Thursday 13 January 2011

Robots need love too.....

Botdance - a synopsis for a strange and unusual fifteen minute film by Jess Sweetman

(Disclaimer - parts of this synopsis are based on what my brother Jake actually thought, for many years, the movie Flashdance was about. Suffice to say he was deeply disappointed when it turned out not to actually be an extended 80's music video with no plot or robots.)

Natasha, a twenty five year old loser has been to purgatory, heaven and hell following an attention seeking suicide attempt (whiskey and lemsip) which went awry and killed her. Having escaped from Hell by cutting a bargain to correct all her previous bad behaviour she takes the wrong pipe to The Past and ends up crashing into The Future.

The Future is a land where robots have taken over England and rule with an iron (ahem) grip. Adult humans are slaves whilst their offspring are hoarded into nurseries until they are of working age.

When patrolling robots, on account of her clothing and inability to respond to simple commands, mistake Natasha for an infant suffering from giganticism she is placed in a nursery where she befriends some socially inept teenagers. The teenagers take Natasha into their confidence and show her the special space that they have hidden from the robots, in which they are learning to dance - using cuttings from 80's magazines that fell through a wormhole in space as inspiration, and the soundtrack to The Stud, the Jackie Collins penned classic movie. Dancing has been prohibited by the evil robots - who only have one early 80's dance move to brag about and is punishable by death.

Using her age and experience as someone who hasn't been raised by robots to her advantage Natasha takes leadership of the group, showing them a variety of moves which she invented whilst holed up in her room with no friends. The teenagers learn fast and Natasha is also able to put the moves onto Todd, a particularly ripped 17 year old.

The robots burst in, however, and the teenagers and Natasha are forced to start the revolution against the robots. Because of their physical prowess and dangerous moves they are able to fight down the attacking hoards and the revolution is a complete success. The teenagers and Natasha are put in charge of the country.

After imposing one law upon the newly liberated humans - compulsory dance - and ignoring all other social need whilst distracted by hair products, the rediscovery of films and music and their own squabbles, the teenagers and Natasha are overthrown by the adults and Natasha takes the opportunity to grab a wormhole back to the past, where she was originally supposed to be, leaving a heart broken Todd behind.

2 comments:

  1. WHERE DO I BUY TICKETS?

    This should well be longer than 15 minutes.

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  2. To be perfectly honest it was originally written alongside another story line in an episode of my long forgotten sitcom Natasha In The Underworld - only that included an abandoned sex robot called Shagbot 3000 and Natasha's purgatorial officer Lenny the Space Cucumber. But that's another story to be told another time.....!
    Glad you like it though xxxx

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