EXTENDED TRAILER: CHRONICLES OF ZOEY – THE COST OF GREATNESS
INT. BOSTON UNIVERSITY QUESTROM SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT - GRADUATE LOUNGE - DAY
Looking out large windows from the third floor onto the street are two young Asian-American women (ZOEY and MARGO) and we see tear gas grenades as they are lobbed down Commonwealth Avenue, against a roaring crowd wearing masks and black bandanas. Some have come prepared with their own gas masks and motorcycle helmets. The agitators in the crowd lob bricks from the back of a parked pickup truck and Molotov cocktails at heavily armored riot police as sirens blare and people shout. There are people down in the street bleeding and there are injured cops being pulled to safety. More cops line up in formation and then, on a signal, charge down the street with their shields. It is a fog of fire, smashed up cars and shop windows, bodies, running people, and anarchy.
ZOEY: So, I guess the shit has officially jumped off.
MARGO: You're telling me. I can’t believe he won another term.
VIDEO - JIM CRAMER ON CNBC
CRAMER: This is an utter catastrophe. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York has been under FBI investigation for reasons that are unknown at this time. The FEDERAL RESERVE BANK OF NEW YORK! A pillar of our financial system. A symbol of confidence. Sources say at least three members of the Board of Governors may be indicted in the next hour. We're waiting on a live press conferences from the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York and the Federal Reserve Inspector General.
VIDEO - A BLACK SCREEN WITH AN NBC PEACOCK LOGO EMERGES IN AN “UNWINDING EFFECT” IN THE MIDDLE OF IT - “NBC TONES” PLAY
FADE TO: SPECIAL REPORT INTRO – WITH THEME SONG, JOHN WILLIAMS - "THE PACE OF EVENTS"
HOLT: This is Lester Holt from NBC News World Headquarters at Rockefeller Center in New York. A nuclear missile has landed and exploded on the island of Japan, in the city of Fukuoka, according to their state news service, sources with Japanese Defense Forces and the US Strategic Command. Fukuoka is a city with a population of 1.6 million people…
VIDEO - CHRIS WALLACE FROM FOX NEWS
WALLACE: Reports are coming in that a Chinese MiG and a two Taiwanese F-16s engaged each other over the South China Sea early this morning…
VIDEO - JOHN DRAZEN FROM BLOOMBERG TV
DRAZEN: It is now official, 2020 is the year the US is out of the World Trade Organization. Stocks have plummeted further than the crisis of 2008. Interest rates are near record highs as relations with China are in chaos, in light of the crises between the Koreas and Japan and Taiwan and China, which have escalated beyond anyone's imagination, simultaneously. Transoceanic cargo shipping has virtually ceased. We now go to a press conference with the President of the International Longshore Union…
VIDEO – DANA BASH FROM CNN AT THE WHITE HOUSE
BASH: The Press Secretary is about to make a statement on the terror attacks in Moscow. There is a statement on an ISIS related website claiming responsibility. The Russian FSB has given an early report that a, quote, "dirty bomb" has exploded at the Kiyevsky Railway Station in the heart of Moscow. We're showing video from KTV right now. The official news here is coming out slowly as the now year-long US government shutdown of non-essential services following congress’ failure to pass a budget has left a virtual skeleton crew to manage crises on all fronts, from the State Department to the Department of Energy and even to some extent at the Pentagon Press Office, my colleagues tell me.
VIDEO – 60 MINUTES CORRESPONDENT MICHAEL CRAY WITH PROFESSOR LESHANG
CRAY (VO): We asked Harvard Professor of Economics James LeShang for his take on the situation.
LEHSANG: This is a disaster, but not one unforeseen. The legislation they passed, the CSFB vs. Navent Supreme Court decision and Department of Education rule changes, combined with the double-digit unemployment rate of the last two years, literally guaranteed defaults on student loans all across the country, and now Sallie Mae, the Federal Direct Loan Program, other student lenders, and their backing banks are in shambles. Plus the consumer debt held by millennials has exploded. It is a bubble that has been growing for nearly two decades and it has just burst, just like the mortgage-backed securities crisis of 2008. Then, with the exit from the WTO the US must now renegotiate trade deals with 164 individual countries with a State Department running with 28% less funding and half the staff. Thirdly, the Chinese middle class has burgeoned in the last four years and with their constant and massive infrastructure and military projects, they’re now much less reliant on their international trade partners, and now have a very self-sufficient internal economy and renewed commitment from Russia as well as their regional partners, plus new friends in Europe and the Middle East who have been hedging their bets on a US that was increasingly disinterested.
INT. LECTURE HALL WITH STADIUM SEATING
PROFESSOR: You are in uncertain times. It’s worse for the undergraduate males who are now being called up to military service. But I also know how your student funding has dried up, that many of you may not make it through this program…and I know that's scary.
INT. ADVISOR’S OFFICE – QUESTROM SCHOOL OF BUSINESS
ACADEMIC ADVISOR: So Zoey, you're here for a graduate education. An MBA and a law degree. Why?
ZOEY is slumped and uninterested, sitting in her chair.
ZOEY: I was bored with my past life.
ACADEMIC ADVISOR: What part?
ZOEY: Breaking into buildings in the middle of the night, bugging them, stealing documents. Bureaucracy. Multiple bosses. Dull places. Red-Tape. Reports. No fun. No friends. No sleep. No beer.
ACADEMIC ADVISOR: Wait, I had your file here just a second ago…where is it…wait…wait…what did you say you did?
ZOEY: I was a clandestine service technician for the CIA.
INT. BOSTON UNIVERSITY QUESTROM SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT - HALLWAY
MARGO and ZOEY wait for an elevator, dressed in business clothes and carrying briefcases. There’s a DING and the doors open. They step inside.
MARGO: So how do we pay for the rest of grad school now that we're in and the loans won’t be there next semester?
ZOEY: You're a Catholic, why don't you just pray this problem away.
INT. BOSTON UNIVERSITY QUESTROM SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT - GRADUATE LOUNGE - DAY
Five people seated around a table, bored out of their minds, watching TV: ZOEY, MARGO, a buff Latino student (LEV), a slightly overweight and older Caucasian (JOE), and a pencil-thin nerdy guy with thinning dark grey hair and glasses (STEVE). On the TV screen is a documentary on Epcot at Disney World.
TV (VO): Disney invented The Land Pavilion at Epcot to showcase the potential for hydroponics to bring fresh food in mass to cities, from within the cities themselves.
LEV: You know how much weed you could grow doing that, man?
STEVE (on his laptop): Colorado made $6 billion in marijuana revenues last year. That's like all small mom and pop shops mostly, because no banks
will provide services or financing for that business, since it’s still against federal law.
MARGO: So, it's all cash based? They could get raided or robbed at any time.
LEV: Supposedly, the new hawkish folks in this administration plan to go after them this time. Republicans love the War on Drugs. It's a Nixon thing.
JOE: When a cop, like I was, spends 12 hours a day buzzing on double parked limos and taxis and then gets a position to work this and be on the news for two minutes in a crisp uniform with a big wad of that and pallets of cash what do you expect? So, our unions used to love us working it. (considerate pause) That IS a LOT of money though.
MARGO: I bet I could figure out a better financial and business model. Something Uberish.
ZOEY: Yeah, you the straight-laced achiever, in the dope business. When did you start smoking it?
INT. DIMLY LIT OFFICE IN THE BACK OF A MEXICAN NIGHT CLUB KITCHEN - AFTER HOURS
ZOEY, MARGO, and LEV sit on folding chairs before a bald Latino man with a greying mustache and a neatly trimmed goatee (BUSINESS MAN).
BUSINESS MAN: So…what do you need?
MARGO: We need half a million dollars, a 40,000 square foot warehouse, four lightly used box trucks, hydroponic equipment, a staff of 20 laborers, a foreman, and five armed guards.
BUSINESS MAN: Ok then.
INT. TABLE AT LA CANTINA BAR - BROOKLINE – NIGHT
Five people seated around a table with food and margaritas: ZOEY, MARGO, LEV, JOE, and STEVE. Loud Mexican music blaring in the background.
ZOEY: So, all things considered now, who's in, who's out?
MARGO: I was a bank Vice President and Corporate America fucked me over. I'm already in. How about you Lev?
LEV: I was a criminal in my own country, I'm pretty good at it… why not here too? In.
JOE: As an ex-cop of 20 years, I think this is just prohibition all over again. "Stick it to The Man." I'm in.
STEVE: I just want a wild ride. Plus, the world’s gone to help. (pause) Let's do this.
They toast to the new enterprise.
INT. GRADUATE DORM ROOM
ZOEY AND MARGO sitting on the edge of a couch across from LEV, STEVE and JOE who are sitting on a long coffee table, all drinking beers from bottles.
LEV: Things have gotten…complicated. They want to take over. They want it all back…for them. They want us to walk.
ZOEY: Steve, you're "Mr. Fix-it". What do you think?
STEVE: We'll…we're here in business school to learn about using leverage, and not just the financial kind. Lev, Joe and I think it's time to apply some. We do that or they fire us, and probably kill us too.
MARGO: So we go full-tilt…we're in real-deal organized crime officially!?
ZOEY: The whole five of us? A sort of minimum-viable-crime-family. The whole "Lean" philosophy?
JOE: Leave it to you Jap girls to bring in your "Toyota Way of Business".
ZOEY: We're Korean dude, and the proper term is “Asian-American”, as Walter from the “Lebowski movie” would say.
MARGO: Yeah, but I didn't build no damn railroads.
ZOEY: And I didn't piss on anyone’s carpet.
EXT. BOSTON - CROWDED BUS STOP OUTSIDE THE BOSTON GLOBE, DORCHESTER – DAY - WIDESHOT
Everyone minding their own business ready to go home from work at the bus stop. LEV calmly walks into the scene and up to a MAN in a suit with a briefcase in front of a fully packed bus shelter. LEV pulls out a GLOCK 19 from an inside-the-waistband holster under his open pea coat and shoots the MAN in the head twice from behind as the crowd goes berserk and pigeons fly. The MAN falls into a puddle on the street. LEV calmly, yet cautiously and swiftly, walks away in the same direction he came.
INT. BMW X5 - A STOP LIGHT, GOVERNMENT CENTER AND FANUEL HALL - NIGHT
STEVE is driving with ZOEY, MARGO, LEV, AND JOE in the car, all looking tired, JOE with a headache.
JOE: So how do we "go to the mattresses," as they say, if we're supposed to be in classes all day?
STEVE: We can’t. I mean…we could hire private security contractors.
INT. QUESTROM SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT - DEAN'S OFFICE
Inside are the DEAN, a massive scary Marine looking guy (FRANK), and ZOEY.
DEAN: So, why are we here?
ZOEY: Um…it's like, come to my attention that my friends and I may be in some sort of…danger, so…we've hired a security firm. This is Frank. He and his staff will be um…around us at all times.
DEAN: What?
INT. GRADUATE DORM HALL
MARGO and ZOEY pace the halls with beers in their hands wearing pajamas and furry slippers.
ZOEY: So if we're already…already in business, then why do we need this schooling at all?
MARGO: Because we want to be the Bill Gateses of the Mary Jane. We want to learn how to scale up fast, run world-wide, do logistics, analytics, boss people…rake in the dough, reinvest it…all that.
ZOEY: Pablo Escobar wasn’t exactly a Harvard MBA. He just had balls and knew how to flex them.
MARGO: It’s the modern, fucked-up world. MBAs and lawyers run the system now. It takes tact.
ZOEY: We’re not exactly facing the Foot Clan from the Ninja Turtles. We’re wide out in the open here.
MARGO: Look, Lev managed a cartel hit team before coming here—he has them covered.
ZOEY: I still can’t figure out how anybody thought that made him a good MBA candidate.
MARGO: Must have been his looks.
ZOEY: So what’s our big, grand vision here? What are we aiming for?
MARGO: We’ll be bigger than “Big Tobacco” was. In five years, new politicians will have had the chance to change the laws and it will be completely legitimate.
ZOEY: “Completely legitimate in five years”? Is that from the Godfather Part Two?
MARGO: I think it was Part One.
ZOEY: Well, let's try to avoid an ending like Part Three.
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