Garner Simmons

Films

FEATURE SCREENPLAYS CURRENTLY SET-UP/AWAITING GREEN LIGHT:

THE EASTER RISING [aka: THE EASTER REBELLION] - Writer/Co-Producer. The story of Padraig Pearse and Irish Rebels who rose up against 700 years of English oppression during Easter Week in 1916. Originally written for Pillar Productions LLC. Picked up by National Geographic Feature Films. Producers: Adam Leipzig, Dennis Patrick, Garner Simmons. Director: Gabriel Range.

PRODUCED SCREENPLAYS:

A RARE BREED (aka: Carnauba)…….”Written by”…. for New World/Jack Cox Producer

MIRACLE LANDING…..”Written by”…. for CBS Entertainment/Norman Powell Producer

SCRIPTS WRITTEN AS “WORK-FOR-HIRE”:

WEST OF THE RISING SUN …Written for Interscope Communications (now Radar Pictures)/ Script was developed (8 outlines/5 drafts) under the aegis of Scott Kroopf and Tom Engelman for director Vincent Ward. Eventually made as THE LAST SAMURAI (Uncredited).

THE ORACLE OF MERMAID AVENUE (Written for Martin Ransohoff/Columbia Pictures)

SPEC SCRIPTS… (Available upon request):

WILL — This is the story of the murder of Christopher Marlowe and Shakespeare before he was Shakespeare! While the characters are drawn from history, the tone is closer to Tony Richardson’s Tom Jones or Richard Lester’s The Three Musketeers. A story of murder, romance and intrigue set in Elizabethan England.

DUST [fka: THE LAST WESTERN] (Western) The script Sam Peckinpah once described as reminding him of Ride the High Country. Had he lived, he might have made it. The script draws upon a number of facts: In 1903 the Thomas Edison Company made the first Western, The Great Train Robbery. Pirated and copied, it forced Edison to send out a small army of lawyers and leg-breakers to protect his copyright. Thus in 1906 in the town of Lawton in Oklahoma Territory, a young would-be actor named Lon Chaney was arrested and put in jail. In the jail’s ledger he lists his occupation as “photographer.” Among those who frequented the Lawton jail was Apache Chief Geronimo, then in his seventies but still a colorful hell-raiser. And about a decade later, a real life lawman named Bill Tilghman made several motion pictures using real outlaws and real lawmen in an attempt to show what really happened in the West. In Dust, a fictional marshal attempts to make a movie to save a headstrong kid from a hanging judge.

ANNABEL LEE (Historical Mystery Thriller) Enlisting in the Army under mysterious circumstances, Edgar Allan Poe quickly rose to the rank of Master Sergeant. In 1830 he was accepted into West Point. Yet within a year he was brought before a courts-martial and dismissed (all historical facts). The question lingers: Why? Perhaps it is his involvement in a series of macabre murders that haunt the Point. Or perhaps it is the dark evil that invades his soul… and his obsessive love of Annabel Lee.

ARTORUS REX (Revisionist History / Action Adventure / Love Story) The Arthurian legend as a political thriller. Handed down through oral tradition for a 1,000 years before Thomas Mallory turned it into Mort d’Arthur, the real story of Arthur, King of the Britons begins in the 6th Century. The Romans are 100 years gone. The Picts are scrambling over Hadrian’s Wall. The Celts raid from beyond the Irish Sea while the Saxons come screaming down the coast. Standing alone at the edge of the world, the Britons are in chaos. Forget what you think you know. For this is Arthur re-imagined. Indeed, the story as it might have been.

THE WALL - A former CIA operative turned reporter for an International news magazine returns to Berlin more than 20 years after he witnessed the Wall go up only to find himself caught up in the welter of events that ultimately will lead to its destruction. From Ronald Reagan’s famous speech at the Wall in 1987 to Leonard Bernstein’s extraordinary performance of Beethoven’s 9th beneath the Brandenburg Gate at Christmas 1989, he probes the human costs the Wall has exacted from those — both East and West — who live in its shadow.

THE KILLING GROUND (fka: ACTS OF FAITH AND HERESY) (Contemporary Action Drama) An American paleo-anthropologist hired by the University of Salamanca to oversee the excavation of a cave in the Pyrenees is recruited by the CIA to locate a friend he once knew in school — the son of a Muslim religious leader who is near death. Last seen in Madrid, the son is also being pursued by an al Qaeda sleeper cell that means to kill him.

THE WHITE RAJAH (Historical Action Adventure) Lawrence of Arabia set in the Far East. This is the story of James Brooke, the First White Rajah of Sarawak, an English adventurer who fought the pirates of the South China Sea. Knighted by Queen Victoria, empowered by the Sultan of Brunei, tried by Parliament for treason, Brooke inspired Kipling’s “The Man Who Would Be King” and Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim as well as T.E. Lawrence, himself, who, half a century later, would go off to Arabia in search of adventure. The chilling irony is that the descendants of the pirates Brooke fought still prowl these waters today.

REASONABLE DOUBT (Contemporary Legal Thriller) Fifteen years ago, following a successful prosecution of a rare bodiless murder, an Assistant DA in Philadelphia was confronted by irrefutable evidence proving the innocence of the one he convicted. Unfortunately, that person had already been killed in prison. Having given up the practice of law for teaching, he is now confronted by a similar crime. Volunteering to work for the defense as an act of atonement, he must help a young, untested female public defender uncover the truth. In the process, he solves both the current crime and the one that haunts his past.

THE REPLICANT [aka: THE TITAN] (Science Fiction/Thriller – Near Future) A ship returns to Earth 25 years after it disappeared with a single survivor who wasn’t aboard when the ship took off. As the investigation into what happened out there in deep space proceeds… so do the murders.

BLOODED HORSES (Suspense/Thriller) When a famous mare in foal to a Triple Crown winner disappears, an out-of-work trainer is hired to recover her, no questions asked. But his search brings him into conflict with old money and dark secrets as nothing is what it seems and death lingers in the darkness. In the mold of Chinatown.

TIE-BREAKER (Sports/Romantic Comedy) An aging over-the-hill star of the Men’s Tennis Circuit is challenged to a high-stakes showdown at Mandalay Bay in Vegas by the 19 year-old girl who’s just taken the Women’s US Open by storm — winner-take-all.

RIDE THE TIGER (Action Thriller) Set in Malaysia. A former diplomat and soldier of fortune goes in search of $2 billion in gold and jewels that was plundered by Japanese General Tomoyuki Yamashita and disappeared at the close of WWII.

ADAPTATION (Writing sample only — available upon request):

PROJECTS PENDING / TREATMENTS… (Available upon request):

LONGBOW – Set in 11th Century England, it is an historical re-imagining of Robin Hood.

AMERICAN COUP D’ETAT – The true account of an attempt by certain Wall Street moguls to overthrow the newly elected President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Among the cast of characters are General Douglas MacArthur, his aide-de-camp Major Dwight Eisenhower, J. Edgar Hoover, J.P. Morgan, and Marine Corps General S.D. Butler, the only soldier to be awarded the Medal of Honor twice.

WIND RIDERS - The story of the Wright Brothers, their personal turmoil and triumphs in the quest for flight.