After a graduate student is asked to identify a body—his pot-dealer’s, he enlists the help of two other clients to give the man a proper burial.
My only question would be, Once your lead decides to bury the body, what is standing in the way?
Precisely. Police somehow involved? Other dealers? Maybe the envelope contained clue to where money hidden…I don’t know. Maybe some day I’ll figure it out as it continues to buzz around my brain.
Try a logline for each possibility as writing the thoughts is the only way forward.
Since you don’t have the answer as to what was in the envelope, consider that the story doesn’t answer it, either. It could be a McGuffin or running joke or…
Sound like an interesting seed idea for a story. But what it may grow into, I don’t know. Have you ever asked your husband WHY he didn’t open it?
Be that as it may, I suggest the principle of “Chekhov’s gun” applies. If a gun is introduced in the 1st Act, it has to be fired in the 2nd. By extrapolation, if you’re going to introduce the envelope as an important prop in the 1st Act, you have to pay it off by the end of the film.
How do you want to pay it off?
Re the envelope: he never collected it from the police station, and here’s my recollection on the WHY (cause he can’t remember now)—he was worried there would be drugs (and the cops were trying to “catch him”), even though the cops said there were personal effects in there. My husband and the dealer bonded over being Veterans (from different generations). So it’s possible he had left my husband something and he’ll never know. My husband just told the cops, “we weren’t that close, it must be for someone else named x.”
I know for sure that my husband was freaked, had just identified the body and had—at the cop’s request — phoned the man’s sister to tell her he identified the body. So he definitely wasn’t thinking my wife will kill me for not looking in the envelope! But now my mind can wander to all sorts of places,
Indeed that’s the question – where does this all go and how does it payoff…
Ckharper
I’ve been toying with this idea for years since … I kid you not, my husband was called by San Francisco police to come identify the body of a man who turned out to be his pot-dealer. My husband was simply the last phone number dialed. And upon meeting police, he was also told the man left behind an envelope with my husband’s name on it, but my husband was too freaked out to take it having no idea what was in it. I mean, come on, you can’t make this stuff up. But my idea Is to have the character phone other random clients to help bury the guy. Like a roadtrip buddy comedy perhaps. Anyone see another angle? I mean — WHAT WAS IN THE ENVELOPE? This was haunt me forever.