Treatment/Proposal - Harry Rollin

20 year old Will Lloyd has just woken up in a waiting room with no recollection of how he got there. As he waits in the quiet, clinical room, he slowly realises this isn’t a dentist or a doctor he’s waiting for.

The story begins with whispers and echoed voices with no visuals. Suddenly the distant voices disappear and Will Lloyd wakes up with a start. He looks around and finds himself sitting in a large, relatively empty waiting room. All of the walls are white and slightly overexposed to give the illusion of brightness. Will has no recollection of anything before he woke up and after a second or two of taking in his surroundings he shuffles along a chair or two to a man in his sixties reading a magazine. He asks him first where they are, to which the man does not respond. Will looks over the older man’s shoulder and finds him reading an article about life after death. Will asks the man what he is doing in the waiting room to which the man’s reply is, simply, “Waiting”.
A receptionist dressed all in white calls out the older man’s name, his response to which is to put down the magazine, get up and walk the length of the corridor to the left of the receptionist, at the end of which is a door which he proceeds through.
Will continues to sit by himself for several seconds, beginning to hear faint voices and sirens in his head. However, he shakes this off and silence falls again. He gets up and makes his way over to the receptionist. He asks her where he is, to which she tells him he is in God’s waiting room. She can’t tell him how long he’ll be waiting but asks him politely to take a seat. Will looks understandably confused at first and as he experiences a flashback of an accident he begins to look shocked. He remembers that he was in a motorcycle accident. The audience see a flashback of the accident and that Will sustained many injuries. As the action cuts back to Will in the waiting room he raises his hands to where his injuries should have been but feels nothing.
The receptionist calls out Will’s name and tells him God will see him now. Will gets up slowly, still in a state of shock and walks toward the door. The office he finds himself in is a very simple room and nothing like the grandeur either Will or the audience expect. God appears to be a young man on the phone as Will enters. I imagine this scene to be very dialogue-heavy and I want it to be witty, light-hearted and make the audience laugh. The altercation ends in an argument between God and Will about an incident from Will’s childhood. They argue about the morality of Will bullying a child at school to which Will justifies his behaviour by saying he was provoked. God then decides Will is not ready to enter heaven so he sends him back into his body and as the paramedics examine him he wakes up still muttering about the morality of the incident from his childhood.

I would like the film to begin in a sombre way but as it goes on I want it to be a humourous, light hearted way of interpreting life after death. I don’t necessarily think the portrayal of God would be particularly offensive or controversial, I hope that audiences appreciate the humour. I would like to slightly over expose the shots of the waiting room as opposed to the gritty or dull look I would employ for the flashback sequence to signify the difference between the two settings.
I would say that the film and its humour would appeal most to young people of any religion. Religion can be a contentious issue but I think the tone of the film is more to do with light hearted speculation and interpretation than it is poking fun out of any one religion.