Occupy This

Title: OCCUPY THIS Genre: action adventure / political drama OCCUPY THIS is endorsed by Lief Cocks, founder and CEO of TOP, The Orangutan Project, an on-the-ground NGO in Sumatra and Borneo. Comps: Sharkwater (tone) Star Wars IV (story arcs) Avatar (theme) In 2018 every country in the world declared bankruptcy. Who saved us from economic collapse? The richest 0.0001%. Kids like Geoff call them the Controllers. The internet is more policed. To be cool, young people get their info from the dark web. Hero: Geoff is hot, a bit scruffy, and deeply dedicated to saving jungle animals from extinction. Geoff desperately wants to get out of his white middle class city. He gets his wish. He’s too hot-blooded and constantly ups the ante in his revolutionary tactics. Geoff’s love interest, Petra Kavas, is a Tibetan Buddhist nun and world renowned peace activist. Bad Guys: The Controllers are ten businessmen creating the perfect conditions to take dictatorial control of every country in the world. When Geoff steers the revolution towards violence, he’s handing them the perfect conditions. Cohen is the main bad guy. Subplot: Geoff’s best friend Sprint is a rich geek-chic game master who leads Geoff’s movement online. Sprint falls in love with Cohen’s daughter, Allison. Theme: In a social revolution, what are the best tactics? Peaceful Gandhi style, Abbie Hoffman media antics, Monkey Wrench destruction of property, or outright violence, even killing? Act One: Geoff, Sprint, and a girl pull a serious high school prank: an orangutan hand in a chips bag, fake orangutan blood in a girl’s mascara, and a severed orangutan head in the cafeteria staff’s pail of cooking oil. Sprint puts the videos online (instant viral) but Geoff gets expelled. Geoff’s dad says Geoff’s dead mother, also an activist, would never approve of such tactics. Geoff uses his new credit card to fly to Sumatra. Geoff has a close encounter with a giant orangutan male - and the video goes Ultra viral (thanks, Sprint). Geoff wanders the forest, near starvation, and stumbles onto a camp of scientists/activists. Petra is the leader, and she thanks Geoff for streaming the proceeds of the video to their cause (thanks, Sprint). Geoff falls for her, hard, but she’s a Buddhist nun since, like, birth. Act Two: Geoff and Petra part ways, physically and philosophically. Geoff comes upon a camp of ‘Occupy the Forest’ and he freaks out - they’re eating chips! Made with Palm Oil! Geoff’s rant gets filmed by Allison, who sends it to Sprint. The Occupy the Forest channel is viral on the dark web and kids everywhere start boycotting (and destroying) food, beauty products, everything that contains Palm. Geoff and his new protege monkey wrench a compound of forestry machinery. The Indonesian workers pursue, Geoff’s friend is killed, and Geoff narrowly escapes on a ship that takes him to the Nishin Maru, Paul Watson’s anti-whaling Sea Shepherd flagship. Petra is there too. She’s super depressed, because her bid to bring sanity back to the world at the UN failed, and the Controllers won. Act Two, Part Two Petra tries to commit suicide by staying out on deck in the Antarctic weather. Freezing, she sees a mirage: the entire deck is covered in dead exotic beasts. Geoff saves her (yes, he has to get naked in a sleeping bag with her to get her core temperature back up). She denies the love again, and he denies the need to use nonviolent tactics in the movement. Geoff is hunted by the Controllers everywhere, so he has to accompany Petra back to India. Allison is close to having proof the Controllers (her dad!) are evil. Allison and Sprint prepare to hit the Controllers - releasing their encrypted money pots for all Anonymous hacker warriors to attack. Geoff gets in deep with eco-terrorist militants in India trying to save the Bengal tiger’s forests. Sprint gets a video that looks like Geoff condones killing. Geoff narrowly escapes with his life, thanks to an ‘Angel’ - a telecoms tycoon in Mumbai. Geoff tries to Skype with Petra (she’s back on Sumatra) but we witness video of the extinction moment for orangutans. We think Petra was killed too. Allison infiltrates Cohen’s lair, and is almost killed in a double-cross. Act Three Sprint blames Geoff for frustrating Allison’s almost complete download of Controller vulnerability. They part ways: Sprint will help the ‘Angel’ with the online movement. Geoff goes to Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and sets up a non-violent ‘sit in’ of the Virunga National Forest, last refuge of the Gorilla, and the world’s main source of Coltan - it’s in your cell phone. Petra is alive, and Geoff and her finally hook up. In the mainstream media, youth are depicted as violent revolutionaries threatening anarchy, and Cohen makes his move: he takes over the US military, and his first target will be the kid responsible for radicalizing his darling daughter. Cohen sends paramilitaries in, and they massacre peaceful protesters in the DRC jungle. It gets filmed, gets put online into the mainstream media (thanks Sprint, and the ‘Angel’), and we see a montage of adults waking up to the reality their kids are dying for. Finally, we see old people, middle aged people, all classes and ages at these protests. Petra was killed in the DRC massacre. Geoff takes her place at the podium at the UN general assembly. Geoff breaks the fourth wall and tells us, the audience, that WE are the Controllers. With every dollar we spend, or don’t spend, we choose: verdant jungle or clearcut destruction. We decide.