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Imagine the mayor of Los Angeles, walking shoeless through Venice at night, kidnapped by a blackmailer who has compromising photos of the mayor and his honey. Then imagine the mayor being bonked on the head in a tunnel, and the honey going missing, and the whole thing a mystery having something to do with Napolitano's plans for the mythical Subway to the Sea down Wilshire Boulevard. Who's to say it couldn't happen? Eric Estrin explains the latest developments in Right of Way, the screenplay emerging page by page from the LA Observed Script Project:
The mayor’s good friend and possible lover had been kidnapped several pages earlier, and Napolitano had made the dubious decision to try to get her back through unofficial channels.If he succeeded, the story’s momentum would come grinding to a halt. Where could we go next that wouldn’t make her abduction and rescue seem gratuitous?
If he alerted the authorities, we’d have the basis for a conventional hostage rescue drama, with our protagonist, the mayor, getting pushed aside as the pros take over the job and drive the story.
No, what works best is for Napolitano to jump in and botch things so severely that he’ll have to spend the rest of the script trying to extract himself from the cavernous hole he’s dug.
And in pages 47-50, that’s just what he does, dealing with a kidnapper who, like the mayor himself, is by turns sharp as a tack and hopelessly inept.
More at Eric's Script Notes blog.