PLOT DEVELOPMENT IDEA “DANTE”S ELBOW”

Letter to illustrious expatriot New Zealand director Vincent Ward in the nineteen-eighties:

As Hollywood pulls its hair out for new ideas for films to slowly, carefully, and with baby steps awaken the general public of the truths of genetic engineering and its use in warfare—contemporary warfare, I would like to query your organization with a plot treatment for a very traditional motion picture idea that I have no doubt would do well on NetFlix as well as through major traditional distribution routes. Called “Dante’s Elbow” the plot consists of a traditional switch and replace developmental idea, in the lines with “The Return of Martin Guerre.” At its fundamental level, the removal of Dante from Florence leaves a vacancy, while he writes his seminal literary work “The Divine Comedy.” His enemies, becoming wise to Dante’s plans to ruthlessly excoriate them in his literary work, plan a ruse to replace him with a common criminal they found on the streets of a nearby town who bears a horrifying resemblance to Dante. As Dante has a rather common Italian face, they revolutionize Renaissance plastic surgery, or what would become plastic surgery, by stealing or accessing Leonardo da Vinci’s notebooks and attempt to create a bump on the common criminal’s nose, and a bit of a chin job—creative license would have to be undertaken at this point, with perhaps talks with Leonardo da Vinci himself, either in Italy or his future home with King Louis in France, to ascertain how it could be done according to the genius’s ideas. When Dante is a literary sensation, his ruthlessly excoriated victims manage to get close to Dante, swap him for the common criminal, kill Dante, and a sort of comedy and error play begins.