FILM TREATMENT
Name: Star Wars, Episode XIII: Swim Two Birds
Genre: Culinary Opera/Romantic Comedy
Outline: The unending trials and tribulations befalling an earnest restauranteer. A fight between the forces of good and evil.
Characters:
Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill): Haunted by the death of his father, the full on kiss his sister planted on him and how he hasn’t had a lead in a major motion picture in decades, Luke travels to the edge of the star system, past the forest moon of Woodside, to Jackson Heights, a sprawling bazaar of smugglers, immigrants and gentrifiers. There, he realizes the Empire (anti-european food mafia) has the local community under its grip and he grudgingly joins the Resistance.
Steward “Stew” Job (Shia Le Boeuf): Stew has trained long and hard in the ways of the cook, coming from the frozen north and cooking for Belgians. While humbly and quietly engrossed in making his contemporary restaurant (30’s style built in an 80’s style “we can fix it up” montage), with perfect custom chairs, perfect Technique Français, perfect shellfish and a perfect model of staff compensation, he fails to see the dark cloud rising against him until it is too late.
The Community Board (Helen Mirren, Ben Stiller, John Leguzamo, Jay Lo, John Cho, Aziz Ansari, Alan Alda, Betty White and Snoop Dog): Obstinately a local government, they are agents of the Empire. They employ seedy landlords, bad manners and liquor licenses to stop Stew and others like him. Lolita Bergdorf (Jay Lo) eventually has a change of heart, begins secretly working for the Resistance and becomes a love interest.
Reginald “Redge” Calrissian (Terrance Howard): Stew’s longtime friend, financial backer and bodyguard, Redge was the first to realize the desert of restaurants in Jackson Heights. Sent to prison for a crime he didn’t commit, he promptly escaped to the Los Angeles underground. He briefly resurfaced but his whereabouts are unknown. For this, Stew vowed revenge. While claiming to be a cousin of Lando Calrissian, it is later found out the real Redge died a mysterious death in an orphanage many years ago.
Leroy “de Poo” Brown (Samuel L. Jackson): From the south side of Chicago, once a trouble maker and gambler, often unknowingly working for the Empire, he reinvented himself after a vicious bar fight and became a designer par excellence. While wary of the Resistance, he is convinced by Stew to design the restaurant and along the way learns of the true nature of the Empire. He is unaware that he is a descendant of royalty. Juan Yossarian (Ben Stiller) knows it but actively keeps it a secret.
Ipsos Jackson (Amy Adams): A vocal conduit for elders who advise Stew offering counsel ranging from sober sincerity to creamed cheerleading as they thirst for the water Stew will bring to the land.
The Engineer (Steven Seagal): A nefarious building inspector, a restaurant assassin and all around douchebag, sent by the Empire to further thwart the passion of our hero. He claims to be a Sith Lord Master but is evasive when asked for specifics.
Budget: 1,329,063 Zimbabwean Dollars and rent, lots of rent.
