Fade in on an office building at sunset. Mournful music plays. Cut to interior of the building as the white collar workers leave. One turns back on the threshold and calls, “See you in the morning, John.”
Cut to John, late twenties, All-American looks, clean-shaven but with a lock of hair falling over his forehead, tie loosened and sleeves rolled up, waving goodbye. He remains in the office as night falls, drawing with a T-square on a large tilted desk.
In a laboratory, John pipets a small amount of blue liquid into a test tube, his face rapt with excitement.
Establishing shot of New York in the 1950’s. Old man’s voiceover: “They say that when a true genius appears in the world…”
John stands in a corporate meeting room, pointing at an easel displaying some diagrams. The audience of executives looks bemused, some scornful.
In a coffeehouse, John draws on a napkin, saying, “We can revolutionize the industry.” His interlocutor says, “But don’t you understand, nobody’s ever done anything like this before.”
Old man voiceover: “…you can recognize him by this sign…”
In the throes of creativity, John uses charcoal to sketch a narrow rectangular hut with an open door, inside is an oval-shaped seat. “It’ll neutralize the odor with chemicals,” John says. “We’ll finally be free, I tell you, free of the shackles of plumbing. There’s no end to the places we’ll go. And we’ll call it…” John trails off, then his eye falls upon his own driver’s license, and he says, “…the Portapotty!”
An alabaster-skinned women, Titian-blonde hair soaked, stands in the rain and says, “I believe in you, John. I believe in you and the chemical toilet.”
Surrounded by friends, John uses oversized scissors to cut a red ribbon in front of a brand-new factory, then lights up a cigar and smiles big. Flashbulbs pop.
Old man voiceover: “…that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.”
On the observation deck of the Empire State Building, John, now middle-aged, raves: “I’m not going to let them take the Portapotty away from me! It’s my name, dammit!”
An oily corporate lawyer holds out a piece of paper and a pen and says, “I’m sorry, John. You were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
In a dark parking structure, a figure in the shadows speaks in a raspy voice: “You have meddled with the primal forces of nature.”
In a wood-paneled courtroom, a judge bangs a gavel and says, “Mr. John Portapotty, you are hereby found in contempt.”
Series of quick shots:
John angrily rips up architectural blueprints.
On a firing range, John shoots a pistol at a cardboard cutout of an elderly man labeled “Nigel Portaloo.”
The wind blowing his hair, John stands at the helm of a speedboat racing over the water. Camera tilts up to reveal the Statue of Liberty.
John’s voiceover: “I knew it wouldn’t be easy. But I never thought it would be this hard.”
A much older John stands before a jury, giving an impassioned speech: “Today, Benjamin Franklin would be arrested for sailing a kite without a license. But I can remember… I can remember a time when…”
Triumphant horns blare on the soundtrack and we fade to:
A twelve-year-old John, in some kind of flashback scene, cautiously lifts the lid off the tank of a conventional flush toilet. He gazes at the pipes and the ball float and says to himself, “There must be a better way.”
White letters on a black background, slowing fading:
Portapotty
Coming December 2013
John’s voiceover, whispering: “Nobody will ever poop the same again.”