PROPOSAL - A STIRRING, EDIFYING, WISE yet HILARIOUS and very ABSORBING REALITY SHOW " (or FEATURE FILM SCRIPT )
A REALITY SHOW entails a dozen to 30 EPISODES a YEAR.CALL IT "DIANNE BENNET, MATCHMAKER TO THE STARS" or "HOLLYWOOD MATCHMAKER" is one of the principles, VS. HEAVENLY, THE NEW AGE SPIRITUAL MATCHMAKER
Or get her pal to join her, a famous OTHER matchmaker call it DUELLING MATCHMAKERS!(Show Concept Script & show 'bible' by Anita Sands)
CONCEPT: This world is made up of exotic mixed elements. There is always good and bad, on the side of the Devil, offering temptation, thralldom to the senses, mostly lust and terminating in dramatic sorrow --and then, there's the side of the angels, offering a sweet family life built on compassion and true love.
So we have TWO MATCHMAKERS. First maybe an organic one, that's a possibility... some kind of LOVE GURU, a devotee of a spiritual school, this is a small business out of his garage. He has people in turbans, yogis, vegans, offers introduction services and singles parties at a reasonable rate or free, when there are Temple festivities. Perhaps one week he's a Jewish Singles, a rabbi, perhaps another week, a Hare Krishna devotee. But every week we have our MAIN MATCHMAKER DIANNE BENNETT with the foil of a competitor. A good and bad matchmaker
One could select one of the dozen or so TOP MATCHMAKERS in HOLLYWOOD. We find a man or woman matchmaker who hustles hussies. But I wish you'd use the famed DIANNE BENNET, a Valkyrie Amazon Blonde granny, glam jewelry and fashion, bracelets rattling, hot pink fingernails, platinum blonde coif. When she walks into a room it's as if she were a ship with sails and masts and everybody else is a rowboat. She cuts a swath thru the crowds like an empress with a retinue. She promises the sky in glib, fantabulous words like 'he'll adore and beg to ravish, you darling, he'll kiss your feet. You will own his soul." Real devil talk, no?
THE FIRST GURU teaches each client the principles of human psychology as he/ she talks to clients, and who both synthecizes and shares an elegant philosophy of man/ woman love and family life with the camera.
THE OTHER MATCHMAKER's world? Hollywood, New York, Miami, and what's offered is Glamour, powerful rich men, beautiful sexual women.
The first GURU shares perceptive, instructive Human mating psychology. Set that foundation next to the extemporaneous, unpredictable lightning bolt of love that DIANNE BENNETT is... and you will get audiences who are tutored into better dating and courtship skills. The interacting with teh guru is like having a love shrink.
Now, we see the dating of both clients, the heavenly and the hellish. Same kind of results. Clients are either Turned on or turned off.. DATING is an unpredictable, entertaining, touching and absurd world.
I think this should be shot in Hollywood for its Cinema town tinsel values and when those are combined with the real spark of onscreen love, all of it shepherded by a devilish MATCHMAKER with comedic, wit, calling teh shots, we have comedy.
OK, Let's look at our DEVILISH MATCHMAKER. We will call her MARIANNA. We have not yet met with all the matchmakers in town to find the natural comedienne we need.. As you'd expect, in the Hollywood Zoo, mammalian courtship rites are highly exaggerated. Plumage displays and mating songs are costly, fast and furious. Norms of beauty are high. The sizes of wallets, too. Name and fame enter the game. Luckily Marianna has a taste for the old fashioned courting rites and ships them to the homes of the Rich and Famous. She has the Jungian rules of love under her belt. Alpha males, rich and smart, Beta females, gentle and pure. Surprisingly she has actually worked for Celeb clients, many of these women are rich and powerful, and they made the mistake of dating Beta males who were pathetic and troubled. So Miss Marianna frequently has to hammer some changes into a lady's brain & psyche before putting her on the auction block of love.
THE HEAVENLY MATCHMAKER (Maybe we use JUDY HEAVENLY, a PSYCHIC ASTROLOGER) is like a living MOTHER MARY. SO let's call her MARY. She does psychiatric sessions with her clients, listening to feedback on every date with a client, and that includes every date with a NEW MATCH. So it's an ongoing feast of LOVE INFORMATION for the viewer. This is soo different from every other matchmaking show on TV! It is an encyclopaedia of courtship and marriage and family life information!
TECHNICAL IMPLEMENTATION: A simple sound and picture video crew will follow Mariana the Master Matchmaker around on her daily chores patching holes in life's fences for lonely men and women.
VISUAL SETTINGS: We have three types of mise en scene, generally. Interviews with GIRL and MEN matchmaking clients in their own, unique or oddball 'setting'. Their life millieu ranges from the cafes and clubs of Hollywood to the mansion homes or ghetto shacks. Then, we have
INTERMISSION-NARRATION-PRIVATE-MOMENT segments with Marianna herself, in her boudoir, hair salon or limo, those being her rare moments of quiet. She talks to the camera. Ditto with HEAVENLY, only she's at vegan cafes, not posh wine-sloshy dark daytime restaurants.
SAMPLE FIRST SCENE: Marianna is in her LIMO, talking to camera, setting up a Lunch meeting at Le Dome with a CEO who claims to be so busy that he cannot find women but the truth is quickly seen, he's too proud and shy to pick women up.. Marianna greets the VALET who takes the car and goes inside. INTERIOR: MR M is at the bar with a drink. He is single, sixty, a multi millionaire, a self made men, but he confesses that he has no 'gift' for picking up women. TImid, she holds up his drink. "Marianna If this were a Vodka at noon," he points to his glass, "I'd be pathetic." I am not pathetic. "Then is it that you are too shy and proper or is it that he is too proud, too much ego? Money corrupts and big money corrupts absolutely. She slyly sticks in a finger. and tastes it "Plain Water" we hear her say in over narration. "Good. Vodka at noon? Eh-eh." Maitre de carries them through the crowd, a usual posh, Hollywood lunch, everyone waving and greeting each other. She spots celebs she knows. "I was once a gossip columnist at a Hollywood trade mag, oneof many preparatory studies for matchmaking. AT THE TABLE, they have an interesting philosophic conversation where she instructs him that it is no lack of face for a man to start a conversation with another human. "If you're proud, don't be. Be proud of the fact that you can come up with words. Your mouth. It works. Your brain comes up with really cute stuff. Words are the hunter's bullets. But more important is where you are hunting. There are specific guide maps that a man should follow to meet and secure interesting, valuable, good women. "Not bars. What type of girl goes to a bar? Maybe Carrie does --on Sex and the City' but you want alligators you go to a swamp where even if you're fishing for trout, you will get an alligator. " Marianna does not mince words. She has a lusty philosophy on men, women and love. "REALITY baby! It all boils down to getting in step with reality. You meet a better quality woman at the Beverly Hills library than at SNAKE EYES for drinks on all-the-RUMAKI-you-can-eat-free night. Plus, you really should BE at the library once every two weeks. Have you read all of Malcolm Gladwell yet? Well, you must! I was a meter maid before I read Gladwell! Go to the library on a nice Jupiter night. I will have my astrologer send you those by email. And you have props to open the conversation. Like maybe "Oh, why do you read Gladwell? You look like you don't need him." That kind of thing. And if she reads Danielle Steele, trust me, you don't want to know her." (OR HEAVENLY is in her JEEP up in MALIBU mountains with a fax and cell phone, doing yoga, telling her clients, I'll fax it to you right now, I can't stay on a cell phone more than one minute! So we have to chat on landlines later, love you! And the fax starts grinding.)
SCENE TWO: Marianna meets that CEO at his office. He built, now owns and rents the entire building. "started as an architect, designed houses moved on to office buildings, hotels, city hall renovations. "What happened to the single family home?" "Thing of the past, Architecture is over with. He scorns the idea, no money in it. I was an architect --Contracting the big jobs. That's the ticket. Where is it headed? she asks. " Massive two floor Condos in parklands, for the next decade. Then it will be four floors, forget the parklands." He nods sadly. They figured that out in Paris three hundred years ago. HEAVENLY meets with her client, he is a clerk at WHOLE FOODS.
SCENE THREE: A seedy Hollywood apartment bldg. Door open we meet a Girl in pigtails with potato chip bag and cigarette. In a massive depression, she confesses. Marianna tells her that if SHE had tolive in that building, she'd be on Xanax not chips. We gotta get you a cute cottage, yeah big rent but I'll cosign. Three bedrooms you can have roomates chip in on the rent, end up being less money than you pay to live here in Dracula's hotel. That' s a dealer across the hall. You're gonna take a bullet thru these walls." She pounds drywall. We listen as Marianna sets her straight on the life she's to have even BEFORE she starts dating. Your life must reek perfection. Look at Princess Diana. She worked in a Daycare pure as a Madonna. Heather was a hooker but she cleaned up her act, was running a prosthetic leg charity when Beatle Paul married her. Class, Sass, Ass. In that order! HEAVENLY meets a girl who is a nurse in a big hospital, serving humanity.
SCENE FOUR - BACKSTAGE at LUSTY'S STRIP JOINT - Our DARK MATCHMAKER meets ADELA, a raven-haired beauty. The other strippers who hear what's going on want in on it. Marianna takes a headshot of each. Hands out her card. No promises but if you're what we want, you'll be what my clients want. The perfect wife. I just can't figure out how to hide this career you've got. See, even in my mind, stripping is...a little too edgy. You can't get any respect." LUSTY comes in and starts to chew her out. Marianna handles him inventively. IF we have HEAVENLY at a strip club.HEAVENLY also meets with a topless nudie client, a stripper. She gets the girl to quit. But no problem with anybody, gently, reasonably, explaining sin and sainthood in new age terms. "You dedicate your sexual services to God, as if you were in a temple, that's one thing. Volunteer, say to an old man with no money. But charge for it?" Tch Tch.
SCENE FIVE - ON THE SET OF HER NBC SHOW. Some BOGUS ROCKUMENTARY TV SET footage as we can't use anNBC matchmaker show. She is one of a group of 'experts'. on LOVE. A reality show. Her agent is off set with her promising to get Marianna 'her own reality show!' "Yeah she says, I'm the bomb. I'm big enough for ten reality shows. HYPER REALITY, the one nobody talks about. How beautiful young women BELONG with winner guys, seniors, alpha males, the brightest and best... who are heaven's own reward for girls and how young hotties, the Brad Pitts of this world are the headcolds of all time for beautiful young women. Don't even let one sneeze near you!" HEAVENLY is also on a panel, preaching 'girls not giving it away,' and stuff like that. 'how we pollute our auras to the point that even a dumb man can see we are basically hookers.'
SCENE SIX - SPAGO. Marianna at dinner alone. "Keep it flowing" she instructs the waiter. "Chardonnay" she says to the camera. "My downfall. I was hypnotized once and totally quit, like that!" Finger snap. "Lost fifty pounds. She keeps seeing top executives she knows, and representative couples greet her, whom she put together. They are all trotting to her table, not vice versa. A sixty year old bachelor dining alone leans over, "WHO ARE YOU?" he asks? "Nobody" she answers "Should I KNOW YOU." YES as a matter of fact, she answers."If you're dining alone and haven't found a good woman. You do need to know me. Sir, what do you do or NOT do to find lady friends?" Nothing he confesses, don't know where I'd start." She points to her own chest. Here is where you start. She pulls the 'snapshot book out of her briefcase and leaning over, moves his plate and lays it over his placesetting. Feast on this." He seems to get it. "Ahhh, how much a night for this one?" he points. I have no idea she says. I didn't know she turned tricks. Do you know something I don't? I'm a matchmaker. A thousand gets you ten dates from this book. Second thousand gets you fifteen. But I never had that happen. I've got 149 happily married couples in this other book. None needed the second dozen dates." She points and to each face, we go into the LIFE of that girl. That's the segue. HEAVENLY at dinner alone is watching ROME on CABLE, the dissolute life of the ancient ROMANS and talking to a client and saying, mankind has a lot of baggage, for thousands of years our reptilian mind has taken the sensual path. Where is the moral courage to be clean, not not hustle, not slyly ply our secret motives, manipulating others with love and sex, even. There are tremendous wounds to the human soul from millenia of crime. over generations of it, how do we turn it into sacred actions that will free the human DNA from sorrow and ignorance.
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*GIRL ONE - ADELA, 28, First we see her photo in the book, then we back off the still photo into real life face of a gorgeous Latina. We're in a strip club dressing room as Adela strips three nights a week at top nudie club "LUSTY'S on the Sunset strip. Adela has already been fixed up with a few CEOS. Neither Marianna nor Adela ever tell the CEO what she really does, how she affords that great apartment by a pool over the strip. A fifth generation Californian with some Mexican blood, she is Salma Hayak only younger. In spite of her career, Adela's self-effacing, humble, no ego. Dresses like a schoolteacher when she's off work. Doesn't care about money, says she just wants a guy who'll welcome children. She sure doesn't find them at LUSTY'S! We meet the boss who comes in to bitch about Marianna taking photos in the dressing room. He wants a cut of the profits from those photos. "How sordid you are little man," she comments. Lusty grabs her by the arms to throw her out. The girls quickly surround their matchmaker to protect her. As a group, they warn him away. Forseeing a club with no nudies, he snarls and backs off. "You poor girls having to confront a gorilla every night. That would turn me off men. This place is dangerous to your spiritual imprinting process. You have to break out of here as quick as you can." Marianna says in horror. "INTERMISSION:- Marianna in back seat of LIMO on SUNSET STRIP at night. NEON GLITTER, HEAVY TRAFFIC, horns, trollops on street corners. She pours Glacier water.. "Not only are we what we eat and drink, we are the impressions that we let into our mind. These girls are soaking up men at their sweaty gorilla worst. Lower life forms. I have nothing against stripping in public. That's good for a girl. It's being near lower life forms all the time, interacting with them that'll kill ya. " She shudders. UGH! CUT BACK TO PASSING SUNSET STRIP SCENERY, TRASHY LINGERIE SIGNS flashing by. Hookers beating one another with purses, pimps mediating. Cop cars pulling up. She closes window. AUM MANI PADME AUM, A temple bell rings. She closes her eyes and meditates. The chauffeur's window goes up.. AUM ---
*GIRL TWO MARGO 33- DAYTIME- INTERIOR. LUNCH HOUR. We are on Margo's lunch hour. She's an Executive secretary at a pricey entertainment law firm, like CAA. She meets all the big actors who hit on her as she's staturesque, elegant but she has a 'church lady' side. She knows she should not date clients of the firm and is insulted when these movie star guys ask, and wonders how these hotties cannot see that dating clients cannot be done. A firm is not going to lose a client because a secretary broke up with him. A single date would be an insult to the firm. Margo is no pilgrim, she has a warm, loving heart but basically, she's like a kid in the candystore all day, and can't take one bite of the Clooneys and Sean Penn's who are in the office. At night she retires to a Beverly Hills apartment to zone out with cable. Her life simply isn't working.
*GIRL THREE- PETULIA 22- Cute southern twang ain't really, she's from Appalachia, that's poor country. She's rough as a fresh granite chip from the Blue Smokey Mountains, -- not yet rounded by circulation in the Hollywood Gem tumbler. Petulia slings hash at a local bean and burger eatery. One year of dating truckers and West Hollywood out-of-work-actors gave her nothing she could talk about in letters to back home. Wants to marry so as not to bring disgrace on the Killikaks.
*GIRL FOUR - AMBER - She is 30, not getting any younger, is kept by her manager and a rich old boyfriend to boot, leaving her with days free to seek film jobs but no free nights. Amber has effectively boxed herself into a trap as she cannot date new men. She'd be cheating on both of the current 'masters' and they don't even know about each other! Each believes that they keep her. Marianna's chore as the Matchmaker is to get her ready to date, meaning convince Amber to get a real job as Hollywood just hasn't panned out. There are less and less studio interviews each day as face it, thirty years old is the frontier in this town, job wise, a limit for all Babes in Toyland. Plus, what she's doing is a form of prostitution and there are no innocents in this line of work. She is sullying herself every hour every night that she entertains two gentlemen, lying to each when she's not available. Crime dirties the aura, Marianna tells her. So here is where we learn that Marianna wants her girls for real, pure, employed and not taking handouts from guys. She wants the beauty free to date and have real courtship. And attain real marriage.
"GIRL" FIVE HELEN - LONG SHOT EXT. Beautiful Beverly Hills cottage in the flats, 45 year old WASP widow named Helen.."I'm a little older than you might usually provide for, is that the word?"
"nonsense, you're perfect. Many men want a woman who's approaching midlife who has intellect." Door opens and an elegant 70 year old woman sets a tray & tea service down on coffee table. "This is about the Daycare for Latch Key babies charity, Mother." "Aha. Borrrring. I'll leave you two together then".M. evinces surprise "Who was that?" "Oh, My dead husband's mother. John's perpetual memorial light.. I'm widowed, but she's the one having a hard time taking it. She is the real widow in this house. Twice, so she's getting good at it, her own husband, then her son, my husband. Heart attacks. she sighs. They run in the family. You know I've got my 20 year old son on lifetime omega oils. I raid his house so there's no butter or beef hiding and even go through his credit card receipts to see if he had beef at the grill. Beef is off limits to him. But not to me. I want a handsome beau, muscles and six pack abs but smarts too..." She looks around guiltily.."Listen, if she walks in here, again, you're from the fundraising charity so you must talk latch key babies, fundraisers, name tags and lecturers. We don't tell Mother Dutton I'm looking for husband number two before she's had the slaves build the pyramid at Giza to husband number one. "Ahhh. So we don't have your prospectives meet you here?" "Oh no, that would be tacky on several counts, First They'll realize I'm that Mrs. Dutton, worth two billion, only I'm her only heir unless you count my son, so that would four to six billion. I don't want to tell any man that. It's too...weighty. I want his heart not his open hands. " Isn't the exact extent of the Dutton fortune on public record?" No. Dutton is a common name. John Dutton, how many are there? Besides I was going to do this matchmaking courtship thing with my maiden name. Arbuckle. I want to be loved for myself, not my ex's money. The Arbuckles drove cabs all through the Great Depression. In Oklahoma City. Never owned a thing, not even the cab and left no trace of themselves. I was a coed in Oklahoma U when I meet the son of an oilman, my husband. "It's Kind of hard to hide this house." Well, I thought we could meet at my social club. Winchester Club, in Hancock Park. "Oh, thaaaat Winchester Club. Well, what if he talks to a waiter? Enquires about your membership there. "You're right. Chasens would be better." Chasens closed a decade ago. It did? Is MAUDE ALRIGHT? M. nods softly for a bit realizing this old gal is really outta the scene. "Maude is fine." "Then shall we discuss your fee?" "There is no fee. It's Free! Free to the woman. In my unverse, the man takes care of the money. Call me old fashioned." M makes bright eyes from behind her cup of tea.NOW we have a "NARRATION OVER" FEATURE, little INTERMISSIONS a CLOSE UP of HEAVENLY at yoga class, lithe body, stretching, prayer and incense at home altar. Then we see Marianna (250 pounds, getting a massage. See her either under a dye foil head, or hair salon dryer, over a manucurst's head or during the comb out also from the back seat in her LIMO: Maybe one day, she rides in back of her limo, chauffeur driving, along the Pacific Ocean, her platinum hair is blowing in the breeze. "So get this: we're hiding many of the ladies' antecedents, for many different reasons. This one gal is too poor, the other one's too rich. This patootie's too sleazy, this other one's too posh. The Three Bears and the three beds, all over again. My perfect client would be neither socialite or stripper. Not famous celebrity and not some programmer nerd, though that might be interesting. Put the posh Widow together with a PC nerd. Hmmmm. Here's where I get creative, get to mix apples and oranges...." Opposites do attract. She looks thoughtfully out the window and we cut to bikini beach goddesses, hunky lifeguards.
SCENE EIGHT- CINEMA SUITES HOTEL - Marianna has a posh Rudolph Valentino type Spanish mansion, marble floors, circular staircase. Many bedrooms, a panelled library, a vast salon for entertaining. We see her check in a couple from London (suitcases) and as she walks them around the Hotel, we see the features of this Bed and Breakfast or Petite gem of an hotel. We hear that they get breakfast in bed or at the dining room table, can swim in the pool. She tells the camera, in an aside, "of course no dates are included for this pair of tourists, but frequently I do have extremely wealthy single Brit or German gentlemen as I advertise heavily in Europe. And half they time, they do become matchmaking clients if they are single. OFFSCREEN QUERENT: Men on tour? Aren't they G.U? Geographically undesireable? "Except that These men have the cash to fly in for weekends. O.Q.: Sure, with minimal luggage But who knows what luggage they have back home. Marianna: "I do not faciliate dates for married men. Madame is not my third career These two careers, hotel and matchmaking are very symbiotic and all I require.O.Q. But how do you screen out men who are using you as a Madame, a procurer. Marianna, I ask. They trust me. Nobody tries to put one over on MOM. O.Q. Oh but boys do that from knee high onwards.Marianna:" You ever seen that show LIE TO ME? How you look at a face and read them like a calorie chart? Lie to me once, it's your last try. Lie to me twice, it's your last try.
GIRL THRU FIFTEEN- THE CO-EDS. Billie, Carmen, LaGioconda, Miranda, Charity, and a dozen more, all the perfect California College girls. Where did Marianna find this treasure trove? We learn that Marianna tacked up ads at UCLA. "Tired of dating young H---Y guys. It's a known fact that men don't settle down til they're forty and lose the testosterone overdose. I am a matchmaker who will fix you up with marriage age CEOS who'd be glad to have a beautiful, intelligent wife working for her MBA, and I do not charge you a cent. Call me, my name is Marianna, phone # Website too. M. had to weed out half of the respondents, all idiots though many were gorgeous and make the rest start educating themselves about politics and business." We CUT TO ONE OF THE COEDS in Marianna's OFFICE.- I get straight A's, Yes M. says but The way your brain is today? No ALPHA MALE would respect you. " "But Marianne, you told us that the woman should respect the man and the man should cherish us. Doesn't that gives us an IQ point leeway?" Yes, but before he can cherish you, he has to respect you. All baby doll and no conversance with modern life makes you ridiculous in his eyes. Your aspirations should be to banish planetary suffering. The fact that you CARE about the starving masses and tear up talking about latch key kids will make HIM care and support you in a charity that will give you a second half to your life. Now I'm giving you a list of websites that will improve your IQ. ( THE CONVERSATION 101 INDEX PAGE ) To CAMERA: Marianna SAYS" The fact is, 'girls today are not as smart as college girls a few decades back. They must put stupid in those cereal boxes and they dumbed down the cows milk, too." So just in case stupid is in the food, on that offchance, I put them all on total healthfood diets. The Clerks at Whole Foods tutor them on that. One of my girls left and married the clerk at that very healthfood store! I hate when that happens!"
~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~SO, the FIVE TYPES OF SEQUENCES WE HAVE:
1) INTERVIEWS WITH PRINCIPLES, ALWAYS HIGH IN 'ACTION'
2.) INTERMISSIONS WITH Marianna's "TO-THE-CAMERA-NARRATION. "
3.) the GIRLS' varied, fascinating PRIVATE LIVES
4.) the MEN'S PRIVATE LIVES, all these get INTERCUT those elements with the
5). FIRST DATE or actual meeting of the subjects. ODD PAIRINGS at times.~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~
DIANNE BENNETT PRODUCTIONS * HOLLYWOOD CALIFORNIA.