Face-Lift 361

Guess the Plot

Cruise Control

1. After watching their leading man ruin Oprah's sofa, ridicule depressed people, and give his wife a pacifier during labor, movie executives decide it's time to take action.

2. Nicole has had it with her ex-husband, so she has a voodoo doll made. Now, when he appears live on TV, the world will know what she put up with.

3. The story of a Hollywood publicist, Damaj Controlle, whose desperate attempts to rein in an egomaniacal client result in Damaj's firing. The client's outrageous behavior includes jumping on couches, impregnating a brainwashed youth, and frequently using the word "glib."

4. Tom is being blackmailed into leading a religious cult, and decides the only way to end the extortion is to smear his own reputation and become hated by all. But will televised conniptions and tirades against squirt gun microphone pranksters be enough?

5. Being a Hollywood "star wrangler" is Evie's job, one she excels at. But what can even she do with a certifiably insane Scientologist?

6. Katie'd had enough. No more sofa dancing. No more weird sci-fi mumbo jumbo religion. No more hunching over in public just to appease his enormous little-man ego. She wanted her life back. So she fitted Tom with a subcutaneous behavior-modifying microchip. Now if she could only remember where she left the remote.

7. The seas are afloat with blue-haired old ladies and wannabe professional gamblers. Captain Stubing and Gopher are not at all pleased with the current demographics, believing the new crop of cruise goers are destroying the romance of moonlight strolls and heart-throbbing love trysts. So Stubing and Gopher form a committee to ban sunglasses, baseball caps and Fixodent aboard their cruise line.

8. It doesn't take long for Sadara Obi to decide what to do when he finds a time portal in the basement of his bullying friend, Fang Woo. He travels to 1945 and changes the course of history by installing cruise control on the dashboard of the Enola Gay. Welcome Back, Hiroshima, and Goodbye Shanghai!

9. When dastardly mechanic Cheesy Adams wires his remote controller into the navigational circuitry of a cruise ship, hilarity ensues. But what will happen when a boatload of angry geezers and crones arrives in Haiti?

10. Even though prostitution is legal in the desert town of Tatterville, Police Chief Roy Beauregard is sickened by the hookers strolling Venter Avenue, because that’s where the Dairy Queen is, and Roy’s daughter Lila loves Butterfinger Blizzards. Roy begs Mayor Ernie to erect “No Cruising” signs, but when Mayor Ernie refuses, Roy concocts his own plan and has all the sidewalks replaced with metal grates, the archenemy of stiletto heels!


Original Version

Dear EE,

Tom has it all; money, fame, power. He used to be a person people cheered and revered, until that fateful night. That night he found himself in the company of a peculiar science fiction writer by the name of L. Ron Hubbard, or as Tom had previously known him, Dr. L.

Dr. L knew all about Tom's crime, the crime he had worked so hard to cover up, the crime he could not let anyone ever find out about. But Dr. L's presence proved his cover-up had failed, and now he was thrown at the mercy of a deranged lunatic. Blackmailed by Dr. L into leading a religious cult, Tom's fame becomes his Achilles heal. Hew devises a plan to end his extortion. If he can smear his reputation and become hated by all, he may be set free of his cult duty. Through explosions of feeling on Oprah, tirades against squirt-gun microphone pranksters, and two divorces and marriages, Tom sets out to ruin his name, but will it be enough??????

Cruise Control is a 171-word thriller. Thanks you for your consideration and I hope to hear from you soon.


Notes

I gotta start reading these things when they come in, instead of waiting till the minions have put hours of thought into composing their GTPs, at which point I don't have the heart to ditch the query.