Critical Systems, LLC
The Beginning of a New Industry
Idea for Screenplay / TV Series
The Unexpected Empire At The Core Of A Particular Industry.
Reader is present at founding of a particular industry
Similar (in some ways) to an embedded journalist in a war zone.
Entrepreneur / Creator As Hero Again
As Detectives Were Heroes In The Hardy Boys Books
Entrepreneurs and inventors are the heroes of another generation of boys.
John Fraim
A semi-biographical screenplay on a founder and CEO of Critical Systems in a small farm town in the middle of Ohio. The little farm town in only ten miles from that town ten miles from the outer belt of the great city and this year ranked the Number One suburb in America 2016 by a major business magazine in its famous yearly survey. The community is a Disney type of community. Planned for its inhabitants by a master planner. But more important than a master planner. The genius of retailing in the 20th century. Master builder of brands that dominate the shopping malls. retailing in America. Not a politician. Nor a media person. What in fact was he? This multi-billionaire who has created the community the narrator of the story has his home in.
The story told through which person? First or third? Is it an autobiography? A biography? What’s is the story’s subject? The founders of American industry? The theme is that they should be studies and honored more than American Presidents. These original “captains” of industry were inventors, entrepreneurs, idea people. They were never good at managing. It was too confining. It tied one down too much. They are the true heroes of our nation. Greater even than Presidents.Yet heroes that no one honors today.
Told through what voice? First person. Told from the perspective of this person. How does it feel to be this type of person? Leading an industry, you never started out to be in.
Or, if not told via first person, at third person perspective yet be at ground zero in the explosive creation of a new industry. It is as if we are live next to the new Henry Ford of the medical marijuana industry. Perhaps a new type of embedded, war correspondent, journalist? A postmodern Tom Wolfe? Or Hunter Thompson? Or the Bob Wilson. creator of the Illuminati Trilogy? There are stories told by biographers about Steve Jobs after he passed away. Yet what if the story told is by an embedded biographer in the life of the subject rather than someone reporting on a long dead person of history?
What if one reports from a third person perspective yet also becomes part of the story he or she is reporting? Like Nick Carraway reported and became part of Gatsby’s life. Describing the story from an outsider, observer status. Yet, at the same time, an important element of the story being told, a key part of a story. Not from outside looking in. But from inside looking out.
The founder of the company has an interesting history.
(Fill in here. Perhaps show and don’t tell here via activities of the hero?)
We know that he is a veteran. This is part of his background. But he is also at the leading edge of the modern medical marijuana market as it transitions from an industry which consumed its product largely by smoking it into an industry where oil extraction from the planet rather than smoke is becoming a huge part of the industry.
The owner and creator of Critical Systems, the Andersonville-based plant-oil extraction company focused on the marijuana industry. A former veteran, and now father of five, a man more spiritual than religious in a town that is more religious than spiritual. He has an engineering degree and has created the great extraction system for taking oil from botanicals. By accident, into the most valuable extraction of all: oil from the marijuana plants for medicinal purposes. The company is one of the fastest growing in the nation and the CEO of it has set up a sales team in Denver and are about to attend the largest trade show in the marijuana industry.
He has become a mainstay of the farm town and is on the Chamber of Commerce and a member of the Local AmVets Club. He has visions for the town. The creator of the nearby town has development plans for the town, to make it a new capitol of the marijuana industry in such an unlikely place. wants to turn the 300-acre, 17-year-old Business Park in the town on it’s east side, where Critical Systems is located, into a $500 million medical-marijuana campus. His firm made the Inc. 500 Fastest Growing Companies in America in all years since 2014. It has gone from sales of $700,000 in 2013 to $9.5 million in 2015. Employees have increased from just a few to over thirty.
Story Concept
Ringside seats to witness the founding of an industry. We’re right next to the industry founder.
TV Series? (See Bible for The Wire)
Feature Film? (See The Magic Light)
The device this company makes leads all the world in sucking the most important oils and juices out of nature’s botanicals, fruits and vegetables. The symbolism of a company that leads the world in sucking all the oils and juices from nature. The marijuana business happens to be where the money is now. But what about the future? And does anyone besides me see all the incredible symbolism in all of this? The symbolism of sucking from life rather than creating life.
A start-up company leading an industry it never set out to get in and located in the unlikely location of a small town in the Ohio countryside. The founder never set out in this direction but finds himself at the center of a huge, growing industry today. An industry that will have its own Bill Gates or Henry Ford or Steve Jobs. The marijuana industry, as states around the nation move to legalize it and make it available for sale. The creator of the company is a deeply spiritual person, a husband, family man, somewhat of a religious man and veteran of the U.S. Navy. An engineer. The opposite anyone would guess to be the CEO of the marijuana industries fastest growing business.
Episode 1 (The Meeting)
Andersonville, Ohio
The narrator lives in the famous suburb Berkshire ten miles from Critical Systems located in Andersonville, Ohio. The exclusive little community of Berkshire was created by the greatest American retailer, a man named Henry King. The narrator’s brother in-law lives in Andersonville and he is on the board of this a foundation located in Andersonville. The narrator’s brother-in law owns a farm outside of Andersonville dedicated to growing organic lettuce as an activity for adults with autism for jobs.
One day, the narrator calls the CEO of the company in Andersonville and asks if they could set up a tour of the company for him and his visiting stepson. He tells the CEO his son lives in Boulder and might be interested in the Sales position out there when the campaign was over and election day came.
Lunch time in downtown Andersonville, only a mile from Critical Systems which is a pretty peaceful place. Somewhat like the early town set in the first Back to the Future.Riots in the American cities this summer are far away from the Ohio countryside. The narrator and his stepson meet with the CEO/founder of the company.
The narrator has brought along for the tour and lunch, his stepson who lives in that pioneering city of medical marijuana, Boulder, Colorado. Critical Systems has just established a sales office in Boulder. His stepson is now staying with the narrator and his wife in Andersonville as he is working on a political campaign in Ohio. The narrator had just heard on the radio and read in the local papers. There were already instructional videos posted to YouTube and various sites, blogs and social media pages looking good and active in key social media.
Things have been going very well for Critical Systems but they face a new challenge he tells the story narrator. The CEO of Critical Systems simply hints at what this might be at lunch because he is not sure he can trust our narrator. Not yet.
So, after lunch, the narrator leaves and drives the fifteen miles back to Berkshire through the Ohio farmland thinking about all of this.
Thinking about the clean-cut young inventor engineer who finds (through other sources) that Critical Systems has become the leader in the fastest growing sector of the fastest growing industry in America. Oil extraction from marijuana plants as the industry moves from smokeable products to oils.
While the story is about the fast-growing Critical Systems in Andersonville, Ohio and its CEO, it is based on a true story.
Still developing.
Articles
http://www.10tv.com/article/village-johnstown-votes-welcome-medical-marijuana-business
Berkshire, Ohio
Cool idea John 🙂
Medical marijuana is very much in the zeitgeist…!
Great for pain relief, and treating depression etc!
Saw this the other day too:
http://bigthink.com/21st-century-spirituality/your-new-anti-depression-medication-lsd
eg – interesting:
“While still illegal in the US, LSD is showing promise in treating patients suffering from depression. This study is particularly interesting in that it investigates the role of the human brain’s default-mode network in mental time travel. As it turns out, those of us with an active DMN are more likely to reflect on the past and hence wax romantic about what is not present, a reliable marker of depressed states.
Psychedelics appear to deactivate the DMN, forcing users to stay in the present moment. Ironically, the DMN has been championed in Flow states, in which the experiencer is also in the throes of “ego dissolution,” the term LSD researchers employ regarding the deactivation of the DMN. Flow states apparently shut down the brain’s central executive mode (the other major mode) in its own form of ego destruction.”
Source: http://bigthink.com/21st-century-spirituality/your-new-anti-depression-medication-lsd
ie As you know, I’m very big on Flow Theory:
eg
https://storyality.wordpress.com/2012/12/06/storyality-6b-flow-theory-creativity-and-happiness/
Anyway, a very cool story idea.
Cheers
JT