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THE ECCENTRIC LOVE AFFAIR                                               By Robert T. Roe

 

Log:  (romantic comedy) “To gain his billion dollar inheritance, a dull money lover who’s afraid of commitment, must fall in love and prove it to his ultra eccentric grandmother by taking a lie detector test.”

 

Theme: Love is worth it

Walter’s fatal flaw: He thinks he can get along fine without love but not money.

 

WALTER JOSEPH, forty, was in for the surprise of his life when his grandmother, ELEANOR, invited him to her “wonderland mansion”.   He knew it had to do with his inheritance, but when his grandmother, dressed as the Queen of England, declared to him he had to “die” first, he thought it was time to have the old girl committed.   To drive her point home, she had a gothic executioner chop off the head of a dummy that was made up to look just like Walter.  After she got his attention, she declared to him that the old “Walter” would have to be replaced with a new one, but it was not until the next day that she explained to Walter just what “changes” she was speaking of. 

 

The next morning, Eleanor put on another symbolic drama where she was an old west Judge, complete with hangman, gallows, and a twelve-man jury. They found Walter guilty and hung another dummy dressed up to be Walter.  The court showed mercy on Walter and hauled him into a room with six lawyers, an investigator psychologist, DOCTOR BECK, and a contract that clearly stated that Walter would have to fall in love and prove it with a lie detector test to win the money. One billion dollars that she would not give to a man who didn’t love.

 

Walter, who could not remember feeling any sort of deep love for a woman, thought this was going to be impossible.  He decided he had to cheat, but the woman at the helm of his progress, plain- Jane Doctor Beck, was not going to bend. Instead, she promised she would help Walter do it right.  And so, Walter went through a lot of women but was never able to pass the lie detector test until Doctor Beck discovered the wound that covered Walter’s heart. He had witnessed the death of his parents when seven and was raised by his grandmother who sent him to boarding schools.  Old home movies touched Walter’s heart and it opened way overboard up. He became a fruitcake- thinking he was in love with every woman he met along with making a public spectacle of himself.  But Doctor Beck discovered that Walter actually did have a secret love affair when nineteen but he was too embarrassed to talk about it.  It turns out he had an imaginary romance with a PLAYBOY CENTERFOLD named Krista Bonnet.  And guess what? It was Doctor Beck.  Beck declared Walter had achieved his goal by passing the lie detector test and wanted to get away before the connection was made. Yet, she had fallen for Walter and he for her.

 

Eleanor sensed this and put them both on trial in a new drama with her the Pope of the Spanish Inquisition.  The fun turned into love.