LOGLINE:
Easton Caldwell signs off his most bankable film assets onto his latest feature, The Descent to Madness. As the film commences, the principal players in the project descent into their own madness.
PREMISE:
Hollywood’s most powerful man, Easton Caldwell, signs off to make The Descent to Madness with his most bankable film assets. Director Patrick Quinn and his movie star wife, Gemma Valentine, join Paloma Diamond on the feature. Soon, the effects of the feature send the principal players into an emotional tailspin, altering their realities just as they reach the pinnacle of their distinguished careers.
PLOT SUMMARY:
Caldwell is keen to finally unearth this project from off the ground. He believes Patrick has the vision to pull off a seemingly cursed project. But when Paloma suddenly dies of a gunshot to the mouth during the production team’s drug fueled lost weekend at the studio’s lot, the script is rewritten for Valentine to portray both roles of the person and her alter ego.
As the show goes on, and with the tragic lost of another film star, The Descent to Madness, never skips a beat. It’s now or never to rewrite history. But by the then, the remaining players of the production have already blurred the lines between the film’s simulacrum. The secret to beat the curse of the film’s madness is to kill the symbiotic parasite that keeps someone from seeing the world the way it was meant to be seen.
SYNOPSIS:
Dismissing his friend’s objections, Caldwell signs up the married duo into the project. Unbeknownst to him, the Quinns are in the bouts of their torment. Battling frustrations of living with a person who loves the mere image of the woman he has created, Gemma feels like a parasite in the marriage. Feeling suffocated and and entrapped, she realizes her husband Patrick falls more and more out of love with her each day. The woman he wants is the fantasy he writes for her not the wife he is married to.
Their marriage is falling apart by the time Klein gives them the Wilder script. The mixed emotions run deep. Both aware of the script’s reputation, Gemma wants nothing to do with the film while her husband’s interest is sparked. The lines of gender reversal and dominance is clearly defined. Gemma usually makes the better and more sensible decisions, pragmatic and sensible while Patrick is gunned by his emotions and impetuosity. In his mind, as long as he writes and directs his wife in the movies he makes, he has control of her and her image. It’s been a long road for his butterfly is growing restless. But the loving wife gives in and they both join Caldwell’s newest girl toy, It Girl Paloma Diamond and Hollywood Heartthrob Clark Cooper in what will become the last Caldwell- Quinn-Valentine feature.
The movie kicks off with a drug filled “lost weekend” at the secret Caldwell set for the new picture. At the ominous set, the Quinn’s join Easton, his main squeeze Paloma, and their agent Alpi to a wild party and film shoot. As the drugs quickly take over, their words begin to lose all sense of the false realities they once knew. The compartmentalization of their own minds becomes a thing of the past. They allow themselves get lost into their own minds. They let go of all their preconceived notions of what is right and wrong and take a dip into the lowest entry of their mind, the primordial animal that seeps within them.
Overseeing the madness from all around, Easton is also hell bent to finish the movie. It’s a project that nobody has been able to get done. His ego eats him up alive. It’s his hell’s fire. Easton’s selfish behavior derives from need of getting whatever he wants at whatever cost. He already lost the It Girl. He is willing to lose his reputation along with her. He was challenged to do something outside of his control and now he’s stuck in the eye of a hurricane. The only person trapped in his web of lies that he sincerely cares for is Gemma but even she’s not strong enough to end the madness. Caldwell believes this descent is doing everyone a favor but it’s only been misery and misery loves company. He looks around his empire of dirt. He’s willing to sacrifice what’s left of his legacy to rewrite history.
Caldwell has a secret recipe to save his film. If all roads lead to this path, he must cut loose and kill the only thing stopping this film from succeeding, Patrick. Before the events of the film, the duplicitous Easton played devil’s advocate. He manipulated Quinn into a pact. Quinn wants to become the greatest director of his generation. He never said he wanted to be alive or dead when that happened. That was Caldwell’s secret card this whole time.
He was the man who shot the gun. Maybe not literally but he was the one who implanted the inception in her husband’s mind. He knew Patrick already wanted out. He was already weak. This just gave the push to fall hard. Gemma’s sting words tear him apart. She rips him apart, announcing his cowardice and lack of heart. He is nothing but an impostor in her eyes. This destroys him but in his eyes, the show must go on.
Obscura 