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Interesting Crimes/Criminal Motivation

cheeseandachallenge

cheeseandachallenge

A friend and I are working on a character based piece. One of the leads comes from a pretty wealthy family of criminals.

She's a bookish, overly serious type. By all means she isn't really cut out to be a criminal, she's more of an academic type. She is a small time art thief, but is kind of considered a joke in her family, and eventually she decides to step things up a little... to what?

The film is meant to be funny, but in quite a dry, satirical way. So the crime kind of needs to have potential to create humour, but more out of the context of the crime contrasted with the character, as opposed to the crime being funny. It needs to be serious enough to actually have real dramatic potential, be enough to actually be considered impressive by a family of criminals, and stay out of the realm of being slapstick humour.

All the ideas I've come up with serve, but just seem a bit.. flat? Hitman, drug dealing, etc. It just doesn't seem right.

Does anyone have any suggestions that are a bit more outside the box?
 
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Dealing with the public always comes with varring degrees of customer intelligence and faculty.
Consider your lead "giving a go" at fronting stolen merchandise between thieves and buyers, both of which are various interesting characters.
 
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I think you need to fold in the fact that she's a small time art thief into the story here. If her "crime" family considers this occupation of hers a joke it only seems natural to work that into the story. Especially since it's her way of saying "screw you" this art thief thing can be a huge pay off.

If you want to work in humor, perhaps she reaches out to a contact and she tries to have a duplicate made of a very expensive painting. For instance the Mona Lisa or something. Her plan is to swap out the duplicate of the Mona Lisa with the real painting to sell it on the black market. But her person who paints the duplicate is way off for it to pass as the legit Mona Lisa. Perhaps he nip is hanging out or something. I dunno. Just an example and a bad example at that. But you get what I'm saying. Work in her skill or lack thereof of art thievery into the main story.
 
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I think it's a good idea that this art thief should just up their game. If they’ve been stealing and selling minor works, they should go for something big.

Sure, the “Mona Lisa” or "The Scream" would be a good steal, but I can’t really see the comedic value.

She should steal “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living”. That could be funny.
 
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What you have here is the premise for a basic "Heist" film. You said that she is
bookish, overly serious type ... academic type ... a small time art thief.
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So, as Opus and Hatter offered maybe she goes from small time art thief to big time art thief.

She hears about a moving art exhibit (the British Royal Family occasionally tours some of its art collection to benefit charities, for example) and because she is "bookish and academic" gets a job working for the exhibit. From here your budget is going to dictate the heist; if you have a big enough budget you can steal the painting (a sculpture may be more comedic) during transport, otherwise it will have to be stolen while on display.


Of course, she could be perceived by her family as small time, when in fact she pulls off better heists than the entire family combined, but is so obsessed with secrecy/security her family doesn't know. The comedy continues when both she and the family unknowingly compete to steal the same art work. As a contrast she finesses everything while her family uses the "brute force" approach.
 
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Thanks guys, that seems to be a far more logical leap for the character than anything we were playing with! Will have a crack at brainstorming some stuff around that.

And cheers mlsemann, need a new series to watch anyway, so that's a good excuse!
 
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cheeseandachallenge said:
A friend and I are working on a character based piece. One of the leads comes from a pretty wealthy family of criminals.

She's a bookish, overly serious type. By all means she isn't really cut out to be a criminal, she's more of an academic type. She is a small time art thief, but is kind of considered a joke in her family, and eventually she decides to step things up a little... to what?

The film is meant to be funny, but in quite a dry, satirical way. So the crime kind of needs to have potential to create humour, but more out of the context of the crime contrasted with the character, as opposed to the crime being funny. It needs to be serious enough to actually have real dramatic potential, be enough to actually be considered impressive by a family of criminals, and stay out of the realm of being slapstick humour.

All the ideas I've come up with serve, but just seem a bit.. flat? Hitman, drug dealing, etc. It just doesn't seem right.

Does anyone have any suggestions that are a bit more outside the box?
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That's a really big challenge!
It's always interesting to see people with dual-faces, you know, she's average artist/academic/student/teacher/professor in daytime, and a crazed murderer and maniac at nights. It's kinda Agata Cristi style.
 
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Inarius said:
That's a really big challenge!
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The character? Yeah it's a difficult one to write, a bit of a challenge to myself really, I haven't really done character driven pieces before. Thankfully the person I'm writing it with is good with more character central work, though she hasn't done film before.

It's always interesting to see people with dual-faces, you know, she's average artist/academic/student/teacher/professor in daytime, and a crazed murderer and maniac at nights. It's kinda Agata Cristi style.
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She's not quite a crazed murder, she's more of a reluctant criminal. The story is written so it's a split narrative between two characters (the other being a (delusional) detective). The way its shaping up, it seems our criminal lady will be the more likable of the two, and probably the protagonist (we'd initially planned to write it quite objectively, with neither being a clear antagonist/protagonist).
 
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By saying challenge I mean that complicated character should be in a complicated story. And I personally think that this character can be a great protagonist AND antagonist in one person. As I understand, the character lives a "dual" life (if not crazy, then very smart, a criminal genius), or am I wrong?
 
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Inarius said:
By saying challenge I mean that complicated character should be in a complicated story. And I personally think that this character can be a great protagonist AND antagonist in one person. As I understand, the character lives a "dual" life (if not crazy, then very smart, a criminal genius), or am I wrong?
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She's very smart, and indeed not quite sane (wouldn't class her as insane either). She is complex, and there is a lot of conflict between her "dual lives," yes.
 
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Well, if you need ideas:
How old is she? Does she date somebody? Maybe she can have 2 boyfriends, one is a sadistic criminal, other is an artist or something like that. The goal is that both boyfriends must be very artistic.

And what are the character's goals?
 
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Inarius said:
How old is she? Does she date somebody? Maybe she can have 2 boyfriends, one is a sadistic criminal, other is an artist or something like that. The goal is that both boyfriends must be very artistic.

And what are the character's goals?
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1) Age isn't specified at this point. about 19-23.
2) At this point she doesn't have a partner. She's very much a loner. Initially the way it was shaping up, we were going to write it as a mini/web series type thing, which was going to introduce an apprentice type figure with the potential for a romantic relationship. But it was becoming a bit too ambitious.

As such, we're currently treating this as a short, that, if it comes out well, will become a kind of pilot (to take to interested parties and use to raise some funds to up production values).

It's quite complex as is, and the other character (the detective) already has a sidekick type figure. We were potentially thinking of introducing some form of romance between the detective and our criminal/artist (though likely not a reciprocal relationship). The idea of 2 boyfriends is interesting, though. I'll keep that in mind. Just worried we end up making it too complex. It'd be the kind of thing we'd look at if we do develop it into a series.

3) Goals: This is her way of life, growing up in a criminal family. She isn't really cut out to be a criminal, but is likely a lot cleverer than they are - ironically making her a better criminal at times (though they dabble in much more serious crime). She does what she does because that's the life she knows. But her love of literature, art, etc leads her to her current area. Again, the character and story aren't fully developed. We've not had a chance to work on this since I've posted the thread due to university schedules of our own. But any thoughts you have are greatly appreciated!
 
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cheeseandachallenge, so she's from criminals family, but loves art and literature... that's just the opposite of what I've suggested. That's... mysterious :)

Two boyfriends is a love triangle.:) People like love triangles in film series. But... 19-23 aged girl to date a detective? I haven't seen detectives (especially crime detectives) younger than 30 years old. Don't know, I'm just saying.
 
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Yup. She's not really a proper criminal (well at this stage-that may change) at heart. The detective isn't really a proper detective in reality (but at heart he is). I didn't really want to give too much away but our detective isn't a true detective. He's someone who wants to be, and takes himself very seriously, but he's not employed as such - he's a more comic character in this. Again, this may change, but that's the character at the moment.

As for the romance, that likely wont be introduced at this stage - though I don't know if age is that big of a deal. Ages for both wouldn't be specified, they're both young. Regardless I know a lot of people in relationships in similar positions (typically young female 20 or so dating male 30+). But the complexities of that can be figured out if it ever comes up in the script.
 
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Inarius said:
Well, the idea sound interesting. Are you selling the script? Or shooting yourself? Because I think it requires good actors to play those characters.
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Shooting myself. And yep, you're right, it's going to take strong performances to pull it off. We'll likely have to go through a lengthy casting process (I do have some start being connected with film and theatre circles here)
 
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