The American Journey

Synopsis

The hero, Damián, goes through hell and high water across two continents to be with his love, Stefany.

Background

Stefany and Damián met during the SFI Complex Systems Summer School of 2010. Unfortunately, at the end of the summer school, Damián had to return to Argentina. They continued to talk to each other by phone, and decided that he would come visit her in Boston, where she will be studying at Harvard in the fall.

On the evening of Sunday 26 July 2010, Stefany, Elais, Nathaniel, and Avril were sitting in the dining hall of St John's College. Stefany mentioned that the cheapest round-trip plane tickets between Buenos Aires and Boston were $700 plus a $400 tax. This prompted a discussion of alternative means of transportation, including boating (as in, on a boat), walking, or riding a missile. Nathaniel kept trying to insert death into the story (e.g., Stefany getting hit by the missile, or if not, Stefany getting hit by a bus), on the grounds that if Damián wrote a book of his adventure, it would sell better if it ended in tragedy.

This somehow turned into that it would be a movie. Stefany asked how the movie would begin, and with that, Elais launched into an hour-plus narrative, recounting in detail the plot and characters of a full-length movie, all made up on the spot. (Good job, Elais.)

The Story

(this is just an outline so far. parts might be wrong. fill it in, and put stuff here to avoid forgetting in the meantime)

Day 0

Damián and Stefany are talking on Skype.

Damián gets on a plane in Argentina.

The plane is hijacked by terrorists and crashes in Guatemala. Damián is rescued by a former military pilot named Ernesto, who happens to have a parachute.

Day 1

Damián fights the insurgents in Guatemala.

Day 2

Damián and Ernesto go to Mexico. Ernesto gets a monkey named Ludwig.

Stefany doesn't know what flight Damián was on, but has heard about the plane crash, and since she hasn't heard from Damián, is afraid that he might have been on that plane. She doesn't believe he is dead. She tries calling him, and his little brother says he's at work.

She has two girl friends who convince her to go on a date with a sleazy Italian guy who pretends to be in the mafia and gets beaten up by the actual mafia. She feels sorry for him so agrees to go on another date but doesn't go.

Damián and Ernesto get to Mexico City, and could walk across the border but that would take too long.

They go to Cancún. (are the Israeli terrorists involved here?) Violence happens, American tourists are killed, and America blames the Mexican drug trade and starts preparing to go to war with Mexico.

Day 3

Damián and Ernesto take a boat to Cuba. The captain is Gomez. The boat gets attacked by Israeli terrorists (?). Gomez gets killed. They end up in the jungles of Cuba.

Stefany goes to a coffee shop in Cambridge and runs into Avril. She talks about Damián, and Avril recalls seeing him in a newspaper article about the Guatemala stuff. Avril uses her "MIT hacker skills" to crawl the web and find photos of Damián from surveillance cameras etc, so they can track where he's been.

Day 4

Damián and Ernesto go from Cuba to the US (how?). They end up in Mussel Shoals, Alabama. Or maybe they are in Texas first.

They meet up with Elais, who takes them to the airport in (somewhere), Alabama, and he isn't planning to go with them but gets stuck with them because the Israelis attack the airport. They have fake US passports. Elais's name is Raúl (with a mustache).

They fly to West Virginia (?), at which point they are out of fuel.

Day 5

They get on a train toward Boston. Avril has tracked them, and calls Elais's cell phone, telling him to get off the train. They get off in Philadelphia, just as the Israeli terrorists are getting on. Ethan has a cameo appearance in the train station, barefoot.

Avril gives them instructions to get state IDs from the DMV. They use their real names.

Elais rents a car. Avril yells at him because the government can track his credit card and now knows what car he's in. A police report is issued about the three criminals, but using the names from their fake passports.

Elais, Damián, and Ernesto drive to New York (?). Then they are in Central Park, talking with the leader of the CIA (who has been in the story earlier, but I forget where). The CIA wants Damián's dissertation, because it describes how to obtain Element 0, an element that is lighter than hydrogen and can be used to make more powerful nuclear weapons. He says Damián must give him the dissertation, or else they will just kill him and take it from him. Damián refuses. The leader of the Mossad (the Israeli terrorists) shows up, and has a face-off with the leader of the CIA, as powerful men always do in movies. He gestures upward, and the camera shows them surrounded by snipers on rooftops. The CIA guy does the same, and the camera shows the snipers with guns to their heads.

Meanwhile, Damián, Ernesto, and Elais are trying to sneak awak, but Ernesto steps on a branch, drawing attention to them, and everyone opens fire, leading to the largest violence ever to occur in Central Park.

Somehow they get away, and steal a boat. They fall asleep in the boat, and end up in Boston Harbor.

Day 6

Stefany is sitting in her room, and behind her appears Damián (along with the others). They are happily reunited.

Damián sees the leader of the CIA out the window, and quietly goes out to talk to him. The CIA has decided to just pretend the whole thing never happened.

Damián and Stefany kiss. Avril and Nathaniel also kiss (somehow Nathaniel got into the story, he was helping with the tracking and stuff). Siggy kisses Elais; Elais doesn't kiss him back.

Day 7

They do fun things in Boston.

Prologue

Damián meets Noam Chomsky, who has one more brilliant non-crazy linguistics idea, involving the language of the gods, which can make rocks explode from words. They work on this idea together and Damián becomes a famous linguist, using his background in nuclear physics to explain the god-language. Damián and Stefany have a baby whose first language is the god-language.

Cast of Characters

Stefany: Shakira (other options? No, it has to be done)

Damián: Antonio Banderas (Maybe Gael Garcia, he is the mexican guy of "y tu mama tambien")

Ernesto: Cheech Marin

Gomez: Sean Connery

Head of the CIA: (a black guy)

Head of Mossad: (big bald Jewish guy)

Elais: Denzel Washington Will Smith

Avril: Scarlett Johansson

Nathaniel: himself

Siggy:

Ethan: himself