A Story Idea Each Day for a Month — Day 26

Here’s a comedy premise waiting to be exploited: Fake ad for an orgy leads to arrest:

HARTFORD, Conn. — A Connecticut man who was feuding with his neighbor targeted her in an explicit online posting that invited strangers to a rowdy orgy with a bored soccer mom, police said.

Philip James Conran, 42, made his first court appearance Thursday, but did not enter a plea to charges including reckless endangerment, harassment, criminal trespass and risk of injury to a minor.

The charges stem from an April 5 posting on Craigslist that said a West Hartford woman wanted to “please as many as I can before I go to work!” Detectives, Conran’s attorney and the woman targeted in the posting are not saying what prompted the feud between the longtime neighbors in the middle-class Hartford suburb.

West Hartford Police Chief James Strillacci said even veteran officers were surprised by the number of strangers who knocked on the woman’s door, called the house or drove by.

“We were saying to ourselves, ‘The economy must be worse than we think if all of these able-bodied men are able to immediately drop everything and drive over to this neighborhood’” on a Monday morning, he said.

One man who showed up went to the wrong house, where he groped a teenage girl, police said. He has been charged with sexual assault and other counts. His attorney said his client has psychological issues and plans to plead not guilty.

When I saw this, I immediately thought of a not-so-good 1981 movie Neighbors. Starring John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd, here is the story’s overview per IMDB:

One man’s quiet suburban life takes a sickening lurch for the worse when a young couple move into the deserted house next door. From the word go it is obvious these are not the quiet professional types who *should* be living in such a nice street. As more and more unbelievable events unfold, our hero starts to question his own sanity… and those of his family.

Taking a cue from this idea — remake bad movies, not good ones — why not the Battle of the Neighbors, 21st century style. And certainly one of the sequences could involve a version of the above cited news story.

What other story beats come to mind for a modern ‘homage’ to Neighbors?

Comment Archive