Bringing Out The Dead: The Animated Series
Unlicensed is a blog where I deconstruct the creative process by working up pitches for non-existent licensed projects based on suggestions from readers. Today, I was asked to put together a proposal for:
Bringing Out The What? Is that a zombie thing?
Bringing Out The Dead is straight-up my favorite Martin Scorcese movie. Nic Cage plays a paramedic who starts losing his mind after losing too many patients. I love it so much that up until recently, I would have thought that the idea of an animated series would be a joke. But that was before the Fargo tv series came along, and proved that you can turn a beloved comedic drama into an amazing anthology series tied together by an ice scraper and an accent. So why not a series of stories about early 90’s New Yorkers living the worst days of their lives, tied together by the spectre-like appearance of a mentally unbalanced paramedic prone to Nic Cagesque monologues about life and death?
How in the Dickens would I make that work?
You’ll need a lot of messed up stories for Frank Pierce to encounter though, and I know just where to find them. The hidden secret of Bringing Out The Dead — one that you can watch the movie a dozen times without noticing — is that it’s a stealth remake of A Christmas Carol. I wrote more about the connections here, but suffice to say Nic Cage’s character has ‘been seeing the ghosts’ and has three partners on three nights leading up to Christmas, who in turn talk to him about the past, present and future.
So for the followup, why not go to the followups?
After the success of A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens spent 22 years producing an annual book of creepy Christmas stories. Most of them have never been adapted, so they’re perfect source material for a 22 episode season. Not to remake the stories (even literary scholars call out most of them as half-assed outsourced cash-grabs) but to secretly use their structures and themes to create new stories and see if anyone notices.
So here’s my pitch for…
Bringing Out The Dead: The Animated Series
An FX Original Series. 22 Episodes x 22 minutes.
Paramedic Frank Pierce and his partners help the people of New York on the worst days of their lives, and bear witness to stories of violence, betrayal, redemption and regret.
List of episodes:
1. Bell Tower Park (based on The Chimes)
Frank and Marcus respond to a jumper. The man can be saved, but he won’t help himself. He’s high as hell after being kicked out of his own daughter’s wedding and ranting about how doesn’t deserve to live. Frank finally gets fed up and shouts “You wanna be dead? Fine, you’re dead. Marcus, call it.” They legitimately act like the guy is dead, and he gets up and runs off. While they go off on other calls, the man runs off bloody, bruised and high as balls thinking he’s a ghost. He witnesses one misfortune after another until he crashes his daughter’s wedding and things turn violent. When Frank and Marcus respond to a call at the wedding, the man sees the ambulance that he thinks took his life and decides he wants to live. He jumps out in front of the ambulance to ask for help, and is killed.
2. Sirens of The Bronx (based on Cricket on the Hearth)
The sirens that have always kept the John family awake at night suddenly give them a feeling of comfort when those same sirens respond to a knife-fight at a neighbor’s wedding. Mr. John has attacked the man he saw sneaking around with his wife in disguise, and both men end up badly wounded. In the ambulance on the way, Mr. John realizes that the man is not his wife’s lover, but the groom’s. After hearing the man’s story on the way, Mr. John insists they turn back around and stop the wedding but Frank refuses. When they arrive at the hospital, the groom is waiting. He has left his own wedding, and exchanges vows with his lover instead at the hospital chapel. With the sounds of happiness and the sounds of the sirens, no one but the paramedics notice as Mr. John slips away.
3. Saving A Life Is Like Falling In Love (based on Battle of Life)
Frank and Marcus respond to a teen runaway found living under a bridge. He takes it far too personally as she fights for life, with no one coming to visit her. He takes it upon himself to find and confront the family, who it turns out already thought she was dead. It turns out she left to avoid a love triangle between herself, her boyfriend and her sister. If she hadn’t, her sister and ex wouldn’t be in the very same hospital, giving birth to their first child.
4. The Third Step is Bargaining (based on The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain)
Frank and Marcus pick up a woman named Mrs. Walder who has overdosed on pills in an attempt to forget her pain and suffering. Walder succeeds — not by death but by amnesia. After not recognizing any of her family members, Walder flees the hospital. Frank finds her running through the streets in her hospital gown, and scares some sense into her with an exasperated monologue, telling her she’s only creating more pain and suffering. She has to either deal with the pain and suffering she’s got, or end it once and for all. He leaves her standing at the edge of the bridge he found her at, and tells her he;ll be waiting in the ambulance. A few minutes later, she gets in.
5. The Cypress Tree (based on The Christmas Tree)
The residents of an apartment block have spent months successfully fighting off the city from cutting down the giant old tree that’s been growing in their courtyard for generations. Now, they have to deal with the guilt when the tree falls, collapsing part of the building and trapping a number of residents inside.
6. I Got a Lot of Guilt, You Know What I Mean? (based on What Christmas Means, As We Grow Older)
An old woman has less time to live than the ambulance has left before reaching the hospital. She tells her life story to Frank and confesses things she never told anyone. When Frank finally reaches the hospital, dead body in tow, the family approaches him to ask what the woman told him. Frank, knowing he was the only witness to this woman’s worst moments, simply answers “she said she loved you,” and walks away.
7. People Die in Fires (based on A Round of Stories by the Christmas Fire)
Frank and Larry arrive at a fire before the firemen do. Knowing that their job is to help after the bodies come out of the building, they sit casually, eating and chatting as screams for help come from inside. Frank eventually gets fed up with waiting and goes into the still-burning building. After he doesn’t come back out again, Larry follows him in. The men end up trapped, and for once they are the ones being rescued.
8. There Are No Good Fires (based on Another Round of Stories by the Christmas Fire)
Frank, having been rescued by his fellow paramedics, finds himself in Our Lady of Mercy Hospital, where he has taken so many others. He finds out that someone died because the other paramedics were attending to him instead of the fire victims. Confined to a bed, he is haunted by all those he has taken there and lost.
9. Seven Poor Tourists (based on The Seven Poor Travelers)
Frank responds to what he thinks is a mugged tourist. It turns out he’s an out-of-town mobster in for a meeting to make nice with the local mafia and end a war. It also turns out Frank is going to find six more of this bodies before the night is done. And it’s going to place him in the crossfire.
10. Holly-Tree Hotel (based on The Holly-Tree Inn)
At a shady no-tell Motel, a man has fallen out of a second story bathroom window in his underwear while trying to flee the jealous husband of the woman he was seeing. As he tries to reach the victim stuck on a high up ledge, Frank has to deal with all of the drama unfolding around him.
11. The Golden Girl (based on The Wreck of the Golden Mary)
At a small marina, a boating accident reveals a conflict between the locals and the rich people who use the neighborhood to store their expensive toys.
12. Prisons Don’t Want Her (based on The Perils of Certain English Prisoners)
Police unjustly arrest a group of female protestors, and they decide to escape custody. When the cops open fire, Frank takes care of the injuries. Now, having gone from a police van to an ambulance, one prisoner decides she wants to escape once again.
13. In My House, Shooting At Me (based on A House To Let)
A member of the neighborhood watch investigates some noises inside a building and finds a group of squatters running an illegal drug operation. Frank responds to the shootout that ensues, but finds out that it’s not quite over.
14. What Haunted Me Now Was More Savage (based on The Haunted House)
A slumlord has ignored all of the tenant’s complaints about the building for years, and left numerous life-threatening dangers. Now, he’s the victim of them.
15. Four Hours in Elevator C (based on A Message From The Sea)
Two sworn enemies are trapped in an elevator together. As Frank arrives to treat them for dehydration, he ends up trapped with them as well.
16. On The Ground (based on Tom Tiddler’s Ground)
While showing the ropes to a new rookie partner, Frank comes across usual story of the hermit neighbor that no one noticed was dead until the smell started to creep in to their apartments. Except this time, the man is not quite dead. The man can’t be moved, so Frank has to stay with him as he reminisces. Simultaneously he talks the calm old man through the end of his life and the panicking rookie through the beginning of his new life.
17. Somebody’s Money (based on Somebody’s Luggage)
Riding with the less moral paramedic Major Tom, Frank responds to a gang shooting and finds his victim clutching a duffel bag of stolen money. Frank tries to work, but the man won’t stop clutching it. Major Tom keeps yelling back to ask what it is, and Frank finally tells him. Tom pulls the bus over, turns off the engine, and tries to convince Frank to take the money, and maybe not try so hard to save such a ‘bad man.’ Frank, not wanting to do it, demands the man explain what makes him worth saving. The man tells his story, which does little to convince Frank, but he saves the man anyway, while fighting off Tom. The gang member ends up beating up Major Tom, and running off with his money.
18. Lirriper Lodge (based on Mrs Lirriper’s Lodge)
Frank and Marcus try to help as a woman dies in childbirth at an old hotel. But after tending to the woman, they find out that one of the hotel workers has taken the baby. Frank, knowing the infant needs assistance and not wanting two losses on the same call, obsessively searches the building, and discovers a number of odd things happening in the hotel.
19. Legacy Gym (based on Mrs Lirriper’s Legacy)
An aging boxer named The Taxman was in a friendly sparring match with a young amateur, who took the fight too seriously and thought beating the champ would help his career. Now Frank is fighting to save the older boxer’s life and both men wonder what the event will do for their legacies.
20. The Doctor Is In (based on Doctor Marigold’s Prescriptions)
Frank arrives in a drug dealer’s home to take care of a deaf and mute girl who is having a seizure. As they work her father, Doc, gets home high on his own supply and angry. Frank tries to assure him that he’s a paramedic, not a cop They’re not there to bust him, and not there to take his daughter away. He only wants to help the girl. After she’s better, Doc still won’t let them leave. It’s up to his daughter to communicate with her father and tell him that everything is all right. But in the end, the man is arrested and the girl is taken into protective custody.
21. Morris Park Junction (based on Mugby Junction)
Frank and Marcus are repeatedly called to the subway, where a worker insists he hears someone moaning in pain down in the tunnel. No one can find anything. The man finally decides to go follow the sound himself. Frank and Marcus cme back one least time, to scrape his body off the tracks.
22. Do Not Pass (based on No Thoroughfare)
Season finale. The man Frank picks up has the same name and the same birthday. As Frank tries to keep the other Frank Pierce from dying, he has to confront his own PTSD and wonder if he himself wants to live or die.
So that’s my suggestion for BOTD:TAS. This started is a joke, but I really want to make this now. Or even just watch it. Hey FX, (holds thumb and pinky to side of face and mouths ‘call me’)
