THE STAGE 32 LOGLINES

Post your loglines. Get and give feedback.

THE MEN WHO EAT DOGS

THE MEN WHO EAT DOGS
By Catherine Powell

GENRE: Drama
LOGLINE:

An emotionally charged suspense drama, fiction based on real events, following an air traffic controller whose fatal error speaks volumes about humanity's struggle with survival, forgiveness and hope. Her story begins with personal trauma, her rather successful professional background as an air force pilot, and her journey searching for her parents' plane crash in a thick redwood forest, and an unfinished business before a larger event.

SYNOPSIS:

Our protagonist is 34-year old, Robin Webb, an intellectual and considered by many an over-achiever. She is a top-gun pilot, stationed in Alaska.

She comes from a loving, affluent family. Her father was an aviation enthusiast, owns airplanes for leisure trips. Robin is the youngest of three highly trained and disciplined children.

A tragic event when she was twenty-seven sets her up on an emotional challenge and a psychological trauma when her parents plane disappeared from the radar while in flight over the skies of Oxnard, California.

Over-achievers tackle high-risk jobs. And here is Robin Webb in the cockpit, making a U-turn, she’s being summoned by her commander back to the base. That one fateful day, she learns of her parent’s plane crash. Amidst the emotional turbulence, she remains composed, and hides her emotions in front of her peers. But in the darkness of her quarters, she silently weeps in mourning. And as she looks out the western horizon, she clearly hears a voice, “come home.”

Back in California, she joins the forest rangers and other volunteers to search for her parents. By day fifteen, the search ends without any trace of her parent’s plane.

Not giving up. She sets out on her own journey to search for her parents, and in the wilderness, she finds herself in the thick forest of Ulysses, a one million acres redwood forest where 20 acres of its land is under development by a cell phone company.

Robin applies her knowledge in search and combat to find her parents. Emotionally strong in the beginning, but day by day, she finds herself losing parts of herself. Into its mountains, deep river canyons and thick forest canopy, she has to manage her emotions and the dangers of an enormous, remote and unforgiving wilderness. By the ninetieth day of her search, emotionally, she is becoming frustrated and self-questioning her progress.

She navigates ravines, deadfall, rivers, realistically, a lone person would find it impossible to cover everything. Her long stretches of thought, looping uncontrollably. And as the night falls, on her two hundred twentieth day of search, after falling off from an eroded ground into the river earlier, she manages to climb out of the gushing current of the water. Her navigational errors are multiplying. She’s losing grip of her reality, fatigue sets in. She falls into a deep slumber, and wakes up hearing a voice, “I know why I’m here.” She sees two caskets being lead to a hearse, and sees herself giving directions to the funeral staff to slow down their walking.

An actual voice waking her up. A man who works for the cell phone company is enroute to his job site, and finds her almost lifeless laying next to a redwood tree, on a fire road, where she passed out the night before. The man calls for help.

Robin wakes up in the ICU with broken ribs, concussions and hypothermia. She recovers but the Air Force has discharged her from service. It is her quiet surrender.

Emotionally healing from the trauma, though she refuses to submit to psychiatric help. She is fighting her sense of self with her own self-will power. The urge to quit or do something reckless continues to loop in her mind.

One day, a happy coincidence sneaks in, she meets the man who saved her from the forest while on her daily morning run. Michael Davis, works for Cell Tech. They talk for a brief moment and he invites her to have dinner, and a longer conversation follows through, connecting her with a friend who works at a busy airport. They are hiring for air traffic controllers.

Meeting Michael is the much needed sunlight that help sprout a seed for a full emotional recovery for Robin. But deep in the backdrop of her life, there is still an unfinished business - her parents' disappearance.

She will give this relationship a chance, and a new career.

And then—

Her whole new life and career changed in a split second.

The thick firey smoke in the cabin, emergency sirens, chaos in the runway.

Robin is quickly removed from her chair and ushered into a private vehicle.

The dark clouds envelop the thick, dense forest as rain begins to fall. The wild animals sense a human presence and watch her with glowing eyes. She wakes up with an aching body, bruised and wounded, in the middle of a dense forest, she utters, “If I stop, I have failed.”

Marcos Fizzotti

Rated this logline

register for stage 32 Register / Log In