Film Idea: The Man With No Name, Corporate Edition

As some of you may know, I'm a big fan of formalism, if not the formulaic. I really like to identify the rules of the game, whatever that game may be, and then try to replicate the form that the rules dictate. So, for example, I'm one of those people who actually enjoys writing 250 word encyclopedia entries on Supreme Court cases. It's really hard to cram the facts, holding, vote, and significance of a case, even a minor case, into that many words. But I like that sort of thing.

Same thing with watching movies. The Scream movies proved that horror movies follow rules. The same with Westerns. One kind of Western takes the form: (1) The film has to start with a shoot-out, usually a pretty dramatic shoot-out, maybe a brazen daylight robbery (even Serenity followed this rule); (2) there is a problem--sometimes someone in pursuit of the protagonists, sometimes the opening scene was a trap, some difficulty arises, anyway; (3) the protagonists roam about, trying to solve the problem (vague, I know) or escape to Mexico/Texas/the frontier; and then (4) big shoot-out/showdown at the end. Someone gets killed, if not everyone.

In some ways, The Wild Bunch is the perfect Western, in formalistic terms.

Anyway . . . think that form in a corporate setting. Where do shoot-outs occur? Meetings. Think of it like this: There's a big meeting, a battle of wills. The protagonists get outgunned by the higher-ups. Action, action, problem-solving . . . and a big shoot-out at the end, at a climactic meeting and showdown of wills.

I'm working on it. Just a thought. (In my new job, there are meetings almost everyday. So I've been thinking about how meetings work, at an interpersonal level.)