A Story Idea Each Day for a Month — Day 7

This is the seventh year in a row I’ve run this series in April. Why a story idea each day for the month? Several reasons which I’ll work my through during this series of posts. Here’s another one:

The story idea is how everyone in Hollywood short-hands your script.

From the first moment your script enters into submission process, where it’s covered and at the very top there is a logline, through the marketing of your movie, where posters, newsprint, radio, TV spots, and web content all derive from it, your story idea is the touchstone for everything that happens.

So over time, I think it is fair to say that story ideas have become the lifeblood of Hollywood, what people traffic in all day long. The more you can think like that, play to the way Hollywood people interact with stories, the better your chances of success in the business.

Today’s story idea: The Billionaires at Burning Man.

For his 50th birthday, Jim Tananbaum, chief executive officer of Foresite Capital, threw himself an extravagant party at Burning Man, the annual sybaritic arts festival and all-hours rave that attracts 60,000-plus to the Black Rock Desert in Nevada over the week before Labor Day. Tananbaum’s bash went so well, he decided to host an even more elaborate one the following year. In 2014 he’d invite up to 120 people to join him at a camp that would make the Burning Man experience feel something like staying at a pop-up W Hotel. To fund his grand venture, he’d charge $16,500 per head.

Tananbaum, a contemporary art collector who resembles the actor Bob Saget, grew up on Manhattan’s Upper East Side and graduated from Yale and Harvard, where he earned both an M.D. and an MBA. After years of starting, selling, and investing in health-care companies, he founded Foresite in 2011. A private venture capital firm with $650 million under management, San Francisco-based Foresite specializes in the health-care and pharmaceutical industries.

Busy building his portfolios, Tananbaum only made it to Burning Man in 2009, the festival’s 24th year, but instantly fell under its spell. While his peers in San Francisco’s high finance circles took up kitesurfing or winemaking, he devoted his spare time to preparations for the next burn. “Jim put a tremendous effort into trying to create something very special for the Burning Man community,” says his friend Matt Nordgren, a former quarterback at the University of Texas, who went on to star in the Bravo reality show Most Eligible Dallas.

For 2014, Tananbaum wanted a camp that was aesthetically novel, ecologically conscious, and exceedingly comfortable. In the spring he and his team sent out a detailed invitation, enticing potential guests with an early vision of the camp, named Caravancicle. Anyone concerned about living in a hot, unforgiving wilderness could rest assured. There would be no roughing it at Caravancicle. Accommodations would consist of a series of cubical tents with carbon fiber skeletons. Each cube would have 9-foot ceilings, comfortable bedding, and air conditioning. The surrounding camp, enclosed by high walls, would be safe and private. Amenities would include a central lounge housed in a geodesic dome, private showers and toilets, solar panels, wireless Internet, and a 24-hour bar. Guests could count on a “full-service” staff, who would among other things help create “handcrafted, artisanal popsicles” to offer passers-by. To help blend in with the Burning Man regulars, who tend to parade around the commons in wild, racy outfits (if anything at all), the camp would include an entire shipping container full of costumes.

Each year as the festival nears, there’s a fresh round of speculation that the event has finally jumped the shark, or become overrun by Silicon Valley tech bros. Tananbaum and Ari Derfel, a Berkeley restaurateur he hired to co-create his 2014 camp, didn’t see it that way. (Neither Tananbaum nor Derfel commented on the record for this article.) The two admired the vaguely utopian, anticommercial culture Burning Man has cultivated over the years.

The 24-hour bar at Camp Caravancicle

I’ve never seen a Burning Man spec script, but I have to imagine someone has written one. Right? Or maybe not. Even if so, I’m pretty sure not with this angle: A group of billionaires amidst the frenzy of this desert spectacle?

What to do with this crazy juxtaposition of narrative elements. With the voracious greed driving the 1% crowd, moving them further and further away from the human experience of the rest of the world’s population, combined with the resulting anger we see erupting on both the right and left of the political spectrum, I’m thinking action thriller.

It’s the spirit of the French Revolution played out against the backdrop of desert madness, where the masses erupt into violence, sick and tired of these uber-moneyed men and women rubbing their wealth in the faces of the less fortunate. Rage about the unfairness of it all translated into violence, mayhem, and murder. A cinematic foreshadowing of a potential future something akin to the Occupy Movement transformed into a ragtag, but overwhelming army of enraged and desperate souls, wreaking vengeance on their symbolic overlords.

Producer’s hat on: The budget for this would make the film prohibitively expensive. I mean seriously: Burning Man?!?! So how about scaling it down? Some billionaires head out into the desert for a grand secluded gathering where they can set up their own intimate version of Burning Man. One problem: They’ve unknowingly set up camp in the general proximity of a group of people living on the fringes, barely surviving. What happens when those two groups intersect in an environment where law gets tossed out the window and where survival of the fittest becomes the word of the day?

Maybe it’s actually a horror-thriller…

There you go: My seventh story idea for the month. And it’s yours. Free!

Now it’s your turn. What would you do with this story setup?

Each day this month, I invite you to join me in comments to do some brainstorming. Gender bend, genre bend, what if. Take each day’s story idea and see what it can become when we play around with it. These are all valuable skills for a writer to develop.

To see all of the story ideas in this year’s series, go here.

See you in comments. And come back tomorrow for another Story Idea Each Day For A Month.

Comment Archive