"The Prize," my ready-to-steal spiritual screenplay idea

I've never written a screenplay. I've only read one screenplay. But I know from watching TV and movies that pitches for screenplays often take the form of X meets Y. And I can do that much.

The Da Vinci Code meets Contact.

There... million dollar screenplay contract, please. Major movie studios can reach me at the email address in the right sidebar.

But actually I'm fine with someone stealing my idea, which is a mixture of spiritual (a la The Da Vinci Code) and far-out scientific (a la Contact), since I'd love to see the movie that I'm unable to write a screenplay for.

Not only because I don't know how to write a screenplay. Also because in my current irreligious state of mind I have no idea how the plot would come to a satisfying conclusion. 

Here's the notion that came to mind quite a few years ago. 

My mental movie starts with a view from afar of a fancy corporate jet making its way to somewhere or other. Zooming in, going right through the glass of a window on the plane, we see the interior. 

Lavish, but not Trumpian ostentatious. Beautiful flight attendants are serving food and drink to a few well-dressed passengers. One passenger, though, a gray-haired older man, is too absorbed in his reading material to partake. The camera pans around to the cover of his book. 

It is Marcus Aurelius' Meditations. 

We soon learn that the man, let's call him Victor, is a multi-billionaire, one of the richest people in the world. He founded some sort of high-tech company that now rules a lucrative product sector. Victor is viewed as an eccentric genius in the mold of Steve Jobs.

He has numerous passions, of which making shit-loads of money is one. But that isn't his #1 passion, which is known only by close friends:

Understanding the nature of ultimate reality. 

Now, Victor isn't sure what "ultimate" means. He's exceedingly well-versed in modern science. This isn't what he is thinking of, though. Victor also knows more about the world's major religions than most believers in them do, thanks to his genius IQ and voracious drive To Know. 

This eccentric billionaire also has delved into lots of spiritual, mystical, and New Age paths. Here his drive To Know often came head-to-head with his notorious (to employees of his enterprises) Refusal to Put Up With Bullshit. 

Yet even after all of his discarding and debunking of false prophets, Victor is left with a lingering question: could there be more to reality than what science and everyday experience reveals?

He's had his share of psychedelic experiences. He's proficient in several meditation practices. He's had glimpses of something beyond, something ineffable, something mysterious. But whether this something is anything really real, that remains unknown. And he'd like to know before he dies.

So Victor decides to offer a prize. Which gets me to the title of my imagined movie, "The Prize." We're talking serious prize here. A billion dollars. And the winner would be...

Whoever is able to provide Victor with proof of a substantial reality that lies beyond the physical. Meaning, supernatural, divine, other-worldly, godly -- the words don't matter; the reality does.

Victor didn't make his billions by trusting people who are untrustworthy. His reputation for sniffing out charlatans, whether of the financial or spiritual variety, is well-founded. Yet Victor also is a creative, open-minded guy who is ready to push the envelope, think outside the box, go where few have dared to venture.

So he sets up the machinery for publicizing what soon comes to be known the world over as simply The Prize. Victor realizes that someone who knows the seemingly unknowable may not be motivated by money. He makes clear that the billion dollar prize doesn't have to be accepted; it can be gifted. Or, even refused.

Victor simply wants To Know. Naturally he isn't sure if there is anything to be known beyond the bounds of science, reason, and everyday experience. It is worth a billion dollars to him to throw out this question to the world and see what results.

Not surprisingly, fakes abound. Victor has various levels of personnel assigned to ferret out the most obvious bullshitters. He reserves the right to personally review the evidence submitted by people with the most believable claims to knowing ultimate reality.

Now I have more scene ideas of my never-to-be-written screenplay, but there's no reason to share them. My main reason for sharing this idea of The Prize is to point out how difficult the finale of the movie is to figure out. I never was able to come close to a satisfying "third act."  

After all, in thousands of years of recorded human history, nobody has presented convincing demonstrable evidence that reality extends beyond the physical. Thus it takes more creativity than I can muster to imagine what sort of evidence could convince Victor that someone deserves to win The Prize.

And I don't want to settle for a warm and fuzzy ending such as "love is ultimate reality." Remember, this movie is a mixture of the spiritual and the scientific. I'm fine with a bit of ambiguity, just not a lot of it.

I'm highly skeptical that if some actual billionaire were to offer a big-money prize for evidence of a supernatural reality, than anyone would win it. Religions and other spiritual paths already compete for the minds of believers. One would think that they currently are putting forth their most credible claims to knowledge of ultimate reality.

And all fall short.

I readily admit that my imagined screenplay has a large blank spot when it comes to the ending. I content myself with visualizing movie audiences leaving theaters saying, "Wow, that ending blew my mind." 

I just wish I knew what it was.

Comments

[Appreciative Reader]

Sounds good!

But I'd say, unless you're already driving towards some particular answer that you've already found, a movie may not be the best vehicle for what I think you have in mind. If you're good with showing a final epiphany involving Jesus, or Mohammad, or the refulgent GIHF so familiar to people around these parts, or perhaps an outright sorry-no-one's-at-home-go-lead-your-life-as-best-you-can moment, then a movie's just fine. But that's too definitive, and definitive is probably not what you're really going for, unless I'm mistaken?

May I suggest a TV series instead? You can do much of what you do here in your blog, then, except jazzed up and dramatized. Deal with a different line of enquiry every episode, and wind it down at the end, to look at a fresh line of enquiry in the next episode. I know I'd love to tune in to something like that myself.

[vinny]

Sufi Verses

Kis bey nishan ka nishan hoon mein
Tujhe kya khabar kahan hoon mein

[Man is reflection of the divine.
But he doesn't know where divine resides]

Mujhe la makaani mein dhoond kar
Tujhe kya milega aey bekhabar

[By searching the divine in formless essence
What you'd get , O inquisitive man ]

[Spencer Tepper]

Hi Brian

The great magician Randi has had a similar offer for decades. Anything supernatural.

Your movie would need to have the best arguments for Faith and Atheism boiled down to be a true allegory.

The obvious third act begins where our protagonist, forever wedded to scientific truth over psychological truth, is both smug and somewhat dispondent that nothing new has come to light.....

And then... A scientist reminds him of evidence of things yet unexplained, like particles that change exactly as they are pushed, but before they are! Experiments under the tightest control that somehow lean towards the scientists ' hope. Or the common fact that all this solid matter is filled with empty space, in which nearly countless alternate universes could co exist, though undetected.

The film would end in a mystery that confounds both Atheist and Spiritualist.

The spiritualist admits reluctantly that there is no transferable physical proof.

And the Atheist scientist admits reluctantly that there are known things in this creation that defy logical explanation, where rules must be invented out of imagination as acceptable answers and without proof.

It ends in the awe of possibility, and the hope of our own discovery.

[Jen]

What about science fiction...

Some time in the future we will discover that our world is a prime time entertainment series for some very technically advanced interplanetary species.

When we are conceived our brains are downloaded with many different types of programming so that we will spend our time arguing and fighting over religions and going to war with each other. Added to the mix things like different colour skins, body shapes, languages, and especially made two sexes, male and female, now that really makes things interesting.

I wonder if we will eventually discover that although we seem to be real but basically we are just clones, created for the amusement of those who created us.

[Dungeness]

I think the most engaging narrative would be Victor's
own struggle with finding the truth. Possible scenes
could include those depicting his fears, disappointments,
frustations despite wealth and renewed hope of answers.

All this would intersect with discussions with philosophers,
scientists, religious fanatics, hustlers. At least one funny
scene of a charlatan's failed argument imploding comes
to mind. Victor might find moments of humor that parallel
his own efforts.

Dramatically, I think the most powerful denouement would
be a moment of self discovery or sudden insight. For example, a bit corny (or maybe more) but a final scene could begin as he reads a passage from T.S. Eliot's "The Wasteland"

We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all
our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know
the place for the first time.

He falls asleep and has a dream:

DREAM SEQUENCE:
He walks to an oasis. He slows and stops. The path beneath
him has faded. Beginning and end melt into each other. He
can't remember what he was looking for. A friend slips up
unnoticed beside him. No words. The journey feels done.
END DREAM SEQUENCE

** FADE OUT

[Dungeness]

I think the most engaging narrative would be Victor's
own struggle with finding the truth. Possible scenes
could include those depicting his fears, disappointments,
frustations despite wealth and renewed hope of answers.

All this would intersect with discussions with philosophers,
scientists, religious fanatics, hustlers. At least one funny
scene of a charlatan's failed argument imploding comes
to mind. Victor might find moments of humor that parallel
his own efforts.

Dramatically, I think the most powerful denouement would
be a moment of self discovery or sudden insight. For example, a bit corny (or maybe more) but a final scene could begin as he reads a passage from T.S. Eliot's "The Wasteland"

We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all
our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know
the place for the first time.

He falls asleep and has a dream:

DREAM SEQUENCE:
He walks to an oasis. He slows and stops. The path beneath
him has faded. Beginning and end melt into each other. He
can't remember what he was looking for. A friend slips up
unnoticed beside him. No words. The journey feels done.
END DREAM SEQUENCE

** FADE OUT

[Turan]

Well Brian, the third act doesn't end in any of the ways Victor hoped for or even imagine. Purely through his own ponderings he begins to realise that he is his own problem; he begins to realise who or rather what he is. By watching his mind it gradually dawns dawns on him that what he assumed to be himself is merely an bundle of experiences and impression that has accumulated in his brain/body since birth. He realises that this bundle of information is what he thinks of as his 'self'. This shatters his pre-conceived beliefs of who he thought he was along with any meaning or purpose.

At first he is thrown into despair, he still casts the occassional glance into something he has read or seen half-hoping for some sort of revelation. One spring day he is out walking in the countryside where he is simply watching what is going on around him – wind moving the leaves; flowers growing under the warming sun; mayflies mating and dying; clouds scudding across the sky and beyond the clouds clear blue sky and infinite space. He gasps, “This is it, this is what is, all this happening right now and I am a part of all this!”

He sat down accuteley aware of watching his mind, his thinking trying to analyse all this. He felt the separation arising between him and what he had just witnessed. Then, as though a huge weight was lifted from him, he saw how his thinking, how his mind in its scramble to be safe and secure had invested a peculularly human meaning and purpose to all around him and to the whole universe - and to himself.

From then on he knew. “There is no answer because there is in reality no question. The question only arises due to an aberation of our evolved survival system that safeguards us from physical harm and death that then feels it has to protect this constructed 'self', this'me'. My thinking has created a mental problem that does not exist in reality. There are no ultimate answers because the questions are inventions of a fearful, insecure mind. There is no separate entity called 'me'; there is only ever this and I am part – no, I am that”.

End of story? No, the story goes on – without 'Me'..

[Brian Hines]

Turan, I like your scenario. Nicely creative.