SCREENPLAYS, NOVELS, NON FICTION BOOKS by Anita Sands
SCREENPLAYS
THE SLAVE Adaptation of Isaac Bashevis Singer's Nobel Prize- winning novel about a 17th century Jew taken captive by a Polish village, and used as a slave. When he falls in love with a Polish girl, their lives endangered by Jews and Christians alike. When he secretly marries her they both go on the lam. Romance, set in 1630's . Rights to novel were owned for 15 years by the late Harry Jakobs (HJ Productions, Montreal.Tel-Aviv, Hollywood) Could be shot in Bulgaria, Rumania, Poland or Czech Republic. Written for the LATE Israeli/Canadian producer Harry Jakobs. Rights to novel up for grabs, free now.THE LONG FALL TO THE SIDEWALK CAFE-Beverly Hills housewife becomes a baglady overnight when her husband is caught embezzling. She finds that the gutter is golden in its own, peculiar way. She climbs to the stars with the unusual philosophy she discovers on the street through her homeless friends. Comedy M.O.W. Vehicle for 50 year old film star. MOW or Cable LIFETIME type vehicle for 50 yr old female star. (also a novel 9 chaps ready for viewing)
PERCIVAL-The ultimate take on the Percival legend. ( Disney has been looking for a 'take' on this goofball hero for a live action feature though if cut, this script could be animated). A dumb country hick in 5th century Pretannia becomes a knight for King Arthur under extraordinary circumstances, wins the fair princess, finds then loses the Grail. PG. Vehicle for Jim Carrey or Steve Coogan. Finished script ready for readers. Also a teen market novel.
DEAD GIVEAWAY- Original suspense romance thriller also a P.I. novel, about a gorgeous, young holistic healer who keeps marrying rich old men and inheriting billion dollar fortunes which instantly evaporate, disappear after auctions into offshore banks. Two disinherited SIBS hire Yalie blue-blood P.I. "FITZ" who is the male HERO of the movie. He rigs a meeting at a party then pretends to be a tax specialist to help the lovely widow with her investments. He discovers that before the Beauteous Christine was a Park Avenue whore she had been an incest survivor & public ward and top hooker in Tennesse. She seems to be part of a plot for whores to entrap and fleece oligarch men which makes the Stepford Wives look like the ladies' benevolent association. Fitz is torn between exposing her felonies and her body as by then he's madly head-over-heels in love with her. Like the 40's film LAURA but romantic, comic, larky & has a happy ending. Finished spec script but this is also a P.I. genre novel. "Fitz P.I." FOUR CHAPTERS READY FOR VIEWING.
GETTING OUT OF VENICE- Poignant, tender comical story of a white girl on welfare, with four infant children, scrounging in hippie-Venice California, trying to get off the dole and a handsome, libidinous married screenwriter. Also a novel.
BEGGAR FROM ORISSA- (The Lost years of Christ) Also a screenplay. India/English co-production. A stranger comes to an Indian village preaches sedition, then changes serf for Maharaja in a few days' time.
MELVIN and RUTH -(Script and novel)Sharp, New York, leftist writer, Ruth Glassman, banned from Book industry on account of her friendship with blackballed Commie writer, Arvin Macy, is doing term papers for Columbia students for chump change. She realizes her son MELVIN has gone totally over the edge into paranoid schizophrenia. (He started OUT an IDIOT SAVANT) She first tries to get him help, city offers nothing for free. It's all mega costly. When the rantings win Melvin the friendship of The Democratic Congressman, who uses him as a speech writer, Ruth first writes the speeches for the boss, then harnesses the son's sudden fame and ability to do brilliant rants before TV cameras, with no stage fright at all.... and she turns her son into a huge hit book. At that point, Men in Black types come after him. "BEING THERE" updated. OUTLINE
A CLEAN KILL- Action suspense thriller, character and issue driven. Autumn in Pennsylvania, then, as story advances, a SNOWY LOCALE. Adaptation of Dave Poyer's Novel "Dead of Winter". A grieving father hunts the deerhunters who killed his son,who was an avid, anti-deerhunting activist. (The son had penetrated an organized poaching ring.) Action-adventure spec script based on published novel.
STEPFATHER BANK- Another Poyer novel. Adaptation. Comic Sci Fi. A Futuristic hippie lives outside the system, lying, cheating, pilfering, reciting poetry for half eaten ham sandwiches.(make that soylent green.) One Bank owns it all and he's the only person on planet not using credit, just bartering, outside the system, so naturally, they go after him. FAB NOVELLA, a cult favorite, later reprinted as a full on novel. Spec Script.
MISSY LONESTAR- COMEDY, character driven. l0 year old 'unadoptable' Texas orphan goes to N.Y. in search of her jockey horse-trainer mother. Set in the horseracing world. In NYC, a down on his luck Pete Rose ballplayer with a kindly, Rita Moreno kind of stripper girlfriend, helps Missy find Mom, who was 'horsenapped' by a billionaire (funded by CIA) who uses human brain transplants (jockeys) to give his horses their wits. Mom is being kept on his Long Island farm and daughter gets there in the nick of time. Page one Rewrite Owned by Menahem Golan who's not making it. I want it back. I have copy of script.
HATE MAIL- Geriatric B-Movie writer Jason Jinxwell has cheated on his last wife! Billie Jinxwell wants a divorce that will really 'cost him.' Using tried and true methods from his films, Jason tries to murder the 5th Mrs. Jinxwell and fails miserably. His last hope is to use his demented mistress, Liane, of whom he has tired. Intensely jealous, Liane almost succeeds but the two women, engaged in mutual mayhem, suddenly realize what this alpha male has almost made them do. Then, the 'supposedly dead' ladies haunt Jason in a gran guignol cinema style act calculated to make him regret his misspent life of crime and philandering. But does it? Can any Hollywood sex addict quit? And are these ladies really dead? Black Comedy.
KID-VID - PG comedy. Two 'Martian' anthropologists here to investigate Pentagon war toys, discover that civilization on earth isn't worth saving when they befriend a truant child. When the kid is transformed by their influence, and does a 180, the aliens try to interrupt HomeStar's masterplan to crisp earth. They create a Network Kiddie show which gives PH'D's to kids thru the tube thusly transforming the entire country, earning them the wrath of Christian-right and the FBI/CIA and the Pentagon!
THE ADVENTURES OF WIM- Adaptation of Luke Rhinehart's comic cult classic novel, about an American Indian from a doomed tribe, adopted by a white family who attempts to save his people from extinction. Famous cult book, I know the author, can option this book for next to nothing from Luke Rhinehart. Co-written with Luke and Harry Jakobs.
FILM SCRIPTS
BELLE MERE-A ballerina interrupts her career to marry an interesting Russian fellow. He proves to be an 'odd' husband, but that's nothing compared to the monster mother-in-law that comes from the 'old country' to live with them. The girl and mother in law have a mano-a-mano to the death. Dramatic Horror film with human monsters--the scariest kind.THE STAND-IN-Supernatural TearJerker. Katharine is a movie star who can have everything she wants---except a child. Connie, her 'stand- in,' has nothing, but she is going to have a baby. When Connie has heart problems in pregnancy, and hears from doctor that she may not survive childbirth, she asks Kathy to take her baby when it's born. The dead mother then haunts the movie star couple and teaches the unaware Katharine how to be a mother and wife. "Stand-in' refers to the career girl movie star. She is the stand in mother. Over many years of marriage to a playboy cheating but loving hubby the Star gradually learns to walk that most difficult of all paths, that of wife and mother.
WAHATCHE WOMAN- The life of little-known historical heroine Nancy Hart, friend and SPY of and FOR George Washington. Nancy is the red-headed warrior spy who turned the tide in the Revolutionary War. Historical drama.
THE STAR- Intelligence agents try to assassinate a political film star who is just as 'out of this world' as he seems. For one thing, he hasn’t aged in 50 years. (?) Twilight zone film. The actor's assignment, make a fan of the American president and his family.
THE STALKING OF MARY FEENY- Mother of drug-addicted youth goes after the Colombian Cartel when local cops won't. Action Film
CALIFORNIA JADE-John, 21 a child of immense privilege (with an ambiguous sexuality), raised by an immaculate ex film star mother, (Butlers chez lui wear gloves) finds a twin soul a little farther down the beach in a 12-year old beach brat, Jenny, who has a troubled life and a drunken movie-extra mother whose relationship with a married film writer is coming unwoven. Jenny's passion is to create a garage band but failing to make friends with the beachkids, to scuba up some of the valuable (she thinks,) JADE that occasionally washes ashore.
MARIO THE SQUIRREL- Whimsical Italian peasant, given the secret of prosperity by his grandfather, departs his decayed, fishing village home to take these secrets to Paris where Mario changes the destiny of France. Comedy not unlike TORA SAN films of Japan, in 50's.
IVAN AND ME- Co-written with Moscow filmmaker Oleg Kalyan. KGB spy living in L.A., gets fired by Russia and Hughes Aircraft the same week. Goes after the last living Romanoff, a freshman at SC, seeking the Czar's jewels. Together the kid and this Klaus Maria Brandauer type save Russia from the famine and the Mafioski (ALT TITLE MAFIOSKI?)
JANEEN, TEEN PORN QUEEN- Comic romance. NY cabbie hero meets sweet, daffy wannabe actress Janeen, who's trying to get film on herself and who falls into the hands of the mob and its porno biz.
STARSEED- Horror film about aliens who breed with earthlings. Space can be dangerous for an astronaut in her fertile period.
LIZ ESTRADA 2020- Futuristic action thriller about a buffed up revolutionary barrio Latino lawyer Lady Liz Estrada, who becomes Big Brother's worst nightmare, after the NWO takes over the world, leading the proletariat hordes to unite (blacks/Asians and Latinos) against Big Brother. Futuristic Action flick. Also a musical book.
GETTING OUT OF VENICE- Poignant, tender comical screenplay, a white girl on welfare, four infant children, scrounging in hippie-Venice California, trying to get off the dole. Also a novel.
MY SUGARDADDY MUST BE COMING SOON- Hollywood adventures of a classic, so-dumb-she's-smart-blonde, Vanilla Hopkins, and her amoral but elegant lover, Harry the married man.
THE PLEIADES- Contemporary novel. Seven sisters in the arts, becoming stars strippers or mistresses, one, the seventh sister, becomes a wife. Their careers? A sculptress painter in Soho, a Washington politician, an actress. Their interwoven lives and loves.
THE BURNING GROUND- WWII Period novel. Tortured by his own trivial life, a Pathe newsman Bill Hecht, a Jew who keeps his yamaka in his pocket, finds it hard to deal with his adulterous, alcoholic wife. He is drafted, sent to California at beginning of WWII to work in Propaganda films at FORT HAL ROACH with Reagan, et al.. The OSS hires him to fly over Europe and film bombing targets. He crashes and stumbles on the atrocities of the Holocaust, risks his life for a Polish refugee woman, penetrates the Warsaw ghetto, then discovers the complicity of silence by US Govm't, the fake Pearl Harbor scenario. Based on the life of Edward Anhalt, my employer for 30 years.
BEGGAR FROM ORISSA- The lost years of Christ in India. Novel, & Script for India/English co-production. Jesus helps and is helped by a beautiful, tragic Indian woman who listens to his teachings and finds surcease from sorrow. Set 32 A.D.
STEPFATHER BANK- adaptation of classic Sci-Fi Novel by Dave Poyer. Hirsute tramp, the only person on the planet not to have a credit chip in his hand, forced to devise hilarious ways to survive, is the target of ‘termination’ by The Bank. They send a woman to entrap him. Does he escape to live another larky day?
GRAVEDIGGERS-Sci-fi Futuristic Mini-series. Gov's top human-cloning scientist takes off when Gov wants to use the technology in an unethical way. He finds alternate funding with a highly liberal conspiracy minded, genius software tycoon who was running for public office until he had his head blown off. No problem. Scientist clones him. And a few other geniuses in graveyards all over the world. How do they do it? They dig at night.
J. EDGAR HOOVER AND THE BOYS AT FORT WACKY-Two guards (complete bozos) at Hal Roach Studios, during the period it was used as a Film studio for the Government (OSS,) war effort nearly lose America the war. The bozos (DUMB AND DUMBER) get into hilarious adventures with the O.S.S. and the U.S. Army and German spies. The GI's at Fort Roach were making porno films in the sound stages at night with beautiful, naive girl goddess whom they rescue from a bordello & a career worse than death, but it's an identity mixup as she's a Virgin. The villain? Maybe super officious Captain Ronnie Reagan in charge of the studio. And the arrival of the FEDS, (FBI, J. Edgar, ) will complete the ERNIE KOVAKS type mayhem. Based on the Experiences of an OSS NEWSREEL PHOTOG/ CAPTAIN IN ARMY and friend of mine from FORT ROACH who had a distaste for pontificating Ronnie Reagan before anyone else did.
DONOR 150 - A blueblood scion of Washington family has turned tie-dyed Hippie Dippie and now he's a 50 yr old man living in a broken down RV parked in Venice Calif. with four dogs in his bed. He has been selling his sperm for 25 yrs, has 300 to 500 children and suddenly one of his daughters wants to meet him. BTW, 20/20 just had this guy on, he's real. A New take on DOWN AND OUT IN BEVERLY HILLS. Larry Schiller was after it ditto big UK CO that made a few Oscar comedies, is too. .This was already done as a documentary, Google it. I've known him 40 yrs, we can get the rights. Be a fun musical.
CIRCE AND BILL- Circe, a nymph on the Rhine escapes the rapacious God Neptune and hides in the New York flat of a nice Jewish boy who doesn't do premarital sex. She turns him around but good.
NOVELS:SUNNY LOVES THE JAZZMAN- College girl turns on, tunes in, drops out cheats on her straight, square college boy BF, goes to live with rock and roll JAZZMAN. 60's period piece. Finished novel.
SARA MALONE'S INDIAN- Historical novel. Sara Hofstatter goes in search of her errant gambler husband who disappeared, but who's really pretending to be dead. In her zeal to catch him, the Wisconsin frontier girl becomes the first white woman to cross the Rockies in l836, year of the ALAMO, going to Spanish California where she becomes a part of Andrew Jackson's plot to push the USA west and prevent the Bank of England from taking Texas and the entire American southwest, which they're doing, through the Hapsburgs and France. Historical conspiracy theory hidden deep in a Michener type novel. Almost finished
"RAINFOREST"- A shrewd, unethical Washington expose reporter uses the unsteady. heiress daughter of an American tycoon to catch the father in bed with the CIA and funding 3rd world death squads. When the tycoon's daughter and her friend, Blanca, a Nicaraguan jet-set schemer, cook up a bogus kidnapping plot, at CARNAVAL, the reporter follows the girls to Brazil, thusly stumbling on planetary conspiracies much bigger than he'd ever hoped for including Nazi ties to the White House.
BELLE MERE-Ballerina gives up show biz, enamored of a Russian man who has quirks but nothing like the horror show that comes out of the RUSSIAN MOTHER IN LAW who arrives to live with them. Duel to the death ensues.
AMETHYST - (Romance Novel) born to slaves in Italy in 515 AD, raised by a priest, Benedictus, (who later would found the concept of monks, monasteries and thru that 'invention' all Monasteries of every denomination, ever since. He would later become Saint Benedictus). The period is the beginning of the Dark ages, just after Fall of Rome. Amethyst grows up to be very beautiful, kind of an Anna Nicole of the period. She is educated to be a courtesan to Kings, speaking four languages, taught by nuns who are ordered to do so by Benedictus. They even bring in a whore for the tacky stuff. As he knew they would, pirates take her captive, she's carried to Constantinople. (Byzantium). She fights off her buyer, is brought up on charges, jailed. She is rescued by a judge in the courts of Constantinople and brought before Emperor Justianian, already the great law giver, having marital problems, tied to the Courtesan of all time, Theodora. He got in to deep as a collector of hot beauties, a male love junkie. Of course, being a troubled husband, he falls under Amethyst's spell. And she's not even casting one. But when she realizes how powerful he is, she becomes interested in having him create the kind of laws that Benedictus taught her growing up. A conceit. A sublime notion. Ph'd req'd to read a Frank Yerby novel. THE OUTLINE IS ONLINE. This was also the time of the Planet going dark for five years after an Indonesian volcano went off in February of 535.AD
REALITY TELEVISION CONCEPTS - DUELLING MATCHMAKERS
BROADWAY MUSICALS-
A SPARROW IN THE BIG CITY. An ambitious sixties folksinger, Sparrow McIntire, comes to the Haight Ashbury, lives with Huey, Eldridge and the Black Panthers in the epoch of Gov Reagan and agent provocateurism -- Folk opera that echoes if not mirrors the radical movement today.
THE SLAVE- Musical version of the Isaac Bashevis Singer Nobel prize winning novel. Set in Poland in 1629. Also a SCRIPT for a film.
CURRENTLY RESEARCHING
BRECHT AND WEIL - Bertold Brecht, Lotte Lenya, Kurt Weill and friends in rehearsals for their last play in Germany. They realize that Germany is crumbling and that THEY will soon be pursued and jailed. They make plans to get out. Exactly as did my grandfather had to do in 1933. He conducted at Leipzig Opera until Hitler came into power.NON FICTION BOOKS-
"LOVE AND THE DIVINATORY ARTS" or "How to Catch a Man with Fortunetelling." How to be Lucky at Love. The metaphysics of Courtship. Basically 120 chapters that currently reside on my website, luckinlove.com
"SURVIVING THE MILLENIUM" Povery Tech, "Been Poor so Long it looks like Wealth to me!" with "The Poorhouse Gourmet Cook Book." also "Welfare cookery. Tips from the underground on life without the dollar. Chapters are at the FRUGAL PAGE
GUERILLA CAPITALISM- (< (LIVE LINK)Confessions of a Bottom Feeder) Das Kapital for the Milenium. Urban survival tech.
HOLLYWOOD BOUND (< live link)- How to write scripts, produce them, turn scripts into novels. Or turn novels into scripts. The whole enchilada.
Anita Sands was born in Laurel Canyon in the heart of Hollywood, her father ALBERT SENDREY was a screen composer / arranger at J. Arthur Rank in London for Korda and at MGM (years ranging from Wizard of Oz til Raintree County orchestrating for all films between). She studied acting with Agnes Moorehead, Sandy Meisner, Jack Garfein of the Actor's Lab, worked in film/ tv in starring roles, repped by Norman Brokaw at William Morris, and later by George Litto (now a producer) and Ronnie Lief at MCA. After living in Mexico for 7 yrs as an expatriate in San Miguel de Allende, she returned to W. L.A with four children, worked for 2 time winning oscar-winning screenwriter Edward Anhalt as a secretary, audited his classes at Loyola Marymount, S.C and Sherwood Oaks Film College for 3 decades. Did a page one rewrite for screenwriter for Menahem Golan, 21st Century Films, ("Missy Lonestar") and did same for actor/producer Hugo Stiglitz of Mexico City, (PATRULLA SUR later filmed, ) and co-wrote script projects with Harry Jakobs (Productions) of Montreal, Tel-Aviv, Hollywood and she was co-producing THE SLAVE by Nobel prize winner Isaac Bashevis Singer at the time of Jacobs' death. The project has reverted to her. See Anita Sands at THE IMDB MOVIE DATA BASE She worked for Courtney Love for 7 years. Courtney thanks her in album cover to AMERICA's SWEETHEART. Call Anita at #818-774-1939 or email her at astrology@earthlink.net
