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MICHAEL BARRY - SCREEN DRAMA PROJECTS - own scripts shortlist.

Seeking commissions/ coproduction arrangements

01278 733100/ 07906 364189/ mailto: michaelis@perceptivecreation.co.uk

THE PALESTRINA AFFAIR (Feature film)

Born loosely out of "Bodyheat", this is a plot-driven commercial erotic film noir thriller with many twists and turns. Four passionate characters in an explosive pressure pot.

An 8  minute visual trailer shot 2000.

 (2^nd draft script, treatment, business plan, investor letter, sales brochure,  promo script + footage)

DEADLINE – (2 part x 90 mins TV mini-serial)

When Norman, the ruthless editor of a Scottish tabloid is sensationally murdered, DI Helen Chambers is spoilt for choice of suspects. A powerful story about the relationship between the victims of ritualistic child abuse and the tabloid press; harrowing – but including a fair degree of humour, and dressed as a murder mystery. There is considerable underlying truth, based on my sister’s significant involvement in covering cases for the press.

 (1^st draft script completed, sales brochure)

JUSTIFIED - (feature film).

A modern political thriller with psychological/ religious undertones. Set in a post-devolved Scotland, the story concerns two half-brothers of completely different backgrounds, who clash on both a personal and on a political level. One of the two has an extreme religious background and is a dangerously paranoid schizophrenic.

Loosely based on James Hogg's major classic "Confessions of a Justified Sinner" the film retains the novel's multi-viewpoint approach to events, thus providing the viewer with different versions of reality.

(1^st draft script done)

THE STRANGER - (feature film for TV and theatrical release).

A delightful love story, ghost story and shaggy-dog story all rolled into one, with wit and charm for good measure. Set in two time levels: glimpses of 1746 as Bonnie Prince Charlie and followers try to escape after the debacle of Culloden; and 1865 as the newly ordained Rev Adam Yestreen takes up his first post in the same Highland glen. 

Young, solid, gauche, impressionable (and violently anti-superstitious) - Adam's one and only blinding revelation of the power of love is for the beautiful, charming, witty, gamine Julie - who is a ghost, haunting still the glen where she personally hid and fed the Chevalier.

J.M.Barrie adapted by M.J. Barry at their best! (1^st draft script half done - detailed treatment)

BEETHOVEN A-120 - (big budget feature film).

One-lining as "A Romance so powerful it reaches across 15,000 years, but is threatened by another male - from an extra-terrestrial civilisation as advanced as ours may be in 10,000 years time".

A sci-fi adventure film that explores a whole range of speculative concepts in a story of a dramatic and emotional triangular relationship set within 2 time scales.

(Treatment etc)

INCIDENT AT ANGER POINT (Theatrical and television film)

Nina Powell is a nuclear safety consultant working on site at Anger Point nuclear power station, fighting single-mindedly to acquire the evidence she needs to present to an enquiry, and facing increased resistance from a powerful vested commercial interests.

Exploits accurate scenario on the catastrophic accident potentials of British AGR nuclear plants - based on the detailed analytical work of an American nuclear physicist  who predicted Chernobyl and critically influenced events at Three Mile Island.

(Treatment, storyline, sample scenes)

BUDBURST (or) BURGUNDY SUMMER (Feature film) A mainstream love story with an adventure scam sub-plot.

CHRISSIE is a beautiful, high-living, 30-something English woman, who has inherited her father's five acre vineyard in Burgundy. The quality of the wine produced has been falling for the last 8 years and Chrissie, with sensitive American wine expert Scott, admiring potential lover Jane and avuncular bonne viveur Charlie all helping, sets out to find why.

A scam is being operated and unveiling this leads to an exciting overnight chase - using a motor-bike, Chrissie's XR3i, a hired van and Charlie's auto-gyro. The love affair ends happily.

(1^st draft script done - and revised)

FLIGHT FROM FEAR (Feature film)

A road movie set in the west of Scotland. A middle-aged man sets out, after a life-time of domestic defeat and misery, to find a new life and a modest birth-right of happiness.

However he confuses his quest by setting fire to his house in a burst of rage at his destructive wife before he leaves. On the road, he experiences his first ever positive feedback from others; he faces extreme trials and challenges from people and from nature; and is forced to look deeply at himself and his life. By the end however, he is able to die happy and redeemed.

A low budget film, featuring stunning landscapes and dramatic cinematography..

(1^st draft script done - and revised)

AIRSHIP ENGLAND (Feature or 4-part mini-series with an overall length of 5 hours)

An incredible story from England between the World Wars  telling how one man's political ambitions brought about one of the worst disasters in aviation history - the inside story of the R100 and the R101. The latter, Socialist government-built, R101 was a major disaster. Britain's airship programme was abruptly terminated. The successful commercial R100 was scrapped. (Neville Shute was on the design team).

(Deatiled story outline + treatment)

FREE LOVE, MAN! (or) DISPERSION (Feature or TV film or radio with music)

A 60s study of the fragmentation of a woman into the various roles she plays for the four very different men in her life (each with his own different needs to be filled by a woman) - until she finds enough self-confidence to start being herself and integrated.

Rewritten for the 60s, loosely based on a book by Anais Nin, and following the central character's multi-faceted presentation of herself by rooting the story within an innovative 60s visual and audio style that is also fragmented.

(Treatment, radio script etc)

Others:

LOVE (interactive DVD with linear video off-shoots) - to be improvised.

A detailed exploration of the potential relationships between two particular people - with varying input of status and chemistry.

JAMES HOGG, THE ETTRICK SHEPHERD - (1 hr broadcast Arts programme – radio or TV).

James Hogg was a highly-acclaimed writer of the people, in his own lifetime the accepted successor to Burns' laurels - in spite of having had to teach himself to form his letters in his 40s. Will use a lot of drama.

(Detailed treatment and running order; TV or Radio)

BELLA-VISTA: based on a short story of Colette's, one of three (x 30')  comprising a series for television or radio - or an evening in the theatre.

Each one shows Colette at a different stage of her life - and shows her transmuting her direct experiences into short stories - whether as a budding 15 year-old, already attracting the attentions of men, or in her early 30s as a performer in the Paris music-hall and variety theatre, or, as in Bella-Vista, escaping to Provence to recover from love and blundering into the oddest "domestic" detective story ever.

(One script, two summaries)

THE COACHMAN RAT (Feature film)

"Cinderella and the Pied Piper meet the Russian Revolution".

A woman bathed in light turns a rat into a coachman. He drives a young girl, Amadea, to the Prince's ball. When the clock strikes midnight, a strange animal runs down the Palace steps - a rat with a human voice - setting in motion a bloody war between people and rats. The tragic ending brings the Coachman Rat to a final redemptive vision of peaceful reunion with Amadea and the Woman of Light.

Producer/ director Michael Barry (Perceptive Creation) has brought together a powerful regional team of creative media artists (inc author of underlying book) to pursue the initial development and animatic production of  "The Coachman Rat".

(Treatment, colour brochure, animatic with sound-track. Probably not my script)

THE JOURNAL OF A SOMERSET RECTOR (TV drama series/ serial - 12 eps. X 40 mins)

Based on the highly dramatic personal memoirs of John Skinner, Rector of a parish near Bath, and an antiquarian. For a brief 5 years of happiness, he is married and a father of five children. Then within a space of 2 years his brother, then his wife die - and only 2 of his children outlive him. His tragedy starts. A Shakespearian tragic character - bringing about his own anguish and downfall directly through the flaws in his own character  but a story combining documentary social history with humour and a rich tapestry of human life.

(Treatment, some scenes etc)

THE RAINBOW MOMENTS: (TV play)

A culture and generation clash set in the Scottish advertising world - between Jim, hard-living son of a miner and agency Creative Director, and John, recent prize-winning graduate from Edinburgh Art College, from a privileged background, whose first job is as a Visualizer at Jim's agency.

(Scripted)

THE REP - (Broadcast TV drama series - 12 episodes of 45' - 1 hr).

Twelve main characters, twelve very human stories - told against a backdrop of Her Majesty's Theatre, Oldthorpe-on-Sea, a 60s working provincial repertory theatre.

All the characters are bigger than life, each has his or her own personal problems, loves, aspirations and hopes.  The mix is explosive!

(Treatment and storylines)

ROTTEN TO THE CORE (TV sitcom - 6 x 30' to start)

"Rotten to the Core" is a black comedy sit-com set in an RBMK nuclear power station Control Room. It is situated in an ex-USSR outlands satellite territory, now self-governing.

Each episode will include one major crisis, plus two minor events. More by luck than good judgement, the team will just avoid another Chernobyl-type incident each time.There is no doubt at all that the sit-com will play an extremely useful social role and might even save mankind from early doom and destruction!

(Treatment and characters)

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