THE SCRIPT SYNOPSES
1: GO WEST FOR CHRISTMAS
It is Thanksgiving and the area has fallen on very hard times. Sonny has been forced to pick up extra work as a carpenter just to help make ends meet. However, even this added income is not enough for the family to pay the bills for Sonny and Charlotta have been adding to their expenses by picking up and saving horse off the range that have been abandoned by other destitute ranchers and families who cannot afford to feed the animals.
Sonny Steele is an ex-rodeo cowboy who owns and runs a horse training facility in the far reaches of Wyoming with his wife Charlotta and their two children; son Cody and daughter Mattie.
Sonny meets with the banker who holds his mortgage in order to work a solution to his family’s financial problems but unfortunately the banker is a man with an “attitude”; a very recently transplanted New Yorker with an axe to grind.
The banker hates Wyoming and possesses more grief over not being able to to get cross town to Bloomingdale’s on a Sunday afternoon than he has sympathy for Sonny’s plight.
The banker’s answer is “no”.
Unless some sort of “miracle” either falls out of the sky or is forced by
Sonny’s hand, the ranch will be foreclosed and the rescued horses will go to auction and inevitably the “killers”; the slaughter houses in Mexico.
In the midst of all this stress, the proverbial “straw that breaks the camel’s back” falls upon the family when daughter Mattie’s personal horse develops a hairline fracture; an injury which will require surgery and six months of complete rest.
Now if the ranch is foreclosed the family will not only lose the rescue horses to the killers but Mattie’s horse as well.
Sonny’s answer is “no”.He makes a choice true to character. He kidnaps the banker, gathers his partner Pat, his two children and “steals” his own stock; rounding them up and heading out in the middle of the night; herding the “stolen” horses towards Canada and an old friend; a sympathetic rancher who will let them pasture the horses; picking up other stock and even mustangs along the way.
2: THE MAN WITH NO NAME
It is the end of the Civil War. A solitary Confederate soldier drifts through the southwest toward Mexico. He stops briefly to help a destitute family made homeless by the war and rides on but is ambushed by Comancheroes; a rag tag band of killers employed by a consortium of wealthy men to steal from and prey upon isolated individuals and families.
The gang kills the Confederate soldier and steals his horse; leaving his body to rot on the desert floor.
Time passes but suddenly; inexplicably the Confederate soldier struggles to his feet and walks off; dead … alive?
Dead or alive; the Confederate soldier has somehow been “transformed” like “the Crow” into a soulless killer; stalking his killers; stalking the gang and even the men who have employed them.
There unfolds a series of vignettes whereby the soldier; an avenging angel stalks and kills the gang in a path that leads him directly to the men who
have financed and “boss” the killers.
3: PISTOLERO/PISTOLERO SILENZIO (SILENT GUN)
The Tex/Mex border the very tail end of the Civil War. Renegade Union Colonel CHIVINGTON is tied to money interests with plans to build an empire along the Texas border once the war is over. CHIVINGTON employs a gang of killers led by the murderous Comanchero bandit BARBARO to raid and kill and steal. In the course of his raids BARBARO’s COMANCHEROS wound a CONFEDERATE LIEUTENANT who makes it his personal mission to destroy both CHIVINGTON and BARBARO.
One Man Against an Army. One Man.
4: ONCE UPON A TIME FOR A DOLLAR
ONCE UPON A T IME FOR A DOLLAR is patterned after the great westerns of Sergio Leone.
It is 1870. A gang of bandits robs a bank along the Mexican border. The robbery gets out of hand when one of the bandits; a sadist named CULEBRA shoots one of the bank patrons. Another member of the gang; MANCO confronts and ultimately fights CULEBRA. CULEBRA turns the GANG against MANCO. They shoot him and leave him for dead. But the MANCO is not dead. He is discovered by a Mexican family who nurse him to health and he heads for revenge against the entire gang.
There’s a New Man With No Name!!!
5: MONTEZUMA’s REVENGE
Present day Texas at the Mexican border. A crooked Catholic PRIEST is in consort with a couple of crooked COPS and Russian DRUG DEALERS to steal money from Mexican DRUG DEALERS. Two close friends on a vacation; LENNY and JOE; wander into the path of all this mayhem and JOE steals the money and heads into the desert on horseback with now the joined forces of both the Russians and the Mexicans on his tail.
One Cowboy with Nothing to Lose!!!
6: BLOOD MONEY
BLOOD MONEY is a western also set in the Tex/Mex borderlands at the tail end of the Civil War.
A confederate sharpshooter, exhausted by the war and sensing its end close at hand, desert into Mexico where he runs into an army of Comancheros; killers who have been hired by a consortium of wealthy northern business men to burn their way through Texas; stealing land from homesteaders and kidnapping the women and children in order to sell them into slavery in Mexico.
The sharpshooter survives the Comancheros and inadvertently crosses the path of other victims. Reluctantly at first but with a mounting resolve and a quiet rage the sharpshooter begins to work his way through the harvest of blood and slavery cut through the hard Texas plains by the Comancheros toward a showdown with the men with the money.
Blood sells. Death rides. And what could be worse than death?
7: FOR MORE THAN MONEY
FOR MORE THAN MONEY is a great story designed to capture the attitude and style of the enormously and enduringly successful Sergio Leone westerns; particularly THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY and John Sturges’ THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN.
MAX is an ex-Catholic priest in the Tex/Mex border region of the 1870s. MAX is a very strong, highly intelligent, incredibly humane and compassionate man who has left the church for two very good reasons. First, he fell in love with his beautiful wife CONSUELA and, more importantly, MAX ultimately found it impossible to save the very people he loved the most; his family and the poor people of the villages and farms from all the violence surrounding them with both hands on the Bible. Therefore, although one hand does in fact, remain on the Bible and his voice is in constant communication with God, MAX’s other hand has taken up the gun and he has become a bounty killer.
The dirty border town of Agua Caliente is ruled by MORGAN SILVER and his hired ARMY OF KILLERS. The town is surrounded by small farms bequeathed to the MEXICAN PEASANTS by the Mexican rancher; SENOR RODRIGUEZ. Finally weary of trying to buy RODRIGUEZ out of his lands, SILVER simply has RODRIGUEZ and his FAMILY killed and orders the small farmers off their land under the threat of killing the WOMEN and CHILDREN. MAX decides to lead the VILLAGERS against SILVER.
So MAX, CONSUELA, MIGUEL and the VILLAGERS ride to battle against SILVER, picking up the allegiance of the mysterious bounty killer MONTEADOR on the way.
At one point or another, many major companies have negotiated for FOR MORE THAN MONEY. Recently it was in a major market (IFP) and was entered in the market after competing against 2000 submissions for 30 slots in the market.
They’re Back!
8: MIDDLE AGED AND STILL ONLY SEMIPRO
TOM JENNESS is a very lucky man in a bit of a crisis. TOM has a gorgeous wife, two beautiful young sons and he is absolutely in love with his job and his “life” as a college baseball coach. Tom, however, only makes about forty thousand a year, his wife is twenty years younger than him, his in-laws are wealthy and they hate him and, most importantly, Tom is fifty years old.
Does he give up his love and passion for what he does? How does he stay connected to his children?
What Do You Want to be When You Grow Up?