SCRIPT WRITING JOURNEY: “TOLERANCE” IS ABOUT CONTEMPORARY CHRISTIAN TOLERANCE, IMMIGRATION AND TERRORISM.

The idea of the TOLERANCE movie came after the 2001 terrorist attack on New York’s World Trade Center towers. The treatment journey, from idea to submitting it to a critic and registering it to the Writers Guild of America, took four years. Extensive ethnic, scientific, and media research sources helped in maintaining a fair connection between the real terrorism events we experience in our society and the fiction in the movie. To keep a tight relationship between the movie’s events, dialogue and character behaviors I had to create time lines and mind maps, because it was hard to keep track of them all in my head. At the time of writing the treatment I was taking my second degree in Information Technology. I applied what I’ve learned there to the treatment; the movie is a big object made of smaller ones, each of which has its own attributes, each of which must be related, that is like in an object oriented relationship database; else, the movie is a fluke.

Talking about the idea of the movie, it struck me how some evil people allowed to immigrate into this country, out of contemporary Christian tolerance, were attempting to destabilize it. And yes, they were using our assets and resources to do it. Only our lenience allowed them to succeed: crooks, crooked minds and evil people, behaving like viruses, spread and feed on a tolerant society-the juicy host-. The association of such people fuels a virulence that could damage the society on a large scale. And while such viruses evolve to strike first and kill, the host can only react, coming in second. This sets the first engagement rule: the one who acts, wins over the one who abstains. Unless God rolls the dice and depending on whose God it is. A key dialogue between high ranking intelligence officers sounds like this : “Any opportunity is good for them to grow strong on us, like viruses on a juicy host” forges ahead the officer. “And in our tolerant mindset we can’t imagine how lethal they can be. Nor do we know when they become lethal, because by trying to find out, we infringe on their civil liberties. And we may scare some innocent people in the process.” The officer stands-up and looks at the agents on the floor. “The terrorists are trained to strike first while us, the tolerant society, cannot because we are “too civilized”, emphasizes he. “Unfortunately, the one who acts wins over the one who abstains.”

Recent discussions in the media about the threat of ISIS possibly being in the possession of radioactive material had prompted me to take this treatment out of the attic’s dust. The nature of the threat in the movie is still radioactive, but it is not a dirty bomb. My wife was concerned that I could be giving fresh ideas to the terrorists. But I don’t think so: could we ever, as good people, overcome the genius of the evil? Maybe, if we try harder. If good people do not act, the evil ones win.

I am adding to this post an extract from a paragraph in Winston Churchill’s book, The River War, published in 1899.
“Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the Queen: all know how to die. But the influence of the religion paralyses the social development … has already spread throughout Central Africa…and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science… the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome.”