A Story Idea Each Day for a Month — Day 8

This is the third 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:

You always need more than one in your gun.

Need that explained? Go here to read a Business of Screenwriting post from January 6, 2011.

Today’s story idea: For a Night Each Year, the Airwaves Buzz With Morse Code:

POINT REYES NATIONAL SEASHORE, Calif. — It has been a little more than a decade since the last of the nation’s commercial Morse code radio stations officially went off the air, as new technology sank a system that had been a lingua franca of maritime communication since before the Titanic.

But like transmissions that continue to travel through the cosmos long after their original senders are gone, there are some things that refuse to die. And on Tuesday, several outposts of Morse code blazed to life again, if only for a night, with the help of a group of enthusiasts bent on preserving what they call “the music of Morse,” one key tap at a time.

The occasion was an annual radio reboot known as the Night of Nights, held every year on the anniversary of the last Morse code broadcast from a coastal California station in 1999, which included a traditional sign-off (“We wish you fair winds and following seas”) and more than a few teary-eyed former radio operators.

On Tuesday, though, some of those old key men were back on the job, broadcasting from the former headquarters of a marine Morse station in Northern California, KPH, and joined on air by two other stations outside Seattle and in Mobile, Ala., all to honor a system that linked the world long before the Internet, e-mail and Twitter.

“It’s just beeps in the air, but it just meant everything to people,” said Richard Dillman, a self-described “radio squirrel” who serves as president of the nonprofit Maritime Radio Historical Society, which sponsors the event. “And we are the only thing standing.”

So one night a year, a quirky set of folks gets together to celebrate Morse Code, last of dying breed. I’m thinking Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, Helen Mirren… ah, hell, the entire cast of Red. And this year something weird happens:

What if they get a desperate SOS message?

What if they get a message from the past?

What if they get a message from the future?

What if some psychopath is screwing with them?

What if they get a message promising to lead them to buried treasure?

That they-gather-in-the-woods-and-weird-shit-happens angle appeals to me. Some killing force uses Morse Code to torment its victims. Imagine the transformation of those happy little blips and beeps turning into a frightening sound that presages imminent death.

And then there’s this: Here is an American POW Jeremiah Denton during the Vietnam War. He uses Morse Code by blinking to spell out the word T-O-R-T-U-R-E:

There’s a beat for your movie right there.

What would you do with this story idea?