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THE FRENCH DECEPTION


LATEST NEWS:  8/21/05  "The French" Deception has been put on hold until further notice.  There are many factors contributing to this, the main one being that many people working on the project have gone off to college or moved to other cities to begin work.  There are very few shots left to be redone, and over 3/4ths of the movie is awaiting final editing.  It's only a matter of time until this movie is completed and ready for competition.

SUMMARY

CAST/CREW BIOS

The French Deception is a story about the strength of friendship even in the face of betrayal.  This story is full of coincidental happenings that all affect our two main characters, Cam and Dan.

Cam is a moderately successful businessman who is satisfied with what he has achieved in life.  He cares a lot about himself, his appearance, and also his training.  Though he is happy as a businessman, Cam has the feeling that he was meant to do more than collate copies on this planet.  He says wants more than anything to be a ninja, but what he really wants is to feel like he’s made a difference in the world.

Dan is sort of Cam ’s antithesis.  He works in the same building as Cam, but in a different department.  He hates his job, doesn’t care much about anything except getting enough sleep at night and breathing in and out.  During the course of this story he changes into a man with confidence, but more importantly, a man who truly cares for his friends over himself.

We open with a darkly lit scene in which a car carrying two men stops in a parking lot, empty except for one other car.  Two men get out of the first car.  They are agents from the CIA, Agent White and Agent Jones.  They are making a transfer of a conspicuous briefcase to the next car.  However, their plan is interrupted when Rasputin, an enormous Russian is in the car, having killed the CIA agent who was supposed to be waiting for them.  He attacks the agents and makes off with the briefcase.

The actual story begins in the small town of Sugar Land , TX on a normal workday.  Both men live in a small, two bedroom house and they share a morning routine that they have got down perfectly.  Both of them are ready for work at the same time, and Cam always takes Danny to work (Danny doesn’t have a car).  This morning, something is different though.  As they approach their car, they encounter two homeless bums who have apparently figured out a way to get into their gated apartment complex.  After a brief exchange, the two friends pay little mind to the bums, but they play a very important role in the story.

Once they get to work, things seem to be going normally enough for the two friends.  Things get a little weird for Cam though, when after receiving another lecture from his boss he finds a letter from the CIA on his keyboard.  At first he discards the letter, but the idea of becoming a CIA agent (and thus making a difference in the world) obviously stirs some interest in him.  Danny has run into some interesting problems as well.  While at work he has met with Boris and Rasputin, two Russians (one you may remember from the first scene).  Boris explains to Danny that he has been chosen to work for the KGB, something that Danny is not interested in at all (though he happily agrees after a little convincing from Rasputin).  After the two meet unsuccessfully for lunch (Danny takes too long with the Russians), Cam returns to work to find Agent White under his desk, asking him to join the CIA.  This comes as some surprise to Cam , who wasn’t sure if the letter was serious.  He finds himself actually hesitating when confronted with the choice to join, but Agent White takes his hesitation as a yes and leaves before Cam really has a chance to say much of anything.  When Cam comes to pick Danny up from work, we are introduced to another character crucial to the story, Paul.  Paul is a traveling poet and male prostitute who is quite clearly unstable in the head.  He drives a white Honda Civic (also crucial to the story)

Needless to say, the two men’s lives have changed considerably when Cam comes to pick up Danny at the end of the day.  Danny now is practically enslaved in the KGB (with Rasputin as his watchful master), and Cam finds himself living out a slightly different version of his lifelong dream as a CIA agent.  Both of them keep it a secret, but it is a very awkward tension between them from this point on.

The next day, Danny and Cam are told individually (Danny at work and Cam at home) that they are both assigned to the same job.  Danny is to carry the briefcase Rasputin took and drop it off at a certain location on a certain date so that the briefcase (which was originally stolen from Russia ) can be returned to its motherland.  Likewise, Cam is to interrupt a drop off that the CIA has learned about, and keep the briefcase from leaving the United States (its innards are vitally important to the president).  Cam also gets to see a picture of Rasputin, which raises some suspicion in him regarding Danny, but he shakes it off as coincidence (or maybe the Russians are already onto him)?  Again, both men keep this a secret between the two of them, but some curiosity is aroused when Danny brings home a briefcase mysteriously from work that evening.  Even the bums are intrigued.

That evening, Danny and Cam are approached by their respective government agents and told that the drop off is to take place at 9am the following day, in a park nearby at the driver side door of a white Honda Civic.  They are told at the same time, Danny in person and Cam over the phone, which makes for even more awkwardness between the two of them.  It will only get worse…

The next morning, by a stroke of bad luck, Danny has forgotten to set his alarm and Cam has set his for 8pm instead of am.  Both of them oversleep and find themselves with only minutes before the drop off is to take place.  Fortunately, they are both too panicked to realize that they are both panicked, and they leave for the drop off point ( Cam in his car and Danny on foot).

At the drop off, Cam runs into Paul and finds it quite odd that he saw Paul at Danny’s work as well.  He begins to suspect that Paul is involved in this whole scheme along with the Russians, but Paul is so weird that Cam has a hard time focusing around him.  He is so tied up in his thinking that he actually misses the drop off.  Danny misses the drop off too, but for an entirely different reason:  there are two Civics (one is Paul’s; the other belongs to the Russians).  Danny is so riled up by everything that he puts the briefcase down without seeing that there are two identical cars, and Paul finds the briefcase and leaves.  Cam sees Paul leave with the briefcase and feels that his suspicions have been confirmed (though he is upset because he technically failed his mission).  Luckily, he has Paul’s card and knows his address.  At this point, he runs into Danny, who is walking home glad that he got rid of the briefcase.

When the two friends return home, they find their door open (Danny apparently forgot to lock it) and the bums are inside eating their food.  Danny and Cam finally get them chased out.  While they are surveying the damage, there is a mysterious knock at the door and a call for “housekeeping” in a strangely familiar voice.  Danny realizes it is Rasputin’s just as Cam opens the door and is knocked out when Rasputin runs him over.  Boris also enters the apartment and explains that he is going to have to kill Danny because he (inadvertently) screwed up the operation.  Despite Danny’s pleading, it looks like it’s over, when suddenly Cam springs to action and knocks Boris out.  He then pulls a gun on Rasputin, in a very surprising maneuver.  At this point we see a Cam that hasn’t been seen before; a deadly serious man who is truly concerned for his friend.

Once Cam gets Rasputin and Boris out of the apartment, he turns his firearm on Danny.  At this point the movie becomes very serious as Danny and Cam both spill their guts about their situations.  They agree to go together to get the briefcase from Paul, though at this point their not sure what this is going to accomplish; if Danny gives it to the Russians, Cam will be in trouble, and if Cam returns it to the CIA, the Russians will kill Danny for sure.

When Danny and Cam arrive at Paul’s house, they have to face his attempts to sell them some of his “services.”  They finally get out of him that he has the briefcase, and he agrees to give it to them as long as they will listen to some of his poetry.  They agree, and just before Paul begins his first line, the door slams and in walk the two bums.  Apparently they rode over with Cam and Danny without them knowing, and now they reveal themselves as agents for the French government.

After a verbal exchange, the Frenchmen divulge that they were sent to find the briefcase and figure out what was in it, just so they could get in on other people’s business.  At this point, they steal the briefcase and defeat Cam and Danny in a ridiculous fight.  All looks as if it is lost, when we find out that what was in fact in the briefcase at that time was Pauls’ poetry, not what was originally in it.

Cam loses his job with the CIA for failing his mission.  The President is “very upset” at Cam and so they fire him.  Danny worries a lot about the Russians, but they are killed by ninjas.  The French get screwed because there was poetry in their briefcase instead of whatever it was they were looking for.  It looks like a happy ending, but what was in the briefcase?  Paul discovers that there is a ticket inside to be a cosmonaut on a Russian rocket (since Russia decided to commercialize their space program, the president apparently really wanted to ride on a Russian rocket ship).  The movie ends with the French upset that they were foiled.

 

This movie works well as a political satire and also does an excellent job of making general fun of the idea of secret services in general.  Throughout the movie the strain on a friendship from outside interference is very apparent, and the film also reflects the general feeling the majority of the American public had during President Bush’s (often called “Dubya”) term in office.

 

DIRECTOR: Bobby Rigg
ASSISTANT DIRECTOR: Thi Lam
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Hunter Smith

STARRING: Danny Rigg, Cam Todd, Johnny Rigg, Ricardo Castro, Cameron Wyenberg, Thi Lam, Paul O'Hara, Bryan Alford, Sam Lloydd Hughes

GRIP: Christina Rigg
LIGHTING: Hunter Smith

STAGE OF PRODUCTION: Post production/Cleanup
ESTIMATED COMPLETION DATE: Unknown

**This film was made with assistance from Ferus Somnium Productions.