Death Is an Alliance Waiting to Happen!
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Death is an alliance waiting to happen! Based on the Novel by the same name by Manoj Vaz Concept, Story & Screenplay: © Manoj (Vaz) Ramchandran Tel: +91 9820313809. Email: [email protected] Concept, Story & Screenplay: © Manoj (Vaz) Ramchandran SANDEEP D’SOUZA AKA Sandy (Riteish Deshmukh) is a gay Model PREETI DAS (Paoli Dam) Co-ordinator and Preeti’s is a pretty, divorced woman best friend. in her mid thirties. An ex- international badminton player who also dabbled in acting, she is an officer in the Customs & Central Excise Department. A job she got through the Government Sports Quota and heads the Central Revenue Department’s Sports & Cultural Committee. She had eloped from home at the age of 18 and married Dr. Mandar Joshi (Ram her much older badminton Kapoor) is an alliance that coach, who turned out to be Preeti receives through the a cad with a wife in his village matrimonial site that raises in Uttarakhand. her heckles. Concept, Story & Screenplay: © Manoj (Vaz) Ramchandran KAMINI VYAAS (Shilpa Shukla) is a tough as nails Private Investigator, MAJOR AJAY VYAAS who takes up the profession (Ajay Devgun) is a Kargil after her police officer veteran who has a limp from husband dies in a freak a bullet wound that he accident. sustained while capturing Tiger Point. A decorated officer and a sworn bachelor, he comes to Mumbai to investigate the death of his sister. DIRECTOR (Proposed) NISHIKANT KAMAT ~Drishyam ~ Rocky Handsome ~ Force RAJENDRA BHONSALE ~ Madaari (Nishikant Kamat) is a ~ Mumbai Meri Jaan deranged Sr. Inspector in ~ Dombivli Fast Mumbai Police and is the ~ Evano Oruvan (Tamil) surprise accomplice of ~ Lai Bhaari (Marathi) Sandy in the film. Concept, Story & Screenplay: © Manoj (Vaz) Ramchandran DOT is an edge of the seat thriller and suspense film based on the soon to be released English fiction novel by the same name also written by Manoj Vaz (Ramchandran). DOT is the second novel by Manoj Vaz after the critically acclaimed and successful TINSEL (2015). Vaz is planning to release his new novel a month before the release of the film and create a media buzz to garner publicity for the film and vise versa. This is for the first time that such an innovative dual publicity campaign has been envisaged in India and being an advertising and media person for more than three decades, it is an unique advertising pulse and opportunity that Vaz has caught on to. Concept, Story & Screenplay: © Manoj (Vaz) Ramchandran It’s dark. A lap top is switched on. You can see long, feminine fingers with nail art, keying in a form on a matrimonial website www.matrimatters.com Eerie music and Song in the background (if possible pick up the rights of the song “Gumnaam hai koi…”) TITLES A tall, pretty looking woman opens the lock outside her door and comes in. It is a modest apartment. Song fades… The girl is happy. She changes in front of a mirror. Wearing only a bra and panty, she admires herself in front of the full length mirror. “Not bad Natasha, not bad at all for a 37 year old” she admires and tells herself and smiles. Suddenly she sees a movement near the window of her ground floor apartment. Immediately she shuts off the light. Just then the door bell rings. She wears a bathrobe and asks apprehensively “Who is it?” “It’s me“ comes the reply. “Thank God, it’s you”, she says with a smile and opens the door. FADE INTO DARKNESS Concept, Story & Screenplay: © Manoj (Vaz) Ramchandran DISSOLVE…There are some people at a café. There is a Newspaper stand near the cashier. Camera pans the newspaper stand. The front page says “Model Natasha Raut Killed in Antop Hill Residence” in one paper and “Murder Most Foul in Mumbai” in another. A dusky, slim and beautiful girl (Preeti) is talking agitatedly on the phone. Pramod, her boyfriend of four years has chosen to break up with her on the phone while she is in midst of a CRDSC Committee meeting. Pramod is fledgling film maker and is commitment phobic. She loses her cool and gives him a piece of her mind over the phone. She has raised her voice without knowing and her colleagues in the meeting are taken aback to see the usually cheerful and genial Preeti in this avataar. After her talk, Preeti realizes what has happened and apologizes and excuses herself out of the meeting and heads home. She expertly boards the Churchgate-Borivali ladies special and gets a place to sit. She looks around to see women doing all sorts of chores in the train to save time. Some women are cutting vegetables and storing them into cheap zip lock plastic bags. Others are busy with their phones. Concept, Story & Screenplay: © Manoj (Vaz) Ramchandran She calls her brother from the train and explains her position to him and asks him to come home. Preeti had lost her dad 4 years back and lived with her mother. Her dad Mr. Subrato Das who was livid when Preeti had eloped, but had grudgingly taken her back after she returned battered and bruised physically and emotionally. Her mother and brother had never approved of Pramod. They felt that he was spineless and could never give her the happiness she deserved. And now they had been proven right. Feeling terrible, she calls her best friend Sandy. Sandy is a gay model co-ordinator who had now diversified into production management. Sandy lives near her house, and offers to pick her up from Borivali Station. When she comes out of Borivali Station, she finds Sandy honking his new car to attract her attention. It is nice compact city SUV. Preeti is suitably impressed. Sandy explains the features of the car and the fact that it even had airbags on the Driver’s side. Preeti laughs and asks him why only on the driver’s side? Sandy laughs embarrasingly and says that he usually travels alone and besides it cost 50K more to have both. Concept, Story & Screenplay: © Manoj (Vaz) Ramchandran That night, her brother Ajay diplomatically convinces her to dump Pramod and register herself on India’s leading matrimony website www.matrimatters.com. Her mother also coaxes her. Preeti agrees. That night she creates and uploads her profile on the website. The next day, she is flooded with responses. But most of them are from fickle people looking for a roll in the hay. For two-three days it continues. She talks to her brother and he tells her to take a premium (paid) account. She decides to do that. Immediate the profiles are more genuine and interesting. She shortlists a few and goes out for coffee with some of them. To be safe she always chose a café near her house and met them before sun down. Some were interesting but not interesting enough. Then she comes across the profile of Prakash Pal, the owner of Pal Motors whose father was her Dad’s good friend. She know Prakash socially and knew that he had been through a messy divorce. More over, since he was a Bengali too, her mother would be happy with the alliance. She calls him and sets up a coffee date. Concept, Story & Screenplay: © Manoj (Vaz) Ramchandran She meets Prakash a few times and he is eager to take out on a getaway retreat but procrastinates meeting her family. Then one day she gets a few missed calls and finally the voice on the other end speaks and a stammering feminine voice asks her why she was trying to ruin her life? Preeti is perplexed. She finds out that the girl is Prakash’s girl friend. Preeti tells her to meet her at a café near her office. They meet and Preeti shows her the texts that Prakash had sent her. Both decide to dump the cad. Preeti, now becomes even more wary of online overtures. After a week, she gets an enquiry from Dr. Mandar Joshi – an Orthopedic Surgeon from Chembur in Central Mumbai. Dr. Joshi was a widower with no children. He lived with his mother in a premium housing society in Chembur and had his private hospital nearby. Everything seemed perfect about Mandar, but he did not delve about his relationship with his dead wife even when Preeti probed. Preeti and Ajay also met his mother. Mrs Vandana Joshi though well educated and smart, seemed to a socialite who had gone discreet. The mother son hardly interacted with anybody else. Concept, Story & Screenplay: © Manoj (Vaz) Ramchandran She also finds that Mandar is a chain smoker, which was very strange for a doctor. She asks a colleague of hers who stays in Chembur to find out more about Mandar. She comes back to her after a couple of days saying, nobody knows much about the doctor but his dead wife’s family had registered a police case against him holding him responsible for their daughter’s death. Preeti is scared and doesn’t get sleep all night getting all kinds of nightmares. She switches on the TV at 5 am and stumbles on a News Channel report on the serial killings in Mumbai. The reporter says that four women have been killed. All in their mid-thirties and the funny part is that all of them had registered themselves on a matrimonial website just a few weeks ago. The News Channel was calling him the Dotcom Murderer. Scared, at six in the morning, she decides to get the mysterious doctor investigated. She Googles “Private Investigators in Mumbai” on her tab. She gets many responses but the 9th one catches her eye.