the serial killer stalking and killing gay Latinos. Guess who's the main suspect? (Written on spec)
ROSALIE: This is based on the true story of Rosalie Evans, an American widow who was murdered by the Mexican President in 1924, and comprises part three of Mr. García's MEXICO TRILOGY. During the late 19th century, Rosalie married English banker Harry Evans, and they settled into their huge hacienda east of Mexico City while Evans toiled for an English bank. After the Mexican Revolution (really a civil war) began, the devoted couple emigrated to America. When the bloodshed ceased, Harry returned to the hacienda, then sent for Rosalie. He died before she arrived at the hacienda, which had been taken over by Marxist-led campesinos who had been promised, falsely, that the hacienda would become an agricultural university. Using her political influence and her dedication to Christianity, Rosalie the wealthy socialite regained her hacienda, paid the Indians a living wage, and started farming once again. This was unacceptable to the xenophobic Mexicans, and after six years of political intrigue and intimidation, Rosalie was shot by one of her favorite workers as she drove along a country road to pay the Indians who'd just brought in a bumper crop. Mr. García thoroughly researched Mrs. Evans' life, and he snuck into the present day hacienda (owned by descendants of one of Mexico's presidents) to look around and take photos. (Semi-Finalist, 1997 Monterey County Film Commission Screenplay Competition; Optioned, 2005, by Lulonga Productions)
THE SERPENT GUARDIAN: This supernatural horror story, part one of Mr. García's MEXICO TRILOGY, is set in the mountains above Cuernavaca, where Mr. García lived for several months in a small village 10,000 feet above sea level, apprenticing to a bruja, or sorceress. It tells the tale of a Chicano family which drives to Cuernavaca one summer so that the two children, Talía and Virgilio, can discover their roots. Talía has been cursed with strange nightmares which are actually visions of an ancient apocalyptic Aztec prophesy which foretells the expulsion of all foreigners from Mexico when the sleeping volcanoes awaken. As they approach the mountain village above Cuernavaca, an ex-anthropology professor and current brujo named Don Salvador is jerked from his nap by Talía's visions. The elderly Don Salvador believes he is the reincarnation of the last Aztec prince, and that Talía is his long lost bride. Using his magical powers, Don Salvador ingratiates himself with Talía's parents, and becomes a kind of friendly uncle to the two children. Stealing moments--literally--Don Salvador tutors Talía in the mantic arts, only to discover that her powers dwarf his. This film , which features multi-dimensional special effects, Aztec history, Mexican anthropology, and huge monsters, culminates with a battle to the death between Don Salvador and Talía, his upstart protégé. (Semi-Finalist, 1997 Monterey County Film Commission Screenplay Competition)
VILE AFFECTIONS: In 1853, just after California has achieved American statehood, the state government sends the California Rangers on a mission to eliminate the Joaquin Murrieta gang. Leading the Rangers is the tall Mexican-born Octavio Perez, who has just eloped with Clementina Babcock, the daughter of a Central California Coast judge, who condemns the marriage. Just before the Rangers depart for the Big Sur Coast, Octavio appoints Miguel Chavez his next-in-command, thereby outraging his passed-over longtime lieutenant, Diego. Vengeful Diego vows to destroy Octavio by skillfully persuading General Perez to believe his new bride has had an affair with Miguel Chavez. This Latino Western is based on a tragic romance found in a collection of stories by the Italian writer Giambattista Cinzio Giraldi called Gli Ecatommiti (The Hundred Tales), which was published in 1565, and translated into French in 1584. (Semi-Finalist, 2001 Monterey County Film Commission Screenplay Competition) (Read the entire screenplay)
Reinaldo García has written other screenplays, including the spec script THE HOUSE OF MANY MIRRORS, and the commissioned THE FAIR WITNESS, HALFWAY HOME, and PILLARS OF THE SEA. He also has registered ten screenplay treatments and two television series outlines with the Writers Guild.
1996: Painter/college instructer/investigative journalist Perris Romano and his Mexican wife Maria, an executive with a multinational publishing corporation, have bought a fixer-upper in the African-American controlled town of Seaside, California. Just after they move in, a black crack addict neighbor threatens to kill them. When the Romanos get a restraining order, which the crack addict violates, the African-American mayor and city manager intervene on behalf of the crack addict, with whom they have a vague connection, and attempt to intimidate Romano into dropping his criminal complaint, with the added incentive of a payment from city funds if he does so. After Romano makes a futile attempt to file a criminal report against the mayor and city manager, the Seaside Police are ordered to treat Romano as a 5150 (insane) racist wacko, and to shoot him dead if possible. Based on real incidents, this text comes with a CD containing a secretly recorded conversation with the mayor of Seaside, in which he admits everything.
2020 AFTER DARK: In the year 2020 A.D., 77 year old Pulitzer Prizewinning cowboy rancher playwright Steve Rogers is kidnapped by 70 year old writer/ranch hand Cody Ransom, whose work Rogers stole in 1983, only to see it praised, awarded, then made into a film. The aggrieved writer has cyberstalked the famous dramatist for 37 years, invisibly sabotaging his life, and on this night in the famous writer's studio, he finishes what was started in San Francisco's Magic Theater at the world premiere of "Fool for Love" in early 1983, when Rogers threatened to kill Ransom if he persisted in his claim of plagiarism by the American icon.
CAUGHT IN THE MYSTERY: This full-length musical, an expansion of the one-act play HUNGER, ran for six weeks in Los Angeles in 1983-84. An investigation into identity, set in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, it tells the story of Loopy the Wolf's efforts to redeem himself after he's thrown out of his pack for infidelity. During his exile, the starving wolf runs into Harry, a middle-aged sheep in a midlife crisis, who talks Loopy out of eating him. Instead, he invites Loopy to meet his family, including his teen-age son, Elroy, who receives permission from his parents to join Loopy in his mountain wanderings. Elroy and Loopy concoct a harebrained scheme whereby Loopy will regain admission to his pack. Songs by Reinaldo García and New York City's Rusty Magee. (Optioned for animation)
THE CIRCULAR RUINS: This is Mr. García's adaptation of the late Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges' famous myth, written while Mr. García was between screenplays while living in the Mexican mountains above Cuernavaca. Several years later, while he was teaching songwriting under the aegis of Cal State University Fresno, his student Mary Wada-Roath set the libretto to music. The result is a 40-minute "operetta," recorded in studios in Fresno and San Jose, California in 1994. (Available on CD)
THE DEATH OF REINALDO GARCÍA: A full-length mixed media piece, this work opens with the one-act play HUNGER, then morphs into an autobiographical cabaret piece featuring Mr. García's songs, which are connected by monologues that investigate Mr. García's Mexican sojourn, his return to Texas as an investigative journalist, and his assassination by police-uniformed Mexican narcotraffickers who have infiltrated local law enforcement. Mr. García drew heavily from documented events in south Texas (where Mexican gangs have taken over American ranches), and from death threats and police violence he himself endured while investigating a corrupt Central Coast city administration.
EVERY GIRL A PRINCESS: Premiered in Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1985, where it was chosen “Best New Play of the Year,” this one-act piece tells the story of a waitress and her mutually obsessive relationship with a mysterious customer who challenges her to abandon the bourgeois belief system he claims has enslaved her. Written in 1981 in the back of a Greyhound bus bound for Ukiah, California.
FAMILY ROMANCE: This one man performance piece, featuring Reinaldo García's songs, linked by monologues, tells the story of his life as it evolved from California's San Fernando Valley in the 1950s to Christmas 2000, when his 72-year-old father ran off and married the 35-year-old illegal immigrant Filipina live-in nurse who had cared for Reinaldo's dying grandmother while pocketing the millionaire widow's jewelry and cash. A tale of suicide, drug addiction, alcoholism and sexual betrayal, FAMILY ROMANCE explores how Reinaldo García learned to turn his instinctive survival strategies into art and entertainment as he journeyed through Berkeley in the 60s, Hollywood in the 70s, seven years in a rural monastery, and Mexico in the 1980s, where he apprenticed to a bruja, wrote screenplays, performed his music, and met his Mexican wife. Written in Monterey, California, February 2001. Comes with a 14 song CD soundtrack, featuring “Family Romance,” “On the Grindstone,” “The Fate of Rosie BlueRain,” “3311 Hamilton Way,” “Glen Annie Rd., Storke Road, Next Right,” “The Red Moon Ecstasies,” “Fool for Love,” “The Other Side of the Mirror,” “Haunted,” “Bright Flame,” “Alma My Dear,” “Memory & Desire,” “My Barefoot Chicanita,” and “The Older I Get, The Better I Was.”
HUNGER: Written during a forty minute lunch break while Mr. García participated in the 1981 Bay Area Playwrights Festival, this much-performed one-act tells the story of Loopy the Wolf and Harry the Sheep, who meet one night on a mountain ledge. Prompted by a Sufi saying (“Every man has a sheep and a wolf inside him. His life's task is not to let the wolf eat the sheep, nor allow the sheep to civilize the wolf”), the play explores the perpetual tension between our animal and our human natures.
PLAYTIME IN THE WEASEL WARD: Set in a modern day community college playwriting class, this piece investigates how a trendy feminist instructor's obsessions with political correctness (“Modern theater needs more male-bashing plays,” she announces) corrupt the creative spirit and ultimately foster violence in her classroom.
THEFT: Chosen as a semi-finalist by Houston's prestigious Country Playhouse during a 1985 competition, this 90-minute one-act also garnered for Mr. García the position of Playwright-in-Residence for the state of New Mexico between 1985 and 1987, under a National Endowment for the Arts grant. It tells the story of Venice, California, art forger Perris Romano's attempts to escape to Santa Fe, so that he can buy a ranch and devote himself to his "serious painting," while raising the unborn child his pregnant wife carries. The obstacles? When he and his wife Jennifer entered into a menage a trois with Penelope, a lesbian midwife, Mrs. Romano discovered she prefers women. To confuse things even further, Peter Guerre, a charismatic African-American performance artist, enters the Venice studio as a guest of Perris' patron, Hector La Faye, the night before the Romanos' planned departure for New Mexico, while Penelope is bidding them a provisional farewell. All Perris wants is to receive his final cash payment and begin a new life. Sexual and financial power games reduce the essentially honest Perris to raging, sobbing hysteria. This prescient 1983 piece investigates the then-little known socially-sanctioned assault on the heterosexual white male's "cultural dominance" born of “historical privilege.”