synopsis: AGENT AT LARGE , SCREEPLAY SYNOPSIS

B      Basil nick named Ben is an Arab American singer
with a dying career. Finally his boss fires him. He is
approached by a CIA recruiter who studied his
personnel records as a US special forces member. his
mission is to kill a wealthy industrialist who is
suspected of supplying terrorists with nuclear
weapons, the trouble is that Ben does not want to have
anything to do anymore with any kind of intrigue.

           After refusing the mission adamantly, and
realizing that his marriage is falling apart he takes
his last paycheck and buys a one way ticket to Paris
France. Upon arrival he has a nice dinner with lots of
wine and jumps in the Seine attemting to commit
suicide. His attempt is a failure and he is rescued
wet cold and miserable and taken to the largest mental
state mental hospital in Paris where he falls in love
with Laochi a Vietnamese beauty, who is so uninhibited
that she shows him a hole in the fence in the back
where she takes him skinny dipping in the woods. Ben
assures the penniless Laochi that he will help her
return to Vietnam to take care of her ailing father
and little brother. meanwhile lochi is released and is
accepted in a catholic convent where she waits for Ben
to fulfil his promise.

            Upon release from the hospital he is
refered to an Islamic charity agency where he quickly
befriends the owner a wealthy eccentric Egyptian who
promises to become his mentor and show him how to live
a happy life.  However, Basil(Ben) is adamant about
going to see an an Algerian acqaintance who works at
the docks in Marseille who will help . However he
finds out that the Algerian is an Al-Qaeda operative
who is intending to blow up a jewish synagogue in
Marseille an attempt which is foiled when Ben reports
him to the police. Ben then returns to Paris to the
eccentric Egyptian who gives him two airfares to
Saigon.

            As Ben and Laochi are about to board the
plane, the persistant CIA recruiter appears and
kidnaps them, taking them to where the wealthy
industrialist is having a dinner  and ordering him to
shoot the industrialist, however ben shoots the
recruiter and his henchmen leaving them dying in pools
of blood. ben them seeks refuge in a small Paris
mosque where he seeks advice from the Imam who panics
and tells him to turn himself in to the police. ben
does that and is promptly arrested.

           a court date is set and the trial of the
century begins which stirrs the debate about
immigration reform and foreign nationals commiting
crimes on French soil, with both the prosecuting
attorney and the defense making passionate speeches
outlining their POVs.

          At last Laochi and Ben are acquitted and
freed and they are flown to saigon where the
Vietnamese government gives them 10 acres of land in
the highlands to build a resort. on top of that the US
embassy contacts Ben about a reward for killing two
most wanted fugitives for killing an FBI agent and
posing as CIA agents.

          The couple are then flown to Washington DC
to be honored at a formal dinner at the White House
for over coming their mental illness and achieving so
much. the film ends with the couple sitting at the
balcony of their resort in the Vietnamese highlands
with children playing at their feet.

SCREENPLAY   SYNOPSIS

My second screenplay titled: "Code named Blue Cedar"
is a spy thriller; it is a character driven plot. The
main character Mohammed is an ex-marine who is a never
do well kind of guy neither financially nor
emotionally.

Over opening credits we see an old man beckoning
3-year-old Mohammed to come towards him. They are in
an apple orchard in the spring, the trees are in white
bloom, and the ground is covered with green grass
strewn with multicolored wild flowers, as Mohammed
drinks fresh water from a spring, lifted up by his
grandpa's cupped hands.

Two years later we see Mohammed standing by the Beirut
Damascus highway watching an endless column of Syrian
tanks entering Lebanon upon the request of the
Lebanese government to establish law and order.That
year like all the young men of his midteenage years
Mohamed was drafted into the militias and after 15
days of training he is sent to fight in Beirut in the
bitterly contested hotel district until he is captured
and taken to an underground interrogation center where
he is beaten , tortured and almost killed, before the
Lebanese army overran the underground bunker killing
his captors and freeing him.

Upon return to his home in the relative safety of the
mount Lebanon county, his mother barely believing that
he is still alive sells her jewelry to buy him a plane
ticket to come to live with his brother in southern CA
USA, where two days after arrival he starts attending
high school and graduating in June of that year. He
then enters a trade school and becomes a machinist but
six years later he takes off to Mexico to live and
work on a resort near the Guatemalan boarder, the
place becomes his home the next 5 winters, Mohammed
returns to LA the rest of the year where he lives with
different Arab American families and works in their
small businesses.

In 1992 Mohammed is 32 years old he has his first
unexplainable catatonic spell. He is admitted in a
mental hospital and when he wakes up from a deep coma.
He becomes very violent and has to be subdued and
injected with a myriad of psychiatric drugs.

He is finally released after seven months in a state
mental hospital, but he is penniless and ashamed to go
back to his family, so he takes off and becomes a
drifter riding cargo trains all over the US.

For the next 11 years he is in and out of mental
hospitals, and homeless shelters nationwide, until he
finally gets fed up with institutional living and
recalling with sadness and melancholy the times when
he had jobs with friends and family and a cozy living
arrangement with them, those were happy times when he
was care free. Finally he makes up his mind that he is
going to go back to live with an Arab American family
whenever he gets his first opportunity.

So he returns to southern California and is accepted
at the salvation army, where he gets is accepted into
a long term treatment program for alcohol addiction
and mental illness. On his day off he visits the area
around Pasadena citiy college where he frequents the
coffee houses in the area and chats with young patrons
who remind him of his lost youth.

Then his opportunity comes one day when he meets a
young Saudi student at an internet cafe in that area,
who befriends him after hearing his life story and
vows to help him, eventually he moves in with the
Saudi student and his four other roommates.

However Mohammed gets an unsettling feeling from a
mysterious Latino young man named Louie who doesn't
say much, but spends a lot of time with Mustafa the
head of the household. Mustafa is a middle aged Yemeni
who exhibits leadership and mystery, who seemed not to
object to Mohammed moving in.

However,Mustafa has an aura about him of extreme
seriousness and depth. Seldom has he smiled and even
when he does, he does it in such a way as if he is
mocking his own spirit.

The combination of the last two characters, keeps
Mohammed on the edge and he makes up his mind to flee
again. However that never comes to fruition, for he
has been stung by the scorpion of Middle Eastern
intrigue.

Mohammed's roommates continue to joke and irritate him
with their nosy inquisitive interrogation that he had
even fantasized about becoming a CIA agent, he had
gone to the library and read books about different
intelligence agencies world wide, even while his
roommates were playing cards he had gone on the CIA
website and applied for a job as an agent.

Now it is April 2003 America had just invaded Iraq.,
and in retaliation Al-Qaeda had set off a car bomb
downtown San Francisco killing 64 people and wounding
248 and as the terrorists were trying to escape to
Mexico there was a huge shootout at the border
checkpoint at Nogales Arizona 4 boarder patrol agents
lay dead and 9 are wounded in addition to 23 innocent
migrant workers killed and 197 wounded.

Mohammed had no idea that his worst fears had become a
reality, the people whom he is sharing an apartment
with, are the Al-Qaeda cell responsible for those
acts, he had never suspected it since they are so kind
and they had helped him get a job at an Arab American
club, and even got him a singing gig over there.

Mustafa the leader of the cell had finally decided
that Mohammed already had seen and knows too much,
therefore he had to be eliminated, but that doesn't
work out because after Mustafa lured Mohammed into an
abandoned building downtown LA under the pretense of
showing him the next location for his next half owned
club, Mustafa had drawn the gun prematurely and
Mohamed had overpowered and killed him.

Mohamed was now is in limbo, he cannot go back to his
apartment because Mustafa's attack was the proof
beyond the shadow of any doubt that his roommates were
Al-Qaeda operatives, so he took the money and all of
Mustafa's belongings from his body, and drove the car
away eastward staying in motels in the California
desert, until a Motel clerk recognized him after
seeing his picture on America's most wanted, and
called the police.

          As part of a plea bargain the FBI asked him
to co-operate with the CIA since he is so
knowledgeable about al the warring factions in Lebanon
and sent him back there after training in Langley VA
to track a terrorist by the nom de guerre of Abu Saad.

          However Mohammed was promptly arrested by
the Lebanese internal security forces. The arrest
happened after Tom, Mohamed's trainer in VA and
contact in Lebanon is killed in a drive by shooting
while having coffee in a side walk café in the
fashionable Hamra Street.

          After a lengthy trial, Mohammed is sentenced
to die by a firing squad, because the best Lebanese
defense attorney could not argue successfully against
the prosecutor who based his argument on the nation's
constitution and its laws regarding high treason.

          Even the fact that the American Ambassador
was given his turn to plead on Mohammed's behalf since
he is a US citizen, all that was in vain since
Mohammed had dual citizenship.

          At last the CIA, with help from the
Ambassador and Mohammed's uncle the chief of police in
Beirut, hatched a plan, as the hooded Mohammed is lead
to his death, suddenly the lights in the prison
hallway, went out and Mohammed was switched by another
prisoner who is led to his death by a firing squad.

          In the prison basement Mohammed is stashed
in a coffin that was draped with the American flag,
and driven out to the airport where he is flown out to
Dover Air force base.

          The movie ends with a fantasy scene where
Mohammed dies in car bomb on his way to the airport
and his car becomes a space ship with Arab, American,
French, and British, angels who exchange sarcastic
remarks about the evils of colonialism in the region,
and when the space ship finally lands in heaven,
Mohammed does not like being in heaven because it is a
prison guarded by US Marines who order him to stand in
line, and when he asks what the line is for, he finds
out that it is to be electrocuted, so he escapes and
runs down the white heavenly hallway until a heavenly
earthquake cracks the floor, and Mohammed falls
through it landing on Waikiki beach.

DEEP   COVER
SCREENPLAY   SYNOPSIS
 
Jack is a successful Lebanese American night club owner in
Hollywood CA. he had been in that business for 32
years and now he is tired , he is trying to sell his
nightclub but he cannot fetch good price.
Everyday he goes home and he is tired and trying to
get some rest but he cannot do that because his cousin
Michael an Alcoholic who lives with him comes home
every day drunk and causes a disturbance.
One day one Jack was closing and his best friend and
steady client Ali a devout Moslem Jack a drinker who
is not an Alcoholic invites his clients Jack asks him
to come over for dinner. They talk about everything
including the nightclub and Ali expresses his disgust
with his business and how he is trying to get out of
it.
 
Ali tells Jack that as far as that is concerned he
cannot help and he suggests that he take a vacation or
even get out of the business altogether, even if it
means putting someone in charge who is not likely to
be good manager that will keep running the club at a
profit.
The idea is to just get away from the club.
 
Jack asks Micheal to take over for a while because he
is going to be out of town for a while . Michael asks
Jack where he is going who tells him that he is going
to New York and from there depending on the success of
a meeting with another businessman that he may be
continuing to Europe and that he will call him and
keep him up to date on his whereabouts and check on
him and the club and asks him to cut down on his
drinking other wise he will not be able to handle it.
 
Upon arrival in New York Jack meets with a myterios
gentle man in at the Waldorf Astoria  hotel who
invites him to dinner later that night to meet an
associate. Both meet jack and praise him for his
abilities and his contacts in the business world all
over the  Middle East.

ack is even more pleased with the gorgeous women he
is meeting some of which are coming at night and
setting his passions on fire. Soon Jack realizes that
his youth is coming back and that he feels alive.
 
Little by little Jack gets -more involved with
mysterious gentlemen who have wierd accents and
everytime he is dazzled with the luxury that these
people live in, He is even more dazzled by the that
thousands of dollars they give him in cash at every
meeting in a small envelope and ask him to think and
make up he is mind if he would like to work with them.

 
When jack flies off to Europe he is nore dazzled when wined
and dined with Europe's royalty fro,m country manors in England
 to Castles in Germany he is living in a world that he never throught
 possible until he is pitched a mission to go to Iraq and help coalition
 forces capture Abu Assaad a notoprious leader of an Al-Qaeda
squad reaeking havoc with US and British troops.
It doesn't take long for Jack to realize that he is working for a
British military intelligence unit.
 After traning in perfecting the Iraqi dialect of Arabic he is sent to Iraq.
 He was to go under the cover of a journalist starting in the Mosul area.

Upon arrival in Iraq instantly Jack is invited to a twon meeting to
bridge the gap between the warring factions , instantly he gets
 involved in reconciliation and nation building as he worls his
way throgh car bombs and assasinations to a position of respect
 in the community which totally gets his mind off of his mission.

Finally he is escorted by an official of the new Iraqi governemnt
who tells him that sooner or later he will have to go back to the
USA as well as everybody else and that Iraq belongs only to Iraqis,
 that he had become too Americanized to
 fit in this new environment to him although he was born in the culture.
 Jack finally gets hold of his emotions and it breaks his heart that the official was right ,
that the emotional toll on him is too great and he should go back to the US
and live a meaningless life of pursuing money and wealth.

The Film ends with Jack walking in the desert near Indio
California and looking at people coming to prayer in a small Mosque
in town admiring but not having the courage to join them,
the film ends with jack dressed like an Arab hitch hiking
 across the US and being treated kindly by some and mocked by others.

            &nb  sp;                          &nb  sp;                          &nb  sp;                  

            &nb  sp;                  

Tags: Screenplay Arab American Spy Thriller

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