Wine Not Tasted

WINE NOT TASTED

Movie Plot Draft # 1

After a turbulent start in life Julien Lang has settled into a respectable career as a wine connoisseur and sommelier at fashionable restaurants. He currently holds that position at Le Poison in the nation’s capital.

Among Julien’s classmates in a Western high school was a fellow by the name of Stephen Spelberg who would decades later become a famous movie producer. Their paths would eventually cross again.

Julien grew up during the Vietnam War, becoming a hippie, drug abuser, war protester and repeat draft dodger. The latter “offense” lead to a mousy FBI agent showing up at Julien’s  door  offering a resolution and being told to “fuck off.” Julien gets a lawyer, gets arrested, finger-printed, mug-shot taken and sent on his way. He then gets a girl pregnant, gets married, has a daughter, and receives a second draft greeting. From this second brush with the establishment he is sentenced to two years alternative duty as a hospital janitor, thus avoiding a jail term.

His first marriage ends in divorce as does the second one not much later.  His third and current marriage will much later be dramatically disrupted. In the meantime he apprentices as a wine steward and eventually ends up being a wine consultant for a liquor business in Wyoming. Little did he know what that innocuous job would portend?

One of the wine customers seeking Julien’s advice was a Wyoming politician, Dick Heney. The two got into an escalating argument over the Vietnam War and the draft—Heney brags about having gotten five draft deferments to avoid serving in it. Incensed, Julien splashes Heney in the face with a glass of wine. Furious, Heney gets Julien fired.

Life goes on for the two antagonists. Heney becomes Vice President of the US and is leading the plot to invade a coveted country. Lang, meanwhile, lands a plum job as the chief wine steward at the plush Le Poison restaurant in Washingon, D.C., but his marriage is fraying and he is seeing a psychiatrist for increasingly distressed memories and thoughts about America’s war mongers, military bases covering the globe, and bombs falling on foreign lands.

Years later, Heney, now out of office, dines with friends at Le Poison.  Lang shows them a recommended bottle of wine and then suddenly smashes Heney’s head with it. Heney survives without any complications. Lang is taken away. He becomes an instant cult figure and his trial is swamped by sympathizers. His imprisonment provokes antiwar protests in every major city. He is visited by Spelberg who says he is making a movie about the two antagonists tentatively titled Wine Not Tasted.

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

Twitter @LibertyQuotient

democracypower@bellsouth.net