Collaborative Project Proposal

[petgoat]

In another forum a poster named loudsue expressed the wish that a
movie should be made about the stealing of the 2004 election.

In the spirit of "being the media" I'd like to propose that people
here create such a screenplay collaboratively.

I'd propose that the copyright of this work, and any potential
revenues, belong to DU.

I'd also propose that the work follow the model of Linux: anyone can
hijack the entire work and edit it to an alternative version, and
incorporate into the alternate version any good stuff written in any
other version, but nobody can sell any version of the work for money
because it belongs to DU.

So what do you think? Can the writers here mobilize to produce a
screenplay?

Obviously step one is to produce an outline.

What do you think?

[wli]

1. I'd look at the GPL a bit, there are helpful things there.

The GNU Free Documentation License seems particularly appropriate for such an effort.

[petgoat]

2. Don't all jump on at once....

If somebody with search privileges could link my discussion with loudsue
on this I would appreciate it. I can't find it. It took place in a
thread discussing the Paul Kugman op-ed piece.

[petgoat]

3. I've been getting some comment on this project on the Elections Board;

I'm getting impatient because I want to get to work on it but I want to
let other people's ideas rather than my own guide the project.

I'm disappointed in the lack of interest on this board; I'll suppose
I've impressed people here as an opinionated know-it-all. I'm really
not--it's just "making nice" and constant deference is so boring!

One of the basic questions of this project is whether it will address
the issue of election fraud on a national stage--i.e., "the smoking gun
that proves the 2004 election was stolen" or whether it should be
addressed in a story of more limited scope, a story of localized fraud
that can stand in for the larger picture.

(That's assuming we handle it fictionally at all rather than as a
documentary.)

[petgoat]

4. Link to the thread at the Elections Forum

People have some very interesting ideas. Another thread discusses the
question "If there was a smoking gun about election fraud, what would it
look like?"

Another thread discusses the white stickers on the ballots during the recount in Clermont county, OH.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=203&topic_id=390716&mesg_id=390941

We're all just sort of brainstorming on it.

[petgoat]

5. I'd appreciate your ideas, guys.

I'm really surprised that the enthusiasm for this project is so
flash-in-the-pan. Would people really rather post to a mutual admiration
society than help guide an effort that might actually reach out and
influence some people outside the cogniscenti here?

As it is, it appears that the poster "truckin" has the most staying
power on the project. He wants to do a script based on the book
VoteScam, about the experiences of the Collier brothers in the 1970s
and 1980s in investigating election fraud.

The issues then were exactly the same as the electoral integrity
issues now--secret vote counts, proprietary software, poll data way
out of line with the election results. The Collier's book was written
in 1992, and suggests that GHWB's crucial success in the New
Hampshire primary (pre-election polls put Dole ahead by 6%; results
favored GHWB by 5%) had something to do with voting machines built by
someone previously convicted of vote fraud, and the fact that Governor
Sununu (soon to be GHWB's Chief of Staff) was a computer whiz.

I had a lot of other ideas about the project, but I'm inclined to
yield to those who are actually willing to do the work. My
reservation about the use of VoteScam as a text is that it uses a
couple of hippies as a symbol for the entire anti-election-fraud
movement. Not that I have anything about hippies (I used to date one)
but I think that if we're trying to reach the Middle Americans maybe
invoking hippies as voting-rights activists is a mistake.

What do you think?

[petgoat]

6. This is getting embarassing--nobody came to my party!

I must be a real asshole. Nobody will even tell me I'm not an asshole.

Anyway, the status of the election fraud movie script is:

A lot of people had brainstorm ideas, but few followed up after their
first post. One who did, wanted to do something based on a book.
I summarized the first half of the book and read the second half of the
book, and laid out my problems with the book. So far I'm waiting for his response.

Someone offered a completed script on election fraud, but I figured that
if Hollywood is unwilling to read unsolicited material, perhaps this
project should for the same reason be reluctant to consider it, and so
the offer stands unaccepted.

And so it stands.

I'll keep y'all posted.

[Angry Girl]

7. have you ever written a screenplay before?

Unfortunately, it's not exactly something you can throw together collaboratively like that unless most, if not all, participants have had at least *some* experience writing screenplays.

Besides, a lot of people here are very busy, so unless you start it yourself, you probably won't get much of a response.... But I've been wrong at least once before! :-) Good luck!

[petgoat]

8. I have never written a screenplay

But I have studied film storytelling through extensive fieldwork:>)and
read any number of books on screenwriting in the pursuit of a
fictional aesthetic based on the true vernacular (Shakespearean)
medium of our time instead of the tired elitist ethic in the fictional
establishment today.

I figured if we could knock together reasonable 1,000 word treatment
we could expand that to a reasonable 5,000 word treatment and find
volunteers to do sections of the script--which would then be subject
to edit. I figured that by the time we had 120 pages down on virtual
paper someone with some qualifications might join us.

Truth is, though many have ideas, few seem willing to follow through.
Only a person called truckin has shown much persistence, and he or she
has been so far MIA when the question came down to 1) contacting the
owner of the book upon which s/he wants to base the script or
2) formulating a consensus strategy on how to go about contacting the
owner. So we'll see what happens there.

One experienced rewrite guy named Gordon25 has offered a completed
script on election fraud at the state level, which could serve as a
start. My reluctance to read his script is based on the rather
paranoid notion that we could put a lot of work into developing it and
if at the last minute he withdrew his approval he could even claim he
owns anything we do that touches on any areas his script touches on.

One way to deal with Gordon's project is if someone separate from my
original thread would read Gordon's script and start a separate thread
for working on that, and the original thread people would solemnly
swear not to read the Gordon thread.

I had a number of ideas when the project started, but since then have
adopted a role merely facilitative of others' ideas. Unfortunately,
there is very little overlap. Though perhaps 20 people have
participated in the thread, nobody but me is willing to put any work
into anybody else's ideas.

Thanks for your thoughts. My own experience with collaborative
projects has been disappointing so far, I must admit. But that was in
pre-internet days. I had hoped that our enthusiasm might exceed more
mundane limitations.

If you're interested, the thread is here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=203&topic_id=390716&mesg_id=394864

My summary of the initial ideas presented is here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=203&topic_id=390716&mesg_id=391593

My summary of more recent ideas is here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=203&topic_id=390716&mesg_id=394869