Aram:
This is one of the most interesting questions that I have ever received, so I’m going to sit here and do some free associations…
- I hope your movie starts similar to the way your question started, with a guy on a deadline sitting in a location where he can watch 2 million homosexuals in a parade.
- Ideally, the protagonist in the movie will have a job that gives him flexible time — such as being a software developer. Hmmm… maybe some of the people working at my office are experimenting with 21 hour days. Or, more likely, 27 hour days…
- Luke 1:59 from the King James version of the Bible: “And it came to pass, that on the eighth day they came to circumcise the child; and they called him Zacharias, after the name of his father.” I did a search on Google for “8th day” and there are 44 million hits. So the concept of an 8th day will resonate with movie-goers, probably. That’s good.
- Perhaps every week something weird happens on the 8th day related to one of these things and at some point he becomes paranoid that the 2 million homosexuals are going to circumsize him… this would be a climatic event, so to speak.
- one week: Beatles song: “8 Days a Week”. He meets Ringo.
- another week: the band “8th Day” is involved.
- look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Week#Christian_.22eighth_day.22 Surprisingly, between 1929 and 1931 the Soviet Union had a 5 day week! They changed to 6 days in 1931 and it stayed that way until 1940. So… another week, some communists come for a visit, figuring he is improving things further.
- another week: the Etruscans visit (look up Nundinal cycle in the same article I listed for Russia).
- another week: the Celts.
- The 8th day will need a name. The 7 day week is named after the Sun (Sunday), the Moon (Monday), Mars (Tyr, for Tuesday), Mercury (Wednesday), Jupiter (Thor, Thursday), Venus (Freya, Friday) and Saturday (Saturn). So that leaves Neptune and Uranus… but he might just name it after his cat. The homosexuals would probably prefer one of the two planets; I leave it for the reader to guess which one.
- Can’t call the movie “The Eighth Day”, because it’s already been used: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116581/
- There are 8 notes in an octave.
- and 8 is a nice number for mathematical purposes. You can easily refer to the first half of the week or the last half of the week or a quarter of a week.
- plus, it’s easily represented in a computer since there are 8 bit in a byte. So a byte could be a week and each bit represents a day.
- I think he patents the concept of 8 days in a week and then starts converting the world, which is maybe how the homosexuals find out about him… sample patent: sprinkler that lets you set an 8-day schedule, pre-recording of television, etc. (when you think about it, being able to record 8 days in advance is kind of handy).
- On the 8th day, God created… pirates: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KB5t5fpNWCY
- a 1997 movie called “Eight Days a Week”: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119054/plotsummary
- go to www.imdb.com and search for “eighth day”. Ten movies! Including one coming in 2010 which looks interesting.
- Hmmm… another movie called “The 8th Day”… an apocalyptic porn movie: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghaJwNvOBbI&has_verified=1
- clearly, this idea has religious overtones.
- He needs to visit Oldguy, who just happens to be obsessed with time (have an hourglass on my desk, for example). The sand has worn the hole larger, so an hour goes by in 52.5 minutes now… Coincidence? I think not, as the plot will eventually show.
- Scientists discover that the constants in nature are… not constant (which, incidentally, some people think might be true). The speed of light is changing, meaning that the subatomic forces that hold things together are dissipating (or something like that; this is a movie, not science class). So matter is about to fall apart and the world will end.
- Or maybe the constants in nature are constant and what’s happening is the earth’s rotation is speeding up. Why? Like a figure skater pulling their arms in, it would happen if the earth maintained the same mass but got smaller. Perhaps a slow-acting black-hole caused by the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in France/Switzerland sank to the center of the earth. Normally it would suck the earth up pretty quickly, so you have to come up with a reason that it would be slower. Ah! okay, it’s slow but will eat up the earth in a few days unless something is done. So Oldguy’s buddy El-Si the Physicist comes up with a way to rewire the LHC to kill the black hole. So the spinning stabilizes with a 21-hour day (and now we need an 8 day week).
- Now that the earth is spinning more quickly, all kinds of interesting climate issues will result. Probably more wind for awhile? Centripetal force that counteracts gravity a bit? Come up with some reason that it solves the global warming issue and then we learn the the LHC was intended to do this all along.
- Or the spin could reheat the earth’s core and you can claim that they needed to do that because earth’s weakening magnetic field was about to let in too solar radiation. Again, the idea being that the LHC was intended to do this all along.
- We’re getting close to 21Dec2012 (end of Mayan time, some say). Might be able to bring that in as well. Ideally you can have half a dozen groups that wanted to speed up the rotation for their own purposes. Heck, maybe they all wanted to do it but nobody got around to thinking about how to stop the increase in rotational speed! That would be a Dr. Strangelove-like plot where they don’t think too far in advance, making it necessary to have a hero come up with the solution (Oldguy, of course).
- Bonus: fat people suddenly weigh less!
- Sadly: the moon drifts further away.
- All of these plots are independently managed by homosexuals intent on circumcising our hero on the 8th day, of course.
I have enjoyed this exercise. If you find any of the ideas useful, please let us know (you don’t have to say which ones — it would spoil the movie!). And if you want more… Just Ask Oldguy.
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I say it’s a sci-fi where he’s managed to create a machine that lets him slow time to get a couple more hours in the week. He gets addicted to using it, more and more, improving the machine to make it work for longer bursts. He uses the time to write, paint, and do all the things he’d wished he could do. Although he accomplishes much, he grows old faster than his friends and family, and ends up realizing he had the same length of life he would have normally, except without companionship.
The addictive slow-down-time thing (as sci-fi) has been done several times, my favourite being one Orson Scott Card’s novels (Treason, if I remember correctly). I haven’t seen it done as part of a movie plot, however.
I’m one of the odd ones who has the strong suspicion that the constants in nature are in fact not exactly constant(… but not too far off from that either.), that aside Jesus of the Caribbean was a great link.
I love a good laugh.